Jonnie Onion Rings

In the vending machine in Engineering there is a rack loaded with Jonnie Onion Rings. It is an old corn based snack, from when the Celtic Tiger was a glimmer in some Lepracháin's eye.

A simpler time.

[Dramatic pause before beginning rant disproportionate to its cause]

The image on a Jonnie Onion Rings bag (above) is a man in a horizontally striped navy and white shirt, a twisted moustache and a beret. The man is holding a string of onions. A google of "stereotypical Frenchman" produces similar images... Really. How many other snack foods support a stereotype?*

I am reminded of Steve Coogan's Knowing Me Knowing You when he says,"That's not racist. French people chomp onions and go "hoh-hee-hoh-hee-hoh", that's a fact."

Maybe the Jonnie depicted on the bag supposed to be something to enjoy a chuckly while chomping on the snack? Maybe the creators of the product name have more going on under the hood than I would credit. Maybe I am making a mountain out of a mole-hill. Maybe the weather will decide if it is going to be sunny or rainy today. Maybe they were right not to consider prosthetic claws for Mr Jackman in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Maybe the shot 25s into the latest Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen trailer is unnecessary. Maybe the key to Sherlock's release is not under the pillow. Maybe I am still on topic...

Since we live in a country where blasphemy is a crime and someone can get in trouble for making caricatures about a public figure, it probably fits with how we are marketed abroad.

[This outburst is kindly brought to you after listening Bill Hicks' misanthropic ragings]

*Rereading this, I decided I better cover my ass when it came to the truckloads of rhetorical questions I fired out. America, being PC happy as it is, has had a number of studies regarding stereotyping in marketing. The link goes through an analysis of a children-aimed commercials and ethnic portrayals determining whether there are stereotypes being enforced.
A quick glance through the paper indicates the answer is yes there are stereotypes. Asians and Caucasians are more likely to appear where toys and other "discretionary" wares are being pedalled, with other minorities relegated to side-roles and in those cases usually only with snack foods and lower value items. There are some other points in it but some of them were survey based, which I don't care for because [1, 2- cheers Neil for pointing me to them]. Plus people have trouble answering things well.** And "people lie"³

** Some interesting Ted Talks about Cognitive Biase, we are suckers for illusions

Repost about Stem Cell Research

Being a fan of Mr Gaiman's novels I subscribe to his blog.

His latest entry shows a letter from a fan asking for his promotion of continued stem cell research as it is coming under fire from the catholic church.

Being a fan of forward thinking and such, I am putting his link here... granted I am unlikely to expand his reading pool by anything that could be accepted on most levels of significance. Maybe I'd increase it as much as if someone browsed randomly on the interweb, while convalescing. [I'm sure my hardcore fan(s) could be up in arms with this humility...]

Scookies SOP

Why?

Off to Limerick this weekend for a birthday party at Joanne's. I decided to make some scookies and cookies...

The difference between my standard cookies and scookies, is that the larger amount of flour compared to butter leads to more lumpish things, where as the higher butter concentrations in the standard cookies lead to flat-dishlike things

Materials

• 24 oz sugar (any type will do)
• 12 oz butter (I believe it is salted, however I am not certain and making cookies in America confused me...)
• 36 oz flour
• 2 eggs
• Braeburn apple
• Strawberries
• Blackberries
• Cocoa powder
• Milk chocolate

Basic Method

1. Melted butter, added to eggs and sugar
2. Mixed until homogeneous
3. Added flour
4. Mixed until homogeneous

Optional Modifications

• I quartered the basic dough and bagged off the parts because I planned to make 4 different flavours.

• I cut the fruits very finely and placed them into separate bags. For the amounts I listed above, half an apple works perfectly, half a punnet of strawberries, half a punnet of blackberries.
• The fruits are kneaded into their doughs until the fruit is dispersed evenly in the mass

The basic recipe is ideal when mixing in cocoa powder or chocloate chips, etc. However when adding healthy, delicious and juicey fruit the mixture is too sticky and will not cook properly.

• Knead in flour into the lumps until the gunk no longer sticks to your fingers when it is given a good squeeze (I have no idea of the amounts, it was all by touch [baby])
• Figure to the right shows the resulting cookie doughs: top right is cocoa powder (add cocoa to the basic recipe until it is as dark as you like); bottom right is braeburn apple; bottom left is strawberry; top left is blackberry
• Take a tea spoon and scoop out enough dough to fill it
• Preheat the oven to 170-180 degree Celsius (443.15-453.15K)

• Place the cookie dough scoops out on baking trays (I used 3 in rotation as the heating rates with-in the oven were not even. I placed two in a shelf each. When one of them was done, I moved the un-done one to its shelf and placed a fresh one in the vacant spot)

• Take out the cookies when they smell like they should be eaten (or if that does not make sense to you, 7-8 minutes)
• If the cookies are not set reasonably hard after a minute of cooling, put them pack in the oven for a bit longer

• Finally, if you like, melt some chocolate (whatever type you please) and dip the cookies in them, if I had more preparation I would have tried to procure Liquid Nitrogen from somewhere or other to get really fast cooling of the chocolate to generate small chocolate crystals, in the hopes that it would produce tastier stuff - I'll edit this later to include some references. Leave the chocolate covered cookies in the fridge to cool.

I love your homage

I was out with the research group and our supervisor last night, good food in the Bridge off of Grand Canal Dock. I had the chowder for starter, roast pork belly for main and fig tart with chocolate ice-cream. Hungxun- our new postdoc- had lamb on the other side of the table to me, which I regret not going for.

We went on to Keoghs, off Grafton st. Sitting down "chilling" with my peeps, this nod to xkcd came to me:


The mean free path for a particle system is the average distance travelled by a particle between successive particle-particle impacts. It is easy to see how this transfers to women conversation...

[Edit: Jess observed that the girls in the little homage I did were not quirky or nerdy enough to match Mr Munroe's work. As such I pondered on alterations. I am loath to modify work that has been done. So if you want to see a possibly more accurate mimicry of an xkcd strip look here. If only I had consulted her before my first effort!]

fame, I wanna light up the sky- right?

This week, I are mostly watching xkcd's "the Race"...(parts: 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5).

It is about an electric skateboard race between Randall Munroe (xkcd author) and Nathan Fillian (Captain Malcolm Reynolds of Firefly fame- a tragically short lived Joss Whedon sci-fi). Unusually, it ran daily, no drop in quality though. :)

I was interested to see if Nathan Fillian had commented on these happenings, I googled it. One of the results down along was from a "Whedonverse" site. I sent the link onto Kevin, because of the comments in it. One that stuck in my mind was:

" No.

Munroe states there is no particular meaning to the name and it is simply a four-letter word without a phonetic pronunciation, something he describes as "a treasured and carefully-guarded point in the space of four-character strings."

wikipedia

The One True b!X "

Briefly, I wanted someone to compose a Wiki* about me... so that if I were ever asked why my email address is what it is or what size shoe I wear or if I ever took part in the Fás Science Challenge in 2006, there would a handy wiki to separate fact from fiction- with out any friction...

Of course I realised the danger of having a Wiki article makes it infinitely more likely that false facts about me could arise, such as...

• Mairtin is a mechanical engineer
• He is doing a masters
• He reads and enjoys Twilight
• Has hands, feet and arms befitting his height
• He is a devout Christian
• He prefers waltzing to salsa
• He prefers amorphous to crystalline materials
• He has a skill to simplify things, distill them to their uncomplicated essence, in a really clear and transparent manner that even a child can elucidate a meaning from
  
• He is familiar with the works of Pablo Neruda
• He can touch his tongue off his elbow
  

And so on with the falsities...

And then of course there would be:

"Mairtin in pop culture" [Thanks for that one Kevin...]

*Having been called on a lack of TED citing in my corner of the web, I think I should have wished to be a TED presenter instead... Better get started on the presentation for that. Once it is ready, they'll sense its existence in the idea space... I'll just wait beside the phone, staring out at the rain with this song playing in the background.

Mairtin Vs the Toddler

I went to Waterford to meet the younger siblings, grandparents and my mother this weekend past.
I was collected by Deirdre* and Molly.** I had not visited since Christmas, about 20% of Molly's life... I suppose I could forgive her for her dubious glances. However, I am less inclined to forgive her for, "Where's Eimhin,*** is [he] on [the] bus?"... as if I was not good enough for her! After a few minutes of threatening to take her fingers out of her mouth and eating them, she warmed to me.

On the way home, we stopped to get groceries and pretties [hair slides, for people that speak correctly]. When she is dressed in the morning, Deirdre tells her she looks pretty. Naturally, she now calls her hair slides her pretties- it smacks of Gollum, if you ask me. I spent some time on the way home telling her that her hair was a mess, she disagreed of course... I learned that she can shed tears at will. :X

Deirdre is in the habit of declaring the son of the moment her "best boy," Molly picked up on this and calls herself the "best boy" whenever she gets the chance, while also being the self-proclaimed "best girl." Sitting down to my breakfast a on Saturday, I was asking Molly if she was best boy. Not liking my tone she pointed at me calling me a "fat bitch." Winnie**** stepped in and told her to go outside because of her cursing. She looked suitably contrite and shuffled out... of course she got Carthach and Diorraing***** to follow her and play because punishment is so boring without company.

On our way home, after seeing Wolverine, Molly imagined another slight and enquired as to when I was getting the bus, clearly she learned that indirect curses and dismissals are more defensible.

Since I am on the train now, I guess she won this round...

*my mother, it is what I call her, I don't care if it is simpler for others if I call her "Mammy" or some such
**baby sister
***lanky artisan brother
****My grandmother
*****youngest brothers