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I've had a lot of requests, updates, etc sent my way recently and because Harper and I are home today recovering from our trip - I thought I would list a few things for you to read between a few pictures of the princess (I've been messing around with Lightroom).....
- First a PRAISE - Remember little Cora? She is the little girl who was diagnosed with cancer and passed away within a few weeks at 10 months? Words can not tell you how sad I have felt for their family especially as I treasure my little girl and try to imagine losing her after knowing her like I do. Well - they are expecing another baby! I am thankful for this joy they have been given but I'm sure it also bring sadness with it as they remember milestones of Cora's pregnancy and birth. Praise God with me and pray for them also!
- Baby Be Blessed is the wonderful makers of precious scripture dolls. They have also donated dolls to be used by Compassion International. Now they are trying to help a very special family by having a raffle for a custom doll. They will be giving the money to the family of Arwen - a special little girl who has a seizure disorder along with many other struggles. Her mother has terminal cancer and is on hospice. You can read all about their family HERE and if you feel led - it would be a wonderful way to help them.
- I told you recently about Natalie - a girl who lost a baby to a cord accident and her friends are now raising money to help her see a specialist who will monitor her current pregnancy. They are doing a big giveaway to help - you should check it out HERE.
- Pray for baby Dylan who was born 2 months ago and has infant leukemia.
- Britt who had baby Brady last week who had a collapsed lung and huge infection. I don't have a website or more info but God knows who you are praying for.
- Pray for 6 year old Lana who had a brain aneurysm 11 days ago. She is in the children's hospital in Philadelphia.
- Please pray for Mark and Kate. They delivered twins at 24 1/2 weeks in March, Kate's mother died a few weeks ago, Kate lost her job and they have to sell their house. Can you imagine the stress they are under? They could use our support right now.
- Pray for Giovanni Gonzalez - a 23 year old police officer who passed away in Florida recently.
- Check out this great organization that some moms have started to provide CUTE hospital gowns for children who are having to stay in the hospital. Maybe you will feel led to help!
I am so thankful to be able to share requests and fundraisers and to be able to use my blog to help others but I'm going to step back and take a break from listing anything else out for the next month or so. I have a couple of giveaways coming up and then I'm going to just be writing about my family for a little while. If you have an urgent request - please send it and I'll either twitter about it (kellyskorner) or put it on my links to the left! Thank you for your faithfulness to lift others up in prayers - I know it can get overwhelming!

subset: commoncrawl


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text: blog-8 Date 20/01/2016 Ngo Nhat Thi PMP, PMI-ACP. 10-year professional project management & consultancy in the industries of banking, finance and IT. Professional trainer/coach for both traditional and Agile project management methodologies. 20-year+ experience in IT service management and operation. Matured-level skills of setup & implementation of ITIL-based IT management processes.


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Last weekend we had so much of snow thanks to "Daisy". The "big freeze" brought a lot of chaos to Europe especially Germany and the UK. Although the rest of the nation was complaining – we enjoyed it to the max.
Skiing, sledging and building snowmen was basically how we spent the weekend. It could not have been better. After the snow came gorgeous blue skies and arctic cold. So I packed my gear and went for a walk. To capture some of the winter wonderland, I live in.
I live just a 5 minute drive outside of Weimar. The fields that surround our suburb, tucked away on a little hill, is a canvas for artists and photographers regardless of the season and weather.
Hope you enjoy a glimpse of the scenery I enjoy everyday.
Have a great weekend – where ever you are and whatever your weather!
All photographs and written content on What's For Lunch, Honey? © 2006-2010 Meeta Khurana unless otherwise indicated. | All rights reserved | Please Ask First


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Dear Sassy,
Remember on Sunday when we were in the kitchen, and you made me laugh so hard when I was seriously trying to learn the top ten tricks anorexics use to lose weight?
You took out a shot glass and were going to give me a shot of hot sauce…remember how we both laughed so hard we almost peed our pants? Each time we looked at each other we laughed and laughed and laughed.
That brief shining moment reminded me of what an incredible gift you are. And even when you scream at me at the top of your lungs, and SAY you hate me more than anything else in the world, I know deep down in my heart… that you don't.
Thanks for the reminder.
(I am spending time with my kids at the Smithfield County Fair; no internet, and lots of colorful folks. )


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Brand | IWC |
Reference | IW390501 |
Also known reference: | IW-390501, 390501 |
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Condition | New (Original Box & Papers) |
Warranty | 2 years |
Country of Manufacture | Switzerland |
Case material | Rose Gold / Pink Gold |
Case diameter (mm) | 43.5 mm |
Case Shape | Round |
Thickness (mm) | 14.2 mm |
Dial | Silver dial |
Movement | Automatic |
Movement Calibre | 89361 calibre |
Power Reserve (h) | 68 hours when fully wound |
No. of Jewels | 38 jewels |
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IWC Portugieser Yacht Club Chronograph 43.5 mm IW390501
IWC Portugieser Yacht Club Chronograph 43.5mm watch. Model reference: IW390501. This stylish timepiece is the sportiest model in a watch family steeped in tradition. The rounded 43.5mm case of 14.2mm thickness is performed in 18K rose gold. The silver-plated dial has applied Arabic Numerals, dots, printed indexes, and leaf-shaped hands with luminous fill. The small seconds sub-dial is placed at the 6 o'clock. The outer chapter ring and the thin red central hand serve as a seconds chronograph. There are a 60-minute and 12-hour chronographs at the 12 o'clock. The date window is placed at the 3 o'clock. The mechanical self-winding 89361 movement has 38 jewels. It features approximately 68-hour power reserve. The timepiece is fitted on a black rubber strap a tang buckle. It is 60m water resistant. The watch comes in original packaging, with a set of documents and 2 years warranty. At Watches of Mayfair, we offer new authentic watches at the best prices.
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Whether you are dealing with a chronic illness, emotional problem, life transition, or want to enhance your health and well-being, your community may have a group where you can come together with people in the same situation. But maybe you are feeling a little unsure or skeptical about participating in a support group. What can you expect? How can a support group help you?
What Is a Support Group?
In earlier times, barn raisings, square dances, quilting bees, and other community gatherings were places where people came together to celebrate, nurture, encourage, and console one another. Today, most of us need that same nurturing, encouragement, intimacy and consolation, particularly during difficult times. But face-to-face interactions within the community are becoming more and more scarce. If we are lucky, we get support from family and friends, but sometimes they cannot quite understand what it is like to be in our situation. A support or self-help group comprising people in the same situation may help fill the void.
Support and self-help groups involve regular meetings where people experiencing similar problems or life transitions come together to offer each other support and encouragement. In the last 25 years, there has been an increase in the number of support and self-help groups.
What Kinds of Groups Are Available?
Support and self-help groups address many issues. Common ones include:
- Chronic illnesses/conditions—such as cancer , diabetes , fibromyalgia , post-traumatic stress disorder , alcoholism , and depression
- Situational crises—such as divorce, unemployment, single parenting , widowhood , caregiving , and surviving a loved one's suicide
- Personal growth and wellness—such as weight loss , smoking cessation , exercise , men's and women's groups
- Family support—which includes groups that help family members cope with a loved one's illness or condition
What Do You Get From a Support Group?
Although support and self-help groups can vary greatly, all groups share one thing in common—they are places where people can share personal stories, express emotions, and be heard in an atmosphere of acceptance, understanding, and encouragement. Participants share information and resources. By helping others, people in a support group strengthen and empower themselves. In addition to providing support, some groups may also focus on community education or advocacy.
The emotional support derived from support group participation can help reduce stress, which can have a positive impact on health. Further, people may greatly benefit from the information sharing that takes place in a support group. They may learn how to manage symptoms, develop better coping skills, and communicate more effectively with their doctors. By attending support groups, partners, friends, and family members may also learn how to be more understanding and supportive of their chronically ill loved ones. In time, all these benefits may help reduce stress and enhance recovery.
Does Everyone Benefit?
"Support groups vary enormously," says Julia Rowland, PhD, director of the National Cancer Institute's Office of Cancer Survivorship. "They can be helpful for people who feel comfortable in a group, but they aren't the answer for everybody."
How Do You Find a Group?
Most communities, large and small, have support and self-help groups of various kinds. You can often find out about groups in the community pages of your phone book, local newspapers, or online. National self-help organizations such as Alcoholic's Anonymous typically have local chapters and are listed in the phone book and on the internet. You can also ask your doctor or therapist for information about support groups. The National Library of Medicine has an index called DIRLINE that can be useful.
Perhaps you have an issue for which no relevant group exists in your community. In that case, you may want to consider starting a support group. Let your doctor know that you plan on starting a support group and leave your phone number for others to call. Find a comfortable and accessible place and a convenient time to meet. Get the word out by using the community pages of your newspaper and posting and distributing flyers to area doctors, hospitals, and libraries.
Hearts and Minds http://www.heartsandminds.org/self/
National Mental Health Consumers' Self-help Clearinghouse http://www.mhselfhelp.org/
Canadian Mental Health Association http://www.cmha.ca/
Canadian Psychiatric Association http://www.cpa-apc.org/
Cancer support groups: questions and answers. National Cancer Institute website. Available at: http://www.cancer.gov/ . Updated February 2002. Accessed August 13, 2008.
Harvard Health Letter website. Available at: http://www.chpg.net/health.html .
University of Wisconsin, Health and Human Issues Department website. Available at: http://www.dcs.wisc.edu/pda/hhi/ .


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A vivid vision of the warmest wishes, brought to life as fragrant, fresh bouquet!
Because we are an American company, we bill in U.S. dollars. So regardless of where you are located or where you are sending your gift, you will only be billed in U.S. Dollars. Additionally, in the chance that you are issued any sort of refund, you will only be refunded in U.S. dollars. We are not responsible for exchange rate fluctuation. Click for additional policy information.
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This summer I have had a lot of success in experimenting with fruit and berry salsas like the chipotle cherry salsa and there was one more that I wanted to try, a blueberry salsa with habanero peppers. I had come across the idea of a blueberry salsa from the Kogi food truck and I really liked the sound of it. With weather starting to get a bit cooler I figured that it was the perfect time to try making it while the fresh local blueberries were still in season. Salas recipes seem to kind of write themselves these days; you start with the main ingredient, the blueberries, then add some heat, the habanero, then some onions and garlic and a touch of lime juice to keep things fresh. I also normally add a fresh herb and it is almost always cilantro but this time I wanted to go with some basil as I thought that it would work well with the blueberries. The final touch is to season with salt and pepper and I thought that I would go with an Asian twist and used soy sauce and ginger instead.
The blue berry salsa turned out to be another wildly successful berry salsa! All of the fresh flavours play amazingly well together and you could easily polish off a whole batch with a bag of tortilla chips handy. Of course I had to restrain myself from eating too much as I wanted to use the blueberry salsa in another dish!
Blueberry and Basil Habanero Salsa
A savoury blueberry salsa with the heat of habanero chillies and the summery freshness of basil.
- 2 cups blueberries
- 1 habanero, seeded (or to taste)
- 1/4 cup red onion, diced
- 1 teaspoon garlic, grated
- 1 teaspoon ginger, grated
- 1 handful basil
- 1/2 lime, juice
- 1 teaspoon soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- Puree everything in a food processor until smooth.
- Simmer the salsa to remove excess liquid. (Optional: This salsa is great fresh but if you are going to use it in something like tacos you will want to simmer it a bit to remover the excess liquid.)


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Mary Southard, a Sister of St. Joseph, is an artist whose Paintings reflect her close connection to and love for the Natural World and what it is to be a participant in this magnificent Universe. Her paintings and sculptures explore and give expression to our soul journey within this intimate, interconnected Sacred Community of life, with all its beauty and pain, its passion and mystery.
Through a yearly Art/Reflection Calendar, which she began in 1979 until the present, Mary's work brings into consciousness the Oneness of All Creation, and of the importance of all our actions and choices affecting the health or diminishment of Earth, our common home. She was co-founder of the Ecological Spirituality Center in the 1980's (now The Well) in La Grange Pk. IL, and was Co-Founder of Spiritearth with John Surette SJ in 1990.
Her experience as educator, retreat director, and group facilitator has taken her to places here in the US, Canada, Europe and Australia, where her delight is to be with others as they awaken to our Cosmic Story of the Origin and Nature of the Universe, and the power of their own creativity as participants within it. She lives and has her studio in La Grange Park, Illinois. Visit her website: www.marysouthardart.org


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The CIA tells Pakistan in advance about "broad areas" where it intends to take aim at suspected terrorists with drone strikes and interprets the other government's silence and clearing of airspace as "tacit consent," The Wall Street Journal reports this morning.
Saying its sources are "U.S. officials" and "two senior [Obama] administration officials," the Journal adds that:
"The rationale used by the administration, interpreting Pakistan's acquiescence as a green light, has set off alarms among some administration legal officials. In particular, lawyers at the State Department, including top legal adviser Harold Koh, believe this rationale veers near the edge of what can be considered permission, though they still think the program is legal, officials say."
Officially, says the Journal, "representatives of the White House's National Security Council and CIA declined to discuss Pakistani consent, saying such information is classified."
Also officially, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has asked the U.S. to end the drone strikes, as Pakistan's Dawn newspaper writes. Pakistan's people "hate the drone attacks," as NPR's Mike Shuster has reported.
The strikes are aimed at fighters from al-Qaida, the Taliban and other groups that use parts of Pakistan as a safe haven from which to launch attacks in neighboring Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, at the Stanford and New York University law schools alleges that the drone strikes in recent years have killed and injured many more Pakistani civilians — possibly close to 900 — than the U.S. has acknowledged.
The New York Times' AtWar blog says the report also concludes that the strikes have "alienated Pakistani public opinion and set a dangerous precedent under international law."
Back in June, as Eyder wrote, a U.N. investigator said the drone strikes may violate international law.
Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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I know…I am evil to make apple and cider beignets, to take their pictures and put them here while some of you have made food related New Year's resolutions. I guess now you know that I don't make any…! No, seriously, I do make "adjustments", not resolutions. Just the word puts too much pressure so I make a list of bad habits that I need to correct. Back to the beignets though. If you think about it, I am not really evil if you are tempted by these. Don't they say "an apple a day keeps the doctor away"? And that if you fry things at a high enough temperature, you don't get as much oil in the food? So you see….no evil.
Alright, I might be trying to justify the fact that I enjoyed one too many of them tonight but sometimes life is too short to worry about two or three Apple And Cider Beignets. I am not pushing you to throw caution away to the wind but let's face it between two of these and two store bought ones, I know which one I am going for. First, they are made with fresh ingredients that I can pronounce without scratching my head, and second of all who knows what tomorrow holds?
I have been craving fruit beignets like these for months but beside the four days we had of cold-er weather, there has never been a "proper"occasion. I can't say "cold" for those of you under really bone chilling conditions or you would laugh at me! Anyway, if I wait for another drop in the temperatures I might have to move up north before the right moment comes along. And really, when is the right moment? My philosophy is that if it is not hurting anybody and not breaking any law, (college days are definitely over), well, now is as good a time as ever!
I was going to use one of my mom's recipes until I noticed Kate Zuckerman had a pretty mouth watering one also. She uses light beer in her recipe but I had just opened a bottle of "cidre brut" so I went with that instead. Since one of my New Year's "adjustments" is to try more than one recipe from cookbooks I receive, I went along with hers not knowing that I was in for a surprise. I don't know where she gets her apples but after the four called for in the recipes were all dipped and fried, I still had enough batter for four more! So there I was cleaning and slicing a pineapple as quickly as I could before the oil would turn smokey black. No time to roast the pineapple slices as she does the apples but they still turned out alright. Given more time though, I would have proceeded as she does in the recipe just to avoid too much of a bitey feel from the raw fruit. Consider yourself warned and either pick mammoth sized apples, double on the quantity or prepare other fruits. If you go with canned or jarred ones, make sure to pat them real dry with paper towels as we all have discovered at some point that oil and water don't really like each other, especially at frying temperatures.
Apple And Cider Beignets, adapted from Kate Zuckerman:
For the apples:
4 large apples
3 Tb butter
2 Tb sugar
For the batter:
4 eggs
3/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup melted butter (she uses oil)
3/4 cup hard cider or light beer
11/2 cups flour
2 tsp sugar
Oil for frying (1 to 2 cups)
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
Preheat the oven to 350F. Peel and core the apples. Slice them into four even doughnut shaped sections, crosswise. Lay the apples on a parchment paper lined baking sheet. Dot them with butter and sprinkle with sugar. Bake until the apples are brown and tender but not completely done. Let them cool to room temperature.
While the apples are baking, prepare the batter to fry them. Separate the eggs, reserving the whites. Whisk 3 egg yolks (discard the 4th one or use for something else) with the salt, butter and cider. Add the flour and whisk until smooth. In the bowl of a stand mixer, whisk the egg whites until foamy, add the sugar slowly until you get stiff glossy peaks. Carefully fold the whites into the egg yolk batter.
Note about frying: do not overcrowd your pan as it will drop the temperature of the oil and you will have a soggy oily beignet instead of a crispy one. To test if the oil is ready, dip the end of a wooden spoon or dowel in the oil and if you see bubbles at the base touching the oil, it is ready.
Heat one cup of oil in a frying pan to 325F. While it is heating up to temperature, mix the last measurement of sugar with the cinnamon in a plate and keep it close as you will dip the beignets in this once they are fried and cooled a bit.
Dip each roasted apple slice in the batter, coating both sides and gently lay them down in the oil. Cook 4-6 apple slices depend on the size of your pan, until they start to brown around the edges ( I used an 8inch cast iron one and 4 slices at a time). Using a slotted spoon or spatula, flip the apple over and cook until golden brown. Drain them on paper towels for a minute and dredge them in the cinnamon sugar. Serve as soon as possible or reheat briefly in a pan the day after (if they last that long).
P.S: I have read your comments and your emails about the caramel corkscrews and I will make a proper post about those this weekend. I also got emails about a cake I posted moons ago without writing the recipe down for you, so I will upload that too!


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Thursday, June 18, 2009
Buttermilk Spice Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
From the kitchen of One Perfect Bite...No picnic would be complete without something sweet to eat and I've been waiting for an excuse try this mildly spiced cake from Cook's Illustrated. I made the cake to their specifications and the recipe that appears here is an unaltered copy of the one that appears on their website. It produced a light cake with a tang from the buttermilk and cream cheese that's used in its preparation. While the cake is perfect for picnics or homely affairs on the deck, it's not easy to make and the end result is a good, not great, cake. I will make it again but will increase the quantity of spices that I use. Here's the recipe.
Buttermilk Spice Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting...from the kitchen of One Perfect Bite
2 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (11 1/4 ounces), plus extra for dusting pans
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
16 tablespoons unsalted butter (2 sticks), softened
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon table salt
2 large eggs at room temperature
3 large egg yolks at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups granulated sugar (12 1/4 ounces)
2 tablespoons light molasses or mild molasses
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
1 cup buttermilk , at room temperature
5 tablespoons unsalted butter , cut into 5 pieces, softened
1 1/4 cups confectioners' sugar (4 1/2 ounces)
8 ounces cream cheese , cut into 4 pieces , softened
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup coarsely chopped walnuts, toasted (optional)
1) For the cake: Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour 13- by 9-inch baking pan. Combine spices in small bowl; reserve 1/2 teaspoon for frosting.
2) Heat 4 tablespoons butter in 8-inch skillet over medium heat until melted, 1 to 2 minutes. Continue to cook, swirling pan constantly, until butter is light brown and has faint nutty aroma, 2 to 4 minutes. Add spices and continue to cook, stirring constantly, 15 seconds. Remove from heat and cool to room temperature, about 30 minutes.
3) Whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in medium bowl. In small bowl, gently whisk eggs, yolks, and vanilla to combine. In standing mixer fitted with paddle attachment, cream remaining 12 tablespoons butter with sugar and molasses at medium-high
speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes, scraping down sides and bottom of bowl twice with rubber spatula. Reduce to medium speed and add cooled butter and spice mixture, ginger, and half of egg mixture; mix until incorporated, about 15 seconds. Repeat with remaining egg mixture; scrape down bowl again. Reduce to low speed; add about one-third flour mixture, followed by half of buttermilk, mixing until just incorporated after each addition, about 5 seconds. Repeat using half of remaining flour mixture and all of remaining buttermilk. Scrape bowl and add remaining flour mixture; mix at medium speed until batter is thoroughly combined, about 15 seconds. Remove bowl from mixer and fold batter once or twice with rubber spatula to incorporate any remaining flour.
4) Transfer batter to prepared pan; zigzag tip of metal spatula through batter, pulling it to pan edges. Lightly tap pan against counter 3 or 4 times to dislodge any large air bubbles; smooth surface with spatula.
5) Bake until toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out clean, 32 to 37 minutes. Cool cake to room temperature in pan on wire rack, about 2 hours.
6) For the frosting: In bowl of standing mixer fitted with paddle attachment, beat butter, sugar, and reserved 1/2 teaspoon spice mixture at medium-high speed until light and fluffy, 1 to 2 minutes. Add cream cheese one piece at a time, beating thoroughly after each addition. Add vanilla and beat until no lumps remain, about 30 seconds.
7) Run paring knife around edge of cake to loosen from pan. Using spatula, spread frosting evenly over surface of cake. Sprinkle cake with walnuts, if using. Cut into squares and serve. Yield: 12 to 16 servings.
I'm going on a picnic and I'm bringing Buttermilk Spice Cake. My letter is B.
38 comments :
- Unknown said...
This looks great,I'm into this spice cake theme this week has been. :) That looks perfect like a slice of heaven. :)
- June 18, 2009 at 1:08 AM
- theUngourmet said...
I just love spice cake and this one looks terrific! I am so in love with the cream cheese frosting as well. Lovely!
- June 18, 2009 at 1:22 AM
- recipes2share said...
Looks perfect for a picnic - and also next time I have to prepare a cricket tea!!
- June 18, 2009 at 1:40 AM
- Martha said...
Spice cake is a favorit eand who doesn't like anything topped with cream cheese . . . but I prefer easy cakes mostly nowadays and appreciate your comments.
- June 18, 2009 at 5:56 AM
- Deb in Hawaii said...
Gorgeous spice cake and I love cream cheese frosting!
- June 18, 2009 at 6:20 AM
- Katherine Roberts Aucoin said...
Talk about gorgeous! What a perfect way to top off a picnic. I love spice cake, but I'm the only one who eats it around here. I'm going to a Bunko party Saturday, I may try this to take.
- June 18, 2009 at 8:18 AM
- My Little Space said...
Lovely cake. I think my kids will love it.
- June 18, 2009 at 8:50 AM
- ~~louise~~ said...
Hi Mary just popped in from Selby's Corner. I'm so glad I did! I'm having a picnic day celebration over at my blog and WOW that Buttermilk Spice Cake of yours sure would be the icing on the cake. I'm not much of a baker...someday, perhaps:)
I'm liking your blog. I think I'll go have a look see around...
Thanks for sharing... - June 18, 2009 at 8:58 AM
- Ginger said...
Mary the cake really does sound delicious and perfect for a picnic. I would be interested when you make this cake again with your changes.
- June 18, 2009 at 9:06 AM
- Joy Tilton said...
Old time goodness. I'm going to make this today and take your advice to add additional spice to the recipe. This will be a great one to have with a cold glass of milk.
joy c. at grannymountain - June 18, 2009 at 9:41 AM
- Hootin Anni said...
I'm all for this!!!! In fact, it's printing out right now. Yummy. Oh so yummy for the tummy. Now, question is: I got dessert all lined up, what'll I make for the 3 course meal to go with it? Huh?
- June 18, 2009 at 10:03 AM
- Samahita said...
What amazing cake recipes. I love your blog and I have added you to my blogroll. Will keep visiting for more recipes.
- June 18, 2009 at 10:09 AM
- Mary Bergfeld said...
Louise and Samahita, welcome to One Perfect Bite. I hope you'll both become regular visitors. Louise, I'll enter something into your picnic meme this afternoon and Sam I've already seen your gorgeous dumplings. I love that you both have come to visit here.
- June 18, 2009 at 10:18 AM
- NKP said...
You throw a fabulous picnic!
I love spice cake, and cream cheese frosting is the best kind of frosting. :) - June 18, 2009 at 10:43 AM
- Heather S-G said...
I'm all for more spice! It does look absolutely gorgeous, though. Loving the buttermilk in there...a little tang w/ your spice. Nice.
- June 18, 2009 at 10:53 AM
- Lori said...
I love spice cake- dont have it nearly enough. This one looks yummy.
- June 18, 2009 at 11:15 AM
- Pam said...
Spice cake is my favorite - yours look delicious and pretty.
- June 18, 2009 at 11:54 AM
I wish I had patience to work with a recipe that has that many ingredients...I just don't! This looks so yummy...
- June 18, 2009 at 12:22 PM
- Mary Bergfeld said...
Heather, as long as you continue to take such beautiful photos you don't need to cook with so many ingredients.
- June 18, 2009 at 12:33 PM
- Culinary Wannabe said...
Cream cheese frosting - Oh, I could eat it straight from the bowl!!
- June 18, 2009 at 1:08 PM
- mel said...
I am interested to hear what you will do to change this cake. I love spice cake! I have not made a homemade one (only out of the box) but I have eaten homemade spice cake and it is so good. Thanks for sharing and getting my mouth watering! :)
- June 18, 2009 at 1:33 PM
The spice cake looks wonderful but it seems like a pretty lengthy process. Right now I am just starting to make your cobbler recipe with fresh mango and blueberries. If all turns out well, I will take a picture and post it tomorrow. I mean really Mary, I couldn't mess that up..could I?
- June 18, 2009 at 2:13 PM
- ~~louise~~ said...
Hi Mary,
That would be WONDERFUL! Oh yes, I will be back. I've added you to my blogroll. I LOVE it here! - June 18, 2009 at 4:11 PM
- Mary Bergfeld said...
Louise, we're glad you like it here.:-).
- June 18, 2009 at 4:39 PM
- The Blonde Duck said...
All I can do is drool in envy.
- June 18, 2009 at 4:42 PM
- Fifi Flowers said...
YUM... that sounds and looks INCREDIBLE!!!
- June 18, 2009 at 5:29 PM
- Debbie said...
this looks good. Like a good picnic cake. I have an old-fashioned oatmeal cake that I make for picnics. Lov the spices.
- June 18, 2009 at 6:05 PM
- joey said...
... and how could this not be delicious!
- June 18, 2009 at 8:10 PM
- Katy ~ said...
Oooooh, I LOVE spice cake! Big piece out of the center for me please.
- June 18, 2009 at 8:47 PM
- Christina Kim said...
what a perfect slice of cake!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- June 18, 2009 at 11:25 PM
- The Cooking Photographer said...
Mary! I can leave a comment via my phone. Geesh finally! I just wanted to let you know I'm still around and enjoying one perfect bite. Thanks for all your support on my blog too. I appreciate you so much.
Laura - June 19, 2009 at 12:05 AM
- La Cuisine d'Helene said...
I love spice cake and it really have to taste like it has a lot of spices. Thanks for sharing.
- June 19, 2009 at 1:27 AM
- test it comm said...
That cake looks good! I like the use of the cardamom.
- June 19, 2009 at 4:46 PM
- ~~louise~~ said...
Thank you for playing the Picnic Game, Mary. Your Buttermilk Spice Cake promises pure delight!
- June 19, 2009 at 10:23 PM
- Lisa said...
This is just what I was looking for a couple of weeks ago to make for my husband's birthday! The recipe I found is very similar. Like you, I'll be doubling the spices next time. Still, the cake was moist and delicious as yours appears to be. If I were offered a slice, I wouldn't say no...
- June 20, 2009 at 2:14 AM
- maybelles mom said...
looks great. I love spice cake--though I like richly spiced. So I would up the spices too.
- June 27, 2009 at 1:23 PM
- Jess said...
Isn't the cardamom special in this cake? Just made this today, and for fun I made it side-by-side to the Cook's Country Spice Cake and an old recipe from Better Homes and Gardens that I made probably 15 years ago. I loved the BHG recipe then, but boy were these new recipes better! This CI version was the spiciest of the bunch, with a medium crumb, and I loved the frosting. The CC version had that perfect cake crumb that I've tasted before from this company, with a more mild spice flavor, but still a buttery delicious cake. I will definitely be making BOTH of them again! I like your idea to up spices as desired to personal taste...so easy to do! I just love Cook's Country – Cook's Ilustrated – America's Test Kitchen!
- November 17, 2014 at 7:00 PM
- Jess said...
P.S. I like your idea to increase the spices if it wasn't exciting enough for your tastes. Brilliant! I personally love them the way they are; just made this cake again this week and it was really good (to me & husband). I am a super avid baker, and one thing I think is that desserts and which ones are our favorites is such a personal thing. We might all be able to tell a good recipe vs. a bad one, but when it comes to which ones just sing to us (and hey, those are only ones worth repeating, IMO - life is too short!), it's so personal. Maybe it has to do with taste memories, well, so many things; I love to think about things like that! I remember my best friend said that some bars I made were in her "top five" of all the things I've made, yet my husband and I didn't want them again. Go figure. Anyways, customizing the spices sounds so smart. (Or just moving on to another recipe if you're so inclined :)
- July 28, 2015 at 2:16 PM


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Hiroki Kuroda (9-11, 3.56) vs. Roy Halladay (16-9, 2.22).
COMMENTS: Halladay! Celebrate! We-are-going-to-get-our-ass-kicked. The Dodgers came through on the Weisman-mandated four-game win streak, and now they're clean out of winnin' for the season. Just in time for the McCourts' divorce trial! Does this team have its timing down or what?
UPDATE from Sax 4:58p: Looks like Ken Levine of Dodger Talk has taken over dodgers.com! How else to explain comedic headlines like this:
Bwah ha ha ha ha ha ha!


text:
Most dangerous temps in decades push across US
The coldest, most dangerous blast of polar air in decades gripped the Midwest and pushed toward the East and South on Monday, closing schools and day care centers, grounding flights and forcing people to pull their hoods and scarves tight to protect exposed skin from nearly instant frostbite.
Many across the nation's midsection went into virtual hibernation, while others dared to venture out in temperatures that plunged well below zero.
"I'm going to try to make it two blocks without turning into crying man," said Brooks Grace, who was bundling up to do some banking and shopping in downtown Minneapolis, where temperatures reached 23 below, with wind chills of minus 48. "It's not cold -- it's painful."
The mercury also dropped into negative territory in Milwaukee, St. Louis and Chicago, which set a record for the date at minus 16. Wind chills across the region were 40 below and colder. Records also fell in Oklahoma, Texas and Indiana.
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Forecasters said some 187 million people in all could feel the effects of the "polar vortex" by the time it spread across the country on Monday night and Tuesday.
Record lows were possible in the East and South, with highs in the single digits expected Tuesday in Georgia and Alabama. Subzero wind chills were forecast up and down the coast, including minus 10 in Atlanta and minus 12 in Baltimore.
From the Dakotas to Maryland, schools and day care centers shut down.
"You definitely know when you are not wearing your thermal undergarments," said Staci Kalthoff, who raises cattle with her husband on a 260-acre farm in Albany, Minn., where the temperature hovered around 24 below zero and winds made it feel like minus 46. "You have to dress really, really warm and come in more often and thaw out everything."
Even with this nostril-freezing cold, the family still prefers winter over summer.
"You can always put on more layers," she said. "When it gets hot, you can only take off so much."
For a big swath of the Midwest, the subzero cold moved in behind another winter wallop: more than a foot of snow and high winds that made traveling treacherous.
Several deaths were blamed on the snow, ice and cold since Saturday, including the death of a 1-year-old boy who was in a car that went out of control and collided with a snowplow Monday in Missouri and three fatal accidents in Michigan.
It took authorities using 10-ton military vehicles known as "wreckers" until early Monday to clear all the chain-reaction accidents caused when several semis jackknifed along snowy interestates in southern Illinois. The crash stranded about 375 vehicles, but there were no fatalities or injuries, largely because motorists either stayed with their cars or were rescued and taken to nearby warming centers if they were low on gas or didn't have enough coats or blankets, said Jonathon Monken, director of the Illinois Emergency Management Agency. Others got stuck in the snowdrifts, including the Southern Illinois men's basketball team, which had to spend the night in a church.
In the eastern United States, temperatures in the 40s and 50s Monday helped melt piles of snow from a storm last week, raising the risk that roads would freeze over as the cold air moved in Monday night, said Bob Oravec from the Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Md. The snap was set to be dramatic; Springfield, Mass., enjoyed 56 degrees Monday morning but faced an overnight low of 6.
More than 3,700 flights were canceled by late Monday afternoon, following a weekend of travel disruption across the U.S. Airline officials said de-icing fluid was freezing, fuel was pumping sluggishly, and ramp workers were having difficulty loading and unloading luggage. JetBlue Airways stopped all scheduled flights to and from New York and Boston on Monday. Southwest ground to a halt in Chicago earlier in the day, but by the evening, flights resumed in "a trickle," a spokesman said.
Authorities in Indiana and Kentucky -- where temperatures dropped into the single digits and below, with wind chills in the minus 20s and worse -- warned people not to leave their homes at all unless they needed to go someplace safer.
Utility crews worked to restore power to more than 40,000 Indiana customers affected by the weekend storm and cautioned that some people could be in the cold and dark for days.
Ronald G. Smith Sr. took shelter at an Indianapolis Red Cross after waking up the previous night with the power out and his cat, Sweet Pea, agitated in the darkness.
"The screen door blew open and woke me up, and it was cold and dark. I got dressed and I was scared, thinking, 'What am I going to do? My cat knew something was wrong. He was jumping all over the place," Smith said. "This is brutal cold. The cold is what makes this so dangerous."
Even after Indianapolis lifted a travel ban, officials urged residents to stay home for their own safety and that of police and other emergency workers.
"It's still slick out there," said Marc Lotter, a spokesman for the mayor. "It's just not safe for people to be out on the streets."
Officials in Chicago and other cities checked on the homeless and shut-ins for fear they might freeze to death on the street or in their homes.
Between a heater that barely works and his drafty windows, Jeffery Davis decided he would be better off sitting in a downtown Chicago doughnut shop for three hours Monday until it was time to go to work.
He threw on two pairs of pants, two T-shirts, "at least three jackets," two hats, a pair of gloves, the "thickest socks you'd probably ever find" and boots, and trudged to the train stop in his South Side neighborhood that took him to within a few blocks of the library where he works.
"I never remember it ever being this cold," said Davis, 51. "I'm flabbergasted."
Elnur Toktombetov, a Chicago taxi driver, hit the road with hot tea and doughnuts, and an hour into his shift, his cab's windows were still coated with ice on the inside.
People are "really happy to catch the cab. And I notice they really tip well," he said.
Only a few hardy souls braved the cold on the Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis, normally a busy pedestrian area. Many people downtown used the extensive heated skyway system, where it is warm enough to walk around in office attire. Nearly all stores on the skyway were open as usual.
Jersey Devil Pizza & Wings was not.
"Apologies ... We are East Coast wimps. Too cold! Stay safe, see you Tuesday," read a sign taped to the door.


text:
Mystery Signals Show Up in Neurological Amplifiers
December 11, 2012
About seven years ago, a brain scientist was working with primate brain signals three floors underground. The scientist was using special neurological amplifiers that amplified micro-volt signals. He called me to solve a strange, sporadic noise problem that had appeared in his amplifier outputs.
His laboratory had been in operation for many years before this problem appeared. When confronted with a mysterious problem, I always ask one particular question: "What is changed, what is different?" But in this case, the answer was nothing.
Connecting up a scope, I soon saw a signal on the screen that coincided with a noise from a speaker connected to a neural amplifier output. We heard a distinctive "click" sound. By slowing the horizontal time period to one second/division, we could see the entire several-millisecond-long noise pulse. But this was no ordinary noise pulse -- it was actually a perfect bipolar square wave.
Envision a single period of a full sine wave on a scope screen, then convert that same wave pattern to fit a bipolar square wave. That's exactly what it was. Every few seconds it appeared, but each time, the starting and ending polarity was flipped. There was no question this was an intelligently generated signal -- but from where?
Soon, a pattern was discernible. Pulse spacing was a consistent 5.5 seconds.
Remember, this laboratory was about 60 feet underground. The building had corrugated steel plates as the base, with three reinforced concrete floors up above. Line of sight with the local radar dish required that you travel through wet dirt, steel, rock, and reinforced concrete for about two miles at a slight upward angle to reach the local airport dish. And microwaves will not travel through any of these materials very well.
Certain types of microwave sources contain a property few engineers know about -- scalar energy. Scalar electromagnetic waves have the E and B fields in phase, unlike normal electromagnetic waves where E and B fields are typically 90 degrees out of phase. There is another interesting characteristic of scalar waves -- they are not stopped by shielding, even by a Faraday cage. When E and B fields are in phase, they do not interact with metal molecules like conventional RF does, which makes shielding useless. Usually, only distance can stop scalar waves. Based on the waveform period, there could be only one source of this signal.
I called the local international airport TRACON group, which stands for TRacking and CONtrol. My one question to the engineer on duty was simply this: "What is the rotation period of your radar dish? I'm certain I'm picking up your signal at the university." He replied: "Let me look out the window and see."
A short time later, he came back to the phone, saying: "About five and a half seconds." Ah Ha! There was my signal source. Conventional microwave theory says this was impossible, but there it was. Clearly these were not conventional microwaves at all. The engineer then asked where I was picking up their signal and I told him. He mumbled, "Guess it would be good for tracking submarines, too."
Apparently, I was correct. This scalar signal disappeared overnight and never returned. As for the real purpose of this scalar pulse, which traveled through two miles of dirt, reinforced concrete, steel, and rock? It remains unknown to this day. Shutting down that short-lived signal, which was transmitted for just one day, did not cause the airport to close. Apparently, it had little to do with air traffic control.
Here is the strangest part of all: It was a signal that was DC-based and detected by a neural amplifier with a -3db bandwidth of 50Hz. No diode detector, no RF amplifier, no demodulators, no IF stages, no dish, no waveguides, none of the usual RF components. Yet, this very low frequency signal definitely originated from a radar dish after traveling through about two miles of dirt and other materials.
This entry was submitted by Ted Twietmeyer and edited by Rob Spiegel.
Ted Twietmeyer's background includes a patented optical backplane technology. He also has more than 30 years of experience in defense and aerospace systems engineering, project management, and the training of customer technical personnel. Since 2000, Ted has been designing advanced, custom-designed, high-performance systems at the board level.
Tell us your experience in solving a knotty engineering problem. Send stories to Rob Spiegel for Sherlock Ohms.
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Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Physics Question
These questions are pure speculation. I'm asking only because I was thinking first about flying dragons and then, inevitably, about dragon riding, both of which seem impossible without magic doing the heavy lifting. But then I thought maybe I was being too hasty and there was some way to justify such things. So, what's the considered opinion of the readership of this blog? Yea or nay?
42 comments:
Well Quetzalcoatlus was (probably) around 10–11 meters (33–36 ft) in wingspan & (maybe) 90–120 kilograms (200–260 lb). Argentavis was like, 7 m (23 ft) in wingspan & 70 kg (150 lb) in weight.
So...human-sized flying critters are plausible, is my first thought. That also means that there could totally be some of the smaller dragons-- heck, you could even claim that a "huge"-mini'd dragon was lighter than it looked & that wing-size was part of its spacing.
As for riding? That...that strikes me as tough. So far I'm just looking at things that have existed in real life-- not scientifically plausible scenarios like gas-bladders (if that is plausible...) or atmospheric mixtures. Still, if the biggest fliers were around human sized, that makes me think that adding ANOTHER human sized piece of mass into the equation would sink it.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentavis_magnificens is the largest flying bird ever discovered on earth. Wingspan ~23 ft., Weight ~150 lbs. It was built for eating prey whole, on the wing, and one assumes it could pick up pretty hefty creatures.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quetzalcoatlus and similar pterosaurs had wingspans of ~35 ft. and weighed an estimated 500+ lbs.You've also got to consider the maximum power output of muscle tissue, assuming you actually want these things to FLY rather than glide. That, I think, is where the top limit is likely to come in - how much flight muscle can a creature carry before the mass of said muscle becomes too heavy for it to lift itself plus the bone mass to which it's anchored?
Now if you had insect musculature set on an avian skeleton, you might be getting somewhere. Where, I don't know, but somewhere!When I worked for AMNH we did a bit on the evolution of dinosaurs into birds, and on that occasion I was told that according to our current models the muscle power required to take off from the ground fixed a practical limit of 15kg on birds. That larger pterosaurs and other prehistoric beasties seemed to break this limit, and that the current thinking was that these were gliders that routinely took off from high ledges and had to catch thermals to be able to land on the same ledge.
Sounds a bit like a crock to me, but I'm not a biologist.From wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_and_gliding_animals
Studies have shown[citation needed] that it is physically possible for flying animals to reach 18 m (60 ft) wingspans, but there is no firm evidence that any flying animal, not even the azhdarchid pterosaurs, got that large.
To bad the citation is missing.
However, it would also have to have the strength to carry a rider. So assume that its a predator that preys on horses and such. Of course, such flyers don't have the greatest flying endurance.It would depend on how you classify human. There is a few real world fliers that could theoretically pick up a grown human if you go for the extreme side of the bell curve.
As for fliers that could theoretically exist on earth, anything that would be the size of generic D&D dragons would probably not be able to but if you could get a big enough flier that the mass of a human would be quite small comparatively then yes. Anything dragon sized even if it could lift a human, because of the energy needs of such a lift the flight would be quite short.insect musculature set on an avian skeleton
this is creepy cool. A lot of insects take advantage of weird viscosity properties of air at very small scales, though.
So it's simple! Just make your characters and monsters what, 300x smaller than humans! There may be some problems with stuff like surface tension of water, but the advantages are probably huge.Glider Aircraft are of a reasonable size and weight to something like a dragon.
That one weighs in at around 800 pounds, can carry two humans comfortably:
Schleicher ASK 21
* Capacity: 1 pilot, 1 passenger
* Length: 8.35 m (27 ft 5 in)
* Wingspan: 17.00 m (55 ft 9 in)
* Height: 1.55 m (5 ft 1 in)
* Empty weight: ca. 360 kg (793 lb)
* Gross weight: 600 kg (1,323 lb)
* Maximum speed: 280 km/h (174 mph)Richard,
That made me think of a talk I heard once from a physicist and mathematician. He seemed to have no problem with evolution in the overall sense, but questioned the nuts and bolts of many things we just can't explain - like the evolution of flight. He pointed out that flight is more than the existence of wings. Glue wings to a car and it doesn't automatically fly. Everything in any object has to be made solely for the purpose of flight, or flight doesn't exist. And yet, if everything in an object is geared for flight, with flight not yet existing in that object, that object becomes a sitting duck - literally, questioning how then flight, with all of its myriad interconnected necessities, could have evolved at all. It made me think. Which might suggest that we could always say that dragons fly because that's how they were made, and leave it at that.One thing to think about - if you increase the oxygen content of the atmosphere then muscles have more power and thus flapping wings can lift more. Couple that with a bit less gravity and people-sized fliers are probably quite possible with only a small amount of environmental tweaks.
- ArkDave G. said: "Everything in any object has to be made solely for the purpose of flight, or flight doesn't exist. And yet, if everything in an object is geared for flight, with flight not yet existing in that object, that object becomes a sitting duck ..."
Neither of those statements are true.
The current top theories for the structures which were re-purposed evolutionarily for flying are: (1) long arms used to capture prey, (2) bipedal leaping action, (3) gliding behavior.
You can see a presentation on the subject at UCMP Berekeley. If you following the links, you'll see that the fossil record shows flying evolved separately in three different animal groups (pterosaurs, birds, bats), in each different case winding up with the same basic flapping behavior.I presume you're aware of Peter Dickenson's
"The Flight of Dragons" which often gets brought up in these discussions, and so I'll throw that one into the ring.
Long story short, dragons are biological zepplins who's fire breathing is a result of the chemical process' that fill their internal chambers with flammable gas.
It's a fascinating read.Possibly interesting, plausible angle, semiscientific:
human-sized beings can ride pterosaur-sized beings however, it requires the humans make some existing-tech modifications to themselves. The humans carefully design hang-glider like fins so that they catch the air properly and so are only actually bearing down with 100% of their weight during sudden direction shifts.
possibly the humans also employ helium balloons or other lighter-than-air gasses to make themselves lighter.
This is -so- not what you were asking, right?You could take a freaky Lovecraftian approach where the reason they can fly is because the laws of physics experienced on the planet are only part of the entire spectrum.
The dragons/whatever came from... outside... and as such can not only do certain 'impossible' things but also creates terror in most people because of their nature.
The people who would ride or work with them would necessarily become a bit... other... in order to work with them without suffering the terror attacks.Anything is possible!!! Look at the BEEZZZZ...
Turns out bee flight mechanisms are more exotic than thought.
"The honeybees have a rapid wing beat," Altshuler told LiveScience. "In contrast to the fruit fly that has one eightieth the body size and flaps its wings 200 times each second, the much larger honeybee flaps its wings 230 times every second."
This was a surprise because as insects get smaller, their aerodynamic performance decreases and to compensate, they tend to flap their wings faster.
"And this was just for hovering," Altshuler said of the bees. "They also have to transfer pollen and nectar and carry large loads, sometimes as much as their body mass, for the rest of the colony."
Try this!
In order to understand how bees carry such heavy cargo, the researchers forced the bees to fly in a small chamber filled with a mixture of oxygen and helium that is less dense than regular air. This required the bees to work harder to stay aloft and gave the scientists a chance to observe their compensation mechanisms for the additional toil.
The bees made up for the extra work by stretching out their wing stroke amplitude but did not adjust wingbeat frequency.
"They work like racing cars," Altshuler said. "Racing cars can reach higher revolutions per minute but enable the driver to go faster in higher gear. But like honeybees, they are inefficient."
Well, he was the physicist with an emphasis in aerodynamics, so I would probably mutilate his talk, me being but a humble historian. But I think the link more or less demonstrates his point. On one hand, you have much about long arms and wings and gliding and cabbages and kings. On the other hand, you have examining birds, bats, and pterosaurs already capable of flight, in full possession of the thousand interconnected necessities needed for flying. He merely mentioned that saying you have animals that could be ancestors of flying creatures already in full possession of the mechanics needed for flight simply because a pair of arms may have grown long is skipping a pretty big gap. That's like saying 'How to change an automatic transmission in four easy steps. Step 1. Remove the engine.' There's a lot in between those two steps not accounted for.
Again, he wasn't trashing evolutionary theory per se. He was simply pointing out the limits we have, and the sometimes leaps of faith we take in explaining and applying things that the overarching evidence doesn't quite support. Beyond that, I'm sure he said it better than I.
Not to drag Jame's post down with the eternal debate or anything. In terms of the post, I'm fine with 'because they were made to fly and have dragon riders, that's why!' It is, after all, a world in which we concede dragons in the first place.Dave G.: "But I think the link more or less demonstrates his point."
I think the link demonstrates exactly the opposite of his (your) point. So now I've given a link to a specific exhibit on the subject at UCMP Berekeley, and you've given some hearsay from a speaker whose name you can't remember. So I'm happy to leave it at that.I'll echo Bigfella's comment. You MUST read "Flight Of Dragons" because it contains a reasoned argument that the many mythic qualities of dragons are all consequences of their mode of flight, it has a lot of nice historical overviews of dragons in legend in many cultures, and finally because the artwork is spectacular.
Sorry about the lack of a link. It was more or less an off the cuff thought. I didn't think James would want a prolonged discussion. In another forum I would be happy to roll up my sleeves and post away, but not here. I was responding to Richard's post that simply made my mind wander back to a time a few years ago when I sadly didn't have a camcorder in hand to post on a web page. I didn't mean to strike a nerve in anyone or step on any sacred cows. Thought it would be an interesting addition to Richard's thoughts, that's all. No big deal.- AnonymousApril 13, 2011 at 7:29 PM
Well, I did have this awesome dream once where a black snake unfurled Black Feather Wings and as they flexed, they revealed sacks in the skin containing Lighter than air gasses which when heated by the sun provided some lift... So other than some freakish critter that retains its ability to fly by working those muscles and burning fuel...A bag of Hydrogen gas to provide lift seems plausible to keep a huge Zeppelin sized beast aloft. Considering Dragons like flamable gasses to warm their marshmallows, They must store Hydrogen somewhere and simply breath in oxygen as needed (for respiration and blowtorching Knights).
ReplyDelete Quetzalcoatlus Northamericanus was probably one of the largest airborne species. Although I believe there was one larger, recently discovered.
Biologically it is a mix between energy expenditure and energy intake, which is why most large flyers are actually soarers that rely on thermals to gain altitude (just like a glider pilot, although far more efficiently). This dynamics of thermals also serves to cap the effective wing-span, since with larger wing-spans the efficiency and availability of useful thermals declines (more so than is governed by the structural strength of biological materials).
As to carrying a rider, most of the large flyers are already at the limit of the muscular power to weight ratio for flight. That's before you start accounting for the effects of drag and loss of lift due to the disruption of the airflow (for most large birds the entire bird is a lifting body, not just it's wings). So it's a matter of reducing the flyer's weight, or increasing their muscle power, and reducing the weight and disruption caused by the flyer (perhaps by slinging them underneath).
If you want to look at changing the environment you have to examine the attributes of aerodynamic lift provided by Bournelli's Principle [v^2/2 + gz + p/ρ = constant], which measures the conservation of energy in a fluid (air in this case being the fluid).
Increasing velocity (v) has the greatest effect, which is why the faster a plane flies the more lift the wings produce. One idea to replace the gz term is to assume that gravity obeys an inverse-cube** (rather than inverse-square) law (g is acceleration due to gravity, which varies with height, z is height). Similarly increasing the air pressure and reducing it's density (say by replacing the nitrogen in the atmosphere with helium) will increase lift.
[* Having been in a thermal with a wedge-tail eagle, and having sensed it's disdain for the amateur flyer sharing the thermal with it, I feel qualified to comment on this. <grin>]
[** There was a an old White Dwarf article (well, pre-100) that investigated the consequences of doing this in a fantasy campaign.]- AnonymousApril 13, 2011 at 8:44 PM
One thing about upscaling size is that legs (and wings) are not in general designed to support huge mass. The problem in part is that legs (and wings) tend to break or not based on their cross-sectional area (a squared function) while mass tend to grow as its volume (a cubed function).
In other words, if an ant was the size of an elephant it wouldn't look like an ant anymore; it would look more like an elephant so that its own weight doesn't break its own legs. I assume that wing size/mass would have a similar relationship. The thing is that while it might be possible to build a creature that could fly with a rider's weight, one is not likely to evolve unless there is some reason for it to have that excess of lift power -- maybe a predator that carried human-sized prey back to its nest or something, only it would be more practical to eat the prey and regurgitate bits for young, as many birds do.
ReplyDeleteRealistically, I would say no.
Even if you had a saddle or some sort of aerodynamic howdah, the speeds needed to overcome the air resistance would be something fierce.
But this is fantasy, so selection, breeding and training of mounts can explain that away: if yr dragons have a pronounced notch between thoracic and cervical vertebrae, you could possibly put a saddle there, why not? Train them to carry increasingly heavier loads until they can bear a human-sized rider.
* * * * *
To the commenters:
Ack! Where are the paleobiologists when you need them...
First: Birds are descended from dinosaurs, so reverse engineering doesn't work well here. The pterosaurs have massive forelimb bones and very slender bones in the hindlimbs. Not like modern birds at all...
This is Julia Molnar's animation of Michael Habib's theoretical launch, note the use of all four limbs.
These are some of the major muscles that power that lift. I think 'weight' is going to come down more on the differing muscle and tissue densities, rather than that of bone.- AnonymousApril 14, 2011 at 4:58 AM
Don't worry about size and weight of human riders.
These depend essentially on nutrition. Think about African pygmies - nowadays young pygmy people grow as tall as other people from central Africa, while their parents, who grew up with access to root and berry based food only, are still REALLY small (halfling-sized).
A culture riding Quetzalcoatlus or Argentavis-like creatures could exist, eating vegan or seafood only. @Dave G:
This sounds like a common, wrong objection to evolution.
It's not limited to flight. For example a polar bear has to have both reflexes and claws to catch fish, and has to be able to digest fish to gain any benefit. One without the others has no use. So how would either evolve? You might say that they developed gradually, but what use is almost being able to catch a fish, or almost being able to digest it?
The answer, as I understand it, is that there is indeed an advantage to almost being able to catch a fish, or almost being able to digest it. If you can't quite catch a fish, you might be able to catch something a bit slower. Or your claws might have some completely different useful purpose. Perhaps your claws and reflexes can't catch fish, but they might help you defend yourself.
In terms of flight, almost being able to fly is another way of saying 'able to glide'. And almost being able to glide is another way of saying 'doesn't fall quite as hard', the survival benefits of which should be obvious.James, your setting sounds like it's based on the kind of science fiction that's closest to fantasy, like the Barsoom series.
So I wouldn't look for a scientifically-plausible justification, but just come up with something that sounds right. Maybe dragons chew liftwood (and the fire in their stomachs helps them digest it).Large flyers like to use thermals. Dragons breath fire*. I would suggest that a classic dragon hunting technique would be to set fire to something**, eat whatever comes out of cover from the fire, then use the thermals from the fires to fly to a new hunting ground.
In this ecosystem, dragon riders would probably have to be nomads, burning out areas, then moving on. They spend most of their time squabbling with one another, until one day arises a leader known as Dracis Khan...
* Other dragon breaths are left for more thought
** Forest, grassland, cityBirds have hollow, porous bones to allow them to fly by reducing their weight
At the risk of sounding pedantic, the hollow bones are an integral part of the avian respiratory system, which is vastly superior to the mammalian one.
I'll also put in a recommendation for Dickinson's Flight of Dragons, it's one of the greatest examples of sustained whimsical lunacy I've ever encountered.anarchist,
Well, heh, there's a reason that's a common objection. Because it's a big one. There is no real actual verifiable proof demonstrating the objection is baseless. There are tons of theories of course. And if you assume certain things as true, then the theories work. Sort of like if you go ahead and assume the defendant is guilty due to clear motive, lack of actual evidence is less problematic.
As I understand it, the problem with flight, as well as a few other complex, interdependent biological phenomena, is its nature. Everything needed to fly has to be in place at once, or you don't fly, or glide for that matter. Get into a plane next time that says 'almost able to fly.' Everything in the Wright Brother's plane had to be in place to fly. Everything in a 747 or a helicopter has to be in place for it to fly. Same with a bat, sparrow, fly, bumblebee, humming bird, or whatever. We simply have no records of 'almost able to fly or glide' leading to 'there he goes!'.
A polar bear almost able to catch a fish is almost able to catch a fish. That's one thing. That's saying almost able to walk is almost able to run. Flying compared to catching a fish is like lasers compared to rocks and clubs.
As for 'almost able to fly is able to glide', not really. Gliding is its own phenomenon. The mechanisms needed to glide are different than those needed to fly. There are a lot of steps needed between those two. For that matter, there is a gaping hole between organisms not able to glide and those able to glide. A huge, big, giant gaping hole. Going from 'animal unable to get off the ground to animal able to glide through the air' is like trying to make the case that almost able to walk is almost able to play Mozart's piano concerto No. 21. A whole lot of steps in between, all traits needed to be in place at once or you don't glide - you fall.
Plus, and this is a biggie, there is no evidence that all of the various physical and interconnected traits needed for flight in the legions of different organisms capable of flying are advantageous in and of themselves. More than that, there is reason to argue some would be disadvantageous to an organism's survival without the other traits that, working together, allow gliding or flying (that was his main point). I've found that looms large in many cases in which flight is brought up.
Sadly, as I said, I didn't have a link to the fellow since I merely was there some years ago listening because of our friendship, sans camera. I just brought it up because of what Richard wrote, and given the topic of the post, it clicked in my mind and I thought it would be a neat addition. But you don't have to look long on the Internet to see hundreds of pages dedicated to explaining why flight really isn't a problem. Because, in the end, flight is really a problem. As are other things. FWIW, the point of the talk wasn't to poke or attack evolution per se. It was to demonstrate the differences between science and faith in science. But thanks for the info. It's the stuff that makes science fun.As to the original question ...
You want a multi-ton flyer, you just need something like 3x air density and 3/4 gravity. Four times the lift vs weight for the same structure allows through the cube-square limits on muscle power a dragon-size flyer with enough extra lift for a man (4 x as long, 16 times as strong, and 64 times as heavy as IRL limits, or a touch less than that for various biological reasons).
The lower gravity also helps support upright giants and more epic mountain ranges, and makes dungeons more stable with all that volume removed.
High air pressure explains falls that max out speed after 200 feet, fast giant insects, and leaves the flyers fairly slow. A relatively low O2 content could explain the difficulty of burning down your adventure modules.
With smaller 1st edition dragons and giants, you don't need much change at all. Helps you ignore things like narrow day/night temperature ranges on high-pressure worlds.
Technical problems introduced would be the ease of condor-sized birds doing clever acrobatics, and the odd funny look when noticing how fast a Monk can still run.Part I (off topic): I listened to an interesting science show recently that said that a number of dinosaurs and pterosaurs were nocturnal, and others straddled both nocturnal/diurnal (whereas we used to assume that dinosaurs/pterosaurs were diurnal kritters). A lot of the raptors were apparently nocturnal predators.
Part II (on topic): flight for dragon-size things would also be easier if their bones were constructed of a stronger & lighter compound (which doesn't seem that unreasonable), and perhaps if their muscles were some combination of stronger/lighter/more efficient too.


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Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow's account of the Osama bin Laden hunt, has been causing drama on Capitol Hill. The latest scene took place Tuesday at the Washington, D.C., premiere, when director Bigelow, screenwriter Mark Boal and former Senator Chris Dodd tried to quash criticisms from lawmakers who say that the movie miscasts history–particularly the role "enhanced interrogation techniques" played in leading to bin Laden's death.
The film opens with scenes depicting waterboarding and ends with the Navy SEALs' dramatic, successful raid on a certain Pakistan compound. Last month Senators from both parties–John McCain, Dianne Feinstein and Carl Levin–sent a letter to acting CIA director Mike Morell requesting details about the CIA's involvement in informing the plot, which they believe gives too much credit to such practices. Two days later, Morell posted a statement to CIA employees on the agency's website: he said any impression that "enhanced interrogation techniques" were "the key" to finding bin Laden is false but also noted that some intelligence used to place bin Laden in Abbottobad "came from detainees subjected to enhanced techniques." His statement only led to renewed calls from the Senators for more clarity from the CIA, while many more Congresspeople offered their own moral and historical beliefs.
On Tuesday night, Bigelow emphasized the fictional bent of her practice. Taking questions on the red carpet, she repeatedly told reporters that her film is "not a documentary." In a statement she read to the audience before the film showed, she acknowledged the "national conversation" that the film had started and emphasized that she "tried to bring this story to the screen in a faithful way." Even so, she argued, all the relevant details spanning the decade between the 9/11 attacks and bin Laden's death were likely known to no one. Boal doubled down on the artistic-license defense in a live Q&A with ABC News' Martha Raddatz after the film. "The research was over there in a pile, and I had to write a screenplay, make a movie," he said. "The goal was to capture the essence of the underlying reality." He too said that there was no single "underlying reality" of the bin Laden story that anyone, especially people with strong political ties, would agree on.
Both are fair points: arguing about "enhanced interrogation techniques" and the role they've served during the "war on terror" is inevitably done without all the facts, and the larger ethical debate contains grey areas. The issue is a perennial third rail in D.C., a reality demonstrated by protestors who had gathered outside the Newseum, where the film was shown. Some were dressed as detainees, draped in orange jumpsuits with black bags over their heads and arms behind their backs; they stood silently in front of a sign that read "cruel, inhuman and degrading." Code Pink activists held a sign that read "Women say NO to torture."
When Dodd, now head of the Motion Picture Association of America, made his case for the film, he also argued that those "bickering" should understand that Zero Dark Thirty is just a movie–one that's really about the dedication of civil servants who doggedly tracked down the world's most wanted man. But as he started to pontificate about the power of films to affect society at large, he inadvertently supported the critics' case. "How many people changed their views on [HIV/AIDS] because of Philadelphia?" he said. "How many people's views of anti-Semitism changed because some people in Hollywood made a movie called the Gentleman's Agreement?" Legislators concerned about the film's message are worried about a similar question: "How many people's views of 'enhanced techniques' will be forever shaped by the dramatic depiction in Zero Dark Thirty?"
The precise fidelity of the film to its sources is unclear–and is likely to remain so: when Raddatz asked Boal who he spoke to when researching the plot and which parts he fictionalized, questions that the Senators are investigating too, Boal did not give specifics. And he's not the only one holding cards to his chest. Democratic Senators on the Intelligence Committee, which Feinstein chairs, produced a 6,000-page, still-classified report on the CIA interrogation program that the panel voted 9-6 to adopt last month.
In his statement, Morell said that the "CIA interacted with the filmmakers through our Office of Public Affairs but, as is true with any entertainment project with which we interact, we do not control the final product." Others familiar with the CIA interrogation program have said that the reality "bore little resemblance to what is shown on the screen." Americans do get their impressions of what the CIA is like from films, and the opening scenes of Zero Dark Thirty unfold after a note informing viewers that the story is based on first-hand accounts. Still, most moviegoers also know that "based on a true story" accounts must be taken with the many grains of salt in their tub of popcorn.


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When one thinks of the blues, W.C. Handy, John Lee Hooker or B.B. King may come to mind three stellar examples of the American art form. What probably doesn't pop into your head is a rawboned, white-haired 76-year-old Englishman. But it probably should.
John Mayall fits that description, as well as the description of a consummate, accomplished blues artist, though his name lacks household recognition. One might recognize Eric Clapton's name first, or perhaps Fleetwood Mac's. Both have benefited from Mayall's influence.
And that's okay with Mayall, who plays the Birchmere February 16 with his band the Bluesbreakers. It's his under-the-radar status that has allowed him so much artistic freedom over the years.
Whether it was his work with Hooker in England at a time when blues artists weren't fully embraced in America, or his work with a network of other artists over the nearly 55 years he's been on the scene, Mayall's steely, gruff bluesy sound continues to entice audiences.
Recently, he found some time to talk to the Times from his base in Los Angeles about still going strong with his band and his new aptly named album Tough.
Alexandria Times: Was there anything on this album that you tried specifically to do different? You've been around so long, is there anything left to do?
John Mayall: There's always something to do. Especially with the new band, the energy that comes out is pretty amazing. Everything is all straight-ahead blues. And with all the right players, like I said, the energy is pretty astounding.
Is that something that was lacking before with the old version of the Bluesbreakers?
No, not exactly at all. But every album you approach with a different kind of a feeling. So the previous album was a tribute to Freddy King and I don't think it could be done better than that. Every time you get the chance to do a new recording, you bring a new energy to it. So I don't ever release anything that isn't the top of the line.
What was it like playing blues, an American art form, in England back in the day?
Well, in England and in Europe in general, we didn't have the racial divide that America had so we appreciated American black music far more than in their home country. All the blues players and jazz players who would come over to Europe, they were treated like gods. That really was a very big influence in fact the fact that we had access to these wonderful musicians, who for us were legendary. Of course, when I started with my own band we got to work with a whole bunch of them. I worked with John Lee Hooker quite a lot in the '60s and Sonny Boy Williamson and T-Bone Walker all these people who are long gone now.
You're still somewhat of an underground figure, yet you've been around for so many years and have had an influence on so many careers. What's that like for you?
Well, it's become part of the territory. There's nothing I can do about it. I love what I do and fortunately the audiences have supported me over the years. I've had total artistic freedom and I don't think it can get any better than that. But you know, as long as I can work and I can find a house full everywhere I go, that's great.
Do you feel like it gives you more freedom, artistically, to avoid the main stream?
Yeah, I think it has been something that's been very evident. I've never ever had any pressure from record companies about what I should and shouldn't be playing. So the upside of not being so "top of the charts" and all that kind of stuff is the fact that I can do exactly what I want.
What's an example of that?
I don't know … The only way I can put it is that throughout my career, all the different record companies I've had, they've never interfered with what I've done. They just figure, let me do what I want and it seems to work, so that's the way it's always been.
You go on lengthy tours that seem demanding for a 20-something. What keeps you touring for so long?
The music is what drives it all on. But when we go on the road, unlike a lot of the big groups, we travel real light. We don't carry any equipment, so this way we just get in a couple of cars and we can just drive to a different show every night. But if you can do 100 shows, that's only a third of any given year, so that gives you two-thirds of the rest of the year to be at home. That's the way I've always done it the best of both worlds.
What can we expect from the Birchmere show?
Well, we haven't played together since October in Canada. But we're raring to go. We'll be featuring songs from the new album, also a good cross-section of good songs that people identify with from the '60s and beyond. So I try to put a well-balanced blues program together that will satisfy us and impart that to the audience. We're all in for a very good time.
John Mayall&The Bluesbreakers play the Birchmere on Tuesday, February 16 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are still available.


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ManKind Project Philadelphia
ManKind Project Philadelphia introduces itself with the line, "Men's Issues, Men's Support, Men's Training, Men's Community", and gives the following descriptive information:
The ManKind Project is a global nonprofit [501 (c)(3)] charitable organization that conducts challenging and highly rewarding programs for men at every stage of life. The ManKind Project supports a global network of peer-facilitated men's groups where men mentor men through the passages of their lives. The ManKind Project empowers men to missions of service, supporting men to make a difference in the lives of men, women, and children around the world. We help men through any transition, men at all levels of success, men facing almost any challenge. Our flagship training, described by many as the most powerful men's training available, is the New Warrior Training Adventure. The ManKind Project (MKP) is not affiliated with any religious practice or political party. We strive to be increasingly inclusive and culturally aware.


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Holy smokage, it's BASEBALL. On TELEVISION (Prime Ticket / MLB Network). In the glorious AFTERNOON. With a 20% chance of RAIN. Oh well, three out of four ain't bad.
What better way to get ready for the Oscars than to watch the Los Angeles Dodgers take on the Los Angels Angels?
Those of you hoping to watch Jon Garland in action, however, will be disappointed; Dodgers pitching coach Rick Honeycutt is skipping Garland ("It's not a red flag," says Honeycutt) and John "Lincoln Lawyer" Ely will take Garland's place instead.
photo swiped from here


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The farmers market has been overflowing with zucchini lately. They have so much that they are quite literally giving it away! This weekend when I picked up some zucchini at the farmers market they threw in a few extra as I paid. The question was: What was I going to do with all of this unexpected extra zucchini? The first thing that came to mind was a zucchini bread which is always a nice and easy way to use some zucchini. This time however I wanted to try a chocolate version of the zucchini bread. I pretty much just took my standard zucchini bread recipe and added cocoa powder. I kept the walnuts in the bread and added some chocolate chips for even more chocolaty goodness. The chocolate zucchini bread was as easy to make as mixing the ingredients and baking and it turned out wonderfully. I could not resist slicing the bread and trying a piece before it had cooled down from the oven. The chocolate chips were still melted from baking and the bread was nice and light and moist and good! One of the things that I like most about making quick breads like this is that now I will have quick and easy breakfasts for the rest of the week.
Chocolate Zucchini Bread
- 1 1/2 cups zucchini (grated, squeezed and drained)
- 3/4 cup brown sugar
- 1/4 cup oil
- 1/2 cup vanilla yogurt
- 1 egg
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 cup cocoa powder
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/2 cup walnuts (chopped)
- 1/2 cup chocolate chips
- Mix the zucchini, sugar, oil, yogurt and egg in a bowl.
- Mix the flours, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cocoa powder and cinnamon in a bowl.
- Mix the wet and dry ingredients.
- Mix in the nuts and chocolate chips.
- Pour the batter into a greased 5X9 inch loaf pan.
- Bake in a preheated 350F/180C oven until a toothpick pushed into the center comes out clean, about 50-70 minutes.
Zucchini Bread
Blueberry Zucchini Bread
Zucchini Bread with Roasted Red Peppers and Feta
Chocolate Chip Sour Cream Banana Bread
Chocolate Chip Zucchini Greek Yogurt Banana Bread
Flourless Chocolate Peanut Butter and Banana Muffins
Lemon Zucchini Bread
Zucchini Cheese Bread
Zucchini Brownies


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