Nepenthe

About Espresso Espresso is prepared by forcing hot water through finely ground dark-roast coffee beans. Think of it is strong, concentrated coffee. You can add extra ’shots’ of espresso to make your drink stronger. Espresso [e-spres-oh] Espresso Macchiato [e-spres-oh mock-e-ah-toe] Espresso con Panna [e-spres-oh kon pawn-nah] Caffé Latte [caf-ay lah-tey] Flat White Cafe Breve [caf-ay brev-ay] Cappuccino [kap-oo-chee-noh] Caffé Mocha [caf-ay moh-kuh] Americano [uh-mer-i-kan-oh]

The strange pizza you see above are items removed from the gullet of a fledgling Laysan albatross, a rather large sea bird that had consumed over a half-pound of plastic. It is my understanding that most of the plastic that enters the sea actually does break down eventually, but it breaks down into tiny particles that become distributed throughout the ocean—not a true decomposition. A vast swath of the Pacific, twice the size of Texas, is full of a plastic stew that is entering the food chain. Scientists say these toxins are causing obesity, infertility...and worse. At the same time, all over the globe, there are signs that plastic pollution is doing more than blighting the scenery; it is also making its way into the food chain. Some of the most obvious victims are the dead seabirds that have been washing ashore in startling numbers, their bodies packed with plastic: things like bottle caps, cigarette lighters, tampon applicators, and colored scraps that, to a foraging bird, resemble...

When English is short of a word it often takes one from a foreign language Over the centuries the English language has assimilated phrases and words from other languages. Here are some examples. A cappella, Italian, sung without instrumental accompaniment (literally “in chapel style”) Ad hoc, Latin, made or done for a particular purpose (lit. “to this”) Agent provocateur, French, a person who tempts a suspected criminal to commit a crime so that they can be caught and convicted (lit. “provocative agent”) Al dente, Italian, (of food) cooked so as to be still firm when bitten (lit. “to the tooth”) Alfresco, Italian, in the open air (lit. “in the fresh”) Bête noire, French, a person or thing one particularly dislikes (lit. “black beast”) Blitzkrieg, German, an intense, violent military campaign intended to bring about a swift victory (lit. “lightning war”) Carte blanche, French, complete freedom to act as one wishes (lit. “blank paper”) Caveat emptor, Latin, the buyer is responsi...

SCENE: A lonely strip of shoreline, empty but for a solitary figure. The water is motionless, the sky is cloudy, daylight slight and wintry, a continuous dusk pervades. Purgatory, it turns out, looks very much like Faro Island, a fact whose irony is not lost on its former resident, the recently deceased INGMAR BERGMAN, the solitary figure alone on the beach. Wearing his standard fisherman's wool hat and tight, bemused pout, the late writer-director surveys his eternal reward. More...

And a recipe with my favourite fruit, courtesy of 2 lbs fresh figs (about 20) 1/2 cup of water 1 lemon, preferably unsprayed 3/4 cup of sugar 1 cup of heavy cream 1/2 teaspoon of freshly squeezed, lemon juice, or more to taste Remove the hard stem ends from the figs, then cut each fig into 8 pieces. Put the figs in a medium, nonreactive suacepan with the water, and zest the lemon directly into the saucepan. Cover and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, for about 8-1o minutes until the figs are tender. Remove the lid, add the sugar and continue to cook until it reaches a jam-like consistency. Remove from the heat and let cool to room temperature. Blend together with cream and lemon juice, chill in the fridge and then put in your ice cream maker per the manufacturer's instructions.

Adapted from David Lebovitz . 1 1/2 cups whole milk 1/2 cup sugar pinch sea salt 4 egg yolks 1 cup heavy cream 1/2 cup fruity olive oil 1. Whisk together the egg yolks in a small bowl. Put the heavy cream in a large bowl and set a mesh strainer on top. 2. Place the milk, sugar, and salt in a saucepan and bring to a simmer, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Add a bit of the warm milk into the egg yolks in a thin stream, stirring to combine, then add the egg yolk mixture back into the saucepan. Cook the mixture over low heat, stirring constantly, until thick enough to coat the back of a spoon (do not boil or it will curdle). 3. Pour the custard through the strainer into the heavy cream. Stir to combine, then whisk in the olive oil. Refrigerate until thoroughly chilled (3-4 hours please). 4. Whisk the chilled custard until well combined, then pour into your ice cream machine and churn according to the manufacturer's directions. Store in the ...

I was at a dinner party recently, and the conversation turned to movies. Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (1999) came up, accompanied by the usual groans of disapproval and boredom. I felt obligated to say what I usually say in such situations, to say something that results in shock and disbelief: that Eyes Wide Shut is the best movie I've seen since I have been a professional movie critic. The initial responses to Eyes Wide Shut revolved around the following: 1) The MPAA, their threat of an NC-17 rating and Warner Bros' decision to alter the offending scene by censoring it with "digital figures." 2) Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman 's marriage and how it was affected by the filming. 3) Kubrick's death in March of 1999 and whether or not the released film was as he intended. 4) The fact that the film was set, but not shot in New York City and didn't look at all like the real thing; that Kubrick was an exile who hadn't actually been to New York f...

Lemon Shark, so named because of the ripe lemons they usually keep pinched between their teeth and gums. Lemon Sharks like to do this to keep their breath smelling fresh; they are, after all, the so-called Gentlemen of the Seas. Lemon Sharks are also very generous sharks. They simply love it when divers reach deep into their serrated pie holes and pull out the lemons they have cached there. I don't see any lemons on this particularly fine specimen so that means Willy must have already plucked them out. Great job, Willy. Keep up the good work! Photo of the Day (8/24/07) from Gadling

Getting Married? Here's Some Good Advice. Posted Aug 23rd 2007 10:00AM by Brett Atkinson Filed under: Festivals and Events , Stories , United States My recent post about the wedding at Prague's Ruzyne airport got me recalling my own marriage to Carol in 2003. Travel's a big part of our life together. Even though we're both from Auckland, we actually met in Thailand, and more often than not it's her photographs which complement my words. When we got married we'd already been living together for several years, so certainly didn't need anything to set up a shared home. Instead we made a radical travel-oriented change to the traditional wedding register. Rather than ask for toasters, blenders and bed linen, our wedding invitation listed a range of experiences across five countries we would be visiting on our honeymoon. Guests were invited to "buy" us one of the experiences which ranged from cheap cafe meals to a helicopter ride around Manhattan . Wh...

the very useful Learning Japanese with Akira Kurosawa

wrote one of the most vivid descriptions of what it’s like to have the jaws of death literally clamped around your neck, an animal bent on munching you like so many corn chips. The lion “caught me by the shoulder as he sprang, and we both came to the ground together. Growling horribly close to my ear, [the lion] shook me as a terrier dog does a rat. The shock . . . caused a dreaminess, in which there was no sense of pain nor feeling of terror, though quite conscious of all that was happening.” African explorer - to Malawi and so much more, from Wikipedia The town of Livingstonia, Malawi . The city of Blantyre, Malawi is named for his birthplace in Lanarkshire , Scotland , and includes a memorial. Livingstone survived his frightening encounter, but many others have not been so lucky – the hundreds of people around the world who perish from wild animal attacks each year. Despite mankind’s much ballyhooed “conquest” of Planet Earth, there are an awful lot of things out there still wa...

The very useful Blog software comparison chart

To read Ms. Paley’s fiction is to be awash in the shouts and murmurs of secular Yiddishkeit, with its wild joy and twilight melancholy. For her, cadence and character went hand in hand: her stories are marked by their minute attention to language, with its tonal rise and fall, hairpin rhetorical reversals and capacity for delicious hyperbolic understatement. Her stories, many of which are written in the first person and seem to start in mid-conversation, beg to be read aloud. Some critics found Ms. Paley’s stories short on plot, and much of what happens is that nothing much happens. Affairs begin, babies are born, affairs end. But that was the point. In Ms. Paley’s best stories, the language is so immediate, the characters so authentic, that the text is propelled by an innate urgency — the kind that makes readers ask, “And then what happened?” Open Ms. Paley’s first collection, “The Little Disturbances of Man,” to the first story, “Goodbye and Good Luck”: “I was popular in certain circ...

Portugal has the same paid leave as Spain

The reason he had picked me from the audience, Apollo Robbins insisted, was that I’d seemed so engaged, nodding my head and making eye contact as he and the other magicians explained the tricks of the trade. I believed him when he told me afterward, over dinner at the Venetian, that he hadn’t noticed the name tag identifying me as a science writer. But then everyone believes Apollo — as he expertly removes your wallet and car keys and unbuckles your watch. It was Sunday night on the Las Vegas Strip, where earlier this summer the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness was holding its annual meeting at the Imperial Palace Hotel. The organization’s last gathering had been in the staid environs of Oxford, but Las Vegas — the city of illusions, where the Statue of Liberty stares past Camelot at the Sphinx — turned out to be the perfect locale. After two days of presentations by scientists and philosophers speculating on how the mind construes, and misconstrues, reality,...

A IBM anunciou que vai lançar um programa informático, em código aberto, que será capaz de prever a propagação de doenças infecciosas no mundo. O software, de seu nome Spatiotemporal Epidemiological Modeler (STEM), será doado pela multinacional IBM a cientistas e autoridades sanitárias de todo o mundo com o intuito de ajudar a planear com a máxima eficácia a resposta às emergências de saúde. Joseph Jasinski, director da IBM e responsável pelo projecto, afirma que «o STEM permitirá às autoridade sanitárias prever a propagação de doenças, tal como prevê a chegada de uma tempestade ou furacão». Por ser em código aberto, Os programadores informáticos poderão modificar o software, dependendo das doenças ou das populações. «Até agora tem sido difícil simular cenários de crises sanitárias à escala global. O STEM permite fazer isso», acrescentou Jasinski em comunicado. O programa, que esteve em desenvolvimento durante três anos, funciona com qualquer sistema operativo e permite criar uma repre...

Ratatouille ranks on my top 10 of Animation movies, which pretty much comprises some of Pixar (The Incredibles, anyone?), lotsa Miyazaki (lotsa lotsa mainly offered by very good friends) and Jean Grimault's Le Roi et l'Oiseau . Brad Bird , magician extraordinaire, ranks with my top something favorite directors of all time. And now for the recipes: Thomas Keller's Confit Byaldi, courtesy of The NY Times : FOR PIPERADE 1/2 red pepper, seeds and ribs removed 1/2 yellow pepper, seeds and ribs removed 1/2 orange pepper, seeds and ribs removed 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 1 teaspoon minced garlic 1/2 cup finely diced yellow onion 3 tomatoes (about 12 ounces total weight[350 gr]), peeled, seeded, and finely diced, juices reserved 1 sprig thyme 1 sprig flat-leaf parsley 1/2 a bay leaf Kosher salt FOR VEGETABLES 1 zucchini (4 to 5 ounces [150 gr]) sliced in 1/16-inch rounds [2,5 cm should be enough] 1 Japanese eggplant, (4 to 5 ounces) sliced into 1/16-inc...

Tim Wilkinson, the English translator of Imre Kertész, talks about the lack of literary translations in the UK and US, and assesses past, present, and forthcoming efforts to bring Hungarian literary fiction to the English-speaking market. From Eurozine

"The sum of human wisdom is not contained in any one language, and no single language is CAPABLE of expressing all forms and degrees of human comprehension." Ezra Pound, The ABC of Reading

The news came in over the weekend: Ewan and Charley have finished their motorcycle trek through Africa. It took them just 85 days to travel over 15,000 miles through 14 countries, from Scotland down to Cape Town, South Africa. And that's including almost a week's time spent at border crossings alone. "We feel fantastic, and absolutely brilliant," Charley told BBC Breakfast news. "It's been a long, long ride, which has been the fun part, but getting here and arriving in Cape Town is just fantastic. And the thought of sitting on a motorbike in Scotland, and then arriving here is wonderful." I for one cannot wait for the television series to begin. Long Way 'Round was -- as Charley would say -- absolutely brilliant. I've seen the entire thing at least a few times, and plan on watching it once more before I head off to Eastern Europe in October. Thanks goes to Jaunted for the tip. From Gadling

Create an office separate from the main living areas of the house and declare it off limits during working hours. Help your child make a child readable sign for the office door so that he will know when it is and isn’t acceptable to burst into the office. Invest in some quality headphones for quiet, heads down, work. I can’t count the number of times my wife has apologized to me because the everyone was running around screaming, and I responded “Really? I hadn’t noticed.” Maintain a good work schedule, and stick to it. Something that really helps in our home is that I have set working hours during the day. At 4 PM, I emerge from my office like someone returning home from work, and I’ll take the children to the park, help with chores around the house, or run errands with the family. Train the children to go silent when Dad’s cellphone rings, but make sure your cellphone ringer is turned on. In our house, we have a game. When our eldest son hears my phone ring, he runs and asks his m...

Amorim, one of the world’s biggest cork manufacturers, is the first to produce cork oak wine stoppers that are Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)-certified as environmentally-friendly in a move intended to protect cork oak forests, which are home to numerous threatened species. The new eco-labelled wine bottles, currently sold in the US, should encourage wine buyers to choose bottles stopped with cork oak rather than increasingly popular synthetic alternatives. Cork wine stoppers are made from cork oak bark, which can be harvested whilst leaving the tree intact. Cork forests in Italy, Spain, Portugal and North Africa are home to Barbary and Sardinian deer, the endangered Iberian lynx and wild boar. But the forests are now threatened by the growing popularity of synthetic wine stoppers. Plastic and aluminium wine stoppers accounted for 20% of the market in 2006, compared with 2% in 2000. Synthetic stoppers are cheaper than cork because each oak tree takes 40 years to mature – growing c...

Babette's Feast * Big Night * A Christmas Story Soul Food Eat Drink Man Woman * Fatso Fried Green Tomatoes Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle In Her Shoes Like Water for Chocolate * Marie Antoinette Mostly Martha My Best Friend's Wedding * Off the Menu: The Last Days of Chasen's Spanglish Tampopo * Tom Jones * Vatel Volver Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory * * denotes movies I saw. Babette's Feast is totally my favorite ;)

He expelled Jewish and Russian musicians from concert halls during the Third Reich, claimed in Mein Kampf that there was no independent Jewish culture, and referred to Russians as sub-humans, yet at the same time Adolf Hitler listened to their music in secret. Around 100 gramophone records which apparently belonged to the Nazi leader have been discovered in the attic of a house outside Moscow owned by a former Soviet intelligence officer. The collection reveals that while Hitler was publicly heralding "racially pure" German music, his musical taste may have been more closely aligned to the artists he ostracised. Hitler's passion for Richard Wagner is well documented: however this collection contains works by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and Borodin which are worn and scratched from frequent use. There is a record of a Tchaikovsky concerto performed by Bronislaw Huberman. While Hitler (who, it was said, needed his music to relax) would have been listening to the Jewish violini...

Trois hommes, un Belge, un Allemand et un Français, se présentent pour un nouveau job en Angleterre. Avant de passer a l'interview on leur dit qu'ils devront formuler en anglais une phrase contenant les mots green , pink et yellow . Le Belge passe d'abord : «I wake up in the morning, I eat a yellow banana, a green pepper and in the evening I watch the Pink Panter on TV.» L'Allemand : «I wake up in the morning, I see the yellow sun, the green grass and I think to myself : I hope it will be a pink day.» Finalement le Français : «I wek up in ze mornainje, I hear ze phone "green..... green... green..." I "pink" up the phone and I zay "Yellow?"»... Tabacaria

It’s a myth that Europe’s big cities become ghost towns in August, save for misguided tour parties of perspiring Americans. After all, not everyone wants to go to the beach and the city still needs to keep running – even Paris has a skeleton staff of locals. To keep the stay-behinds and the occasional tourists happy, most cities put on festivals or attractions, as well as encouraging the creation of city beaches where you can cool off. Going in summer can work out better value than leaving it until later: there are fewer business travellers clogging up hotels, which means prices fall, and getting there is cheaper too, as city flights tend to cost less than resort ones (in August, Madrid is half the price of Malaga, for instance). So here is our guide to the summer – the hottest cities, the coolest hotels and the best of the fiestas. Lisbon Head straight for the Baixa district, where every weekend throughout August into September there are events (circus, dance, music and just plain ...