Universal health insurance in California

My SO just read about California SB 840, a bill that would create a universal health insurance system in California. The bill just passed the California Senate (25 to 15), and is currently in the Assembly; the bill was introduced by Senator Sheila Kuehl.

This is one of the most exciting things I've read about in the past few months, yet before my SO found this on Democratic Underground, I hadn't heard a thing about it. I only found one very short mention in the LA Times (here), and three opinion pieces in the SF Chronicle. Here's a press release discussing the bill's passage from Senator Kuehl's website:

SB 840, THE CALIFORNIA HEALTH INSURANCE RELIABILITY ACT (CHIRA) PASSED BY THE STATE SENATE

CHIRA SUPPORTED BY STATE SENATE PRESIDENT PRO TEM PERATA AND HEALTH COMMITTEE CHAIR DEBORAH ORTIZ

On May 31,2005, State Senate Bill 840, the California Health Insurance Reliability Act (CHIRA), authored by State Senator Sheila Kuehl, passed in the State Senate by a vote of 24 to 14 and has been sent to the State Assembly for consideration. SB 840 would insure every Californian with comprehensive health benefits while preserving each consumer's right to choose his or her own doctor. SB 840 would create a streamlined reimbursement process that would take the place of current public and private insurance plans, thus saving billions in administrative costs. Consumers would pay a yearly means-based premium for all coverage, which would include medical, dental, vision, prescription drug, hospitalization and emergency coverage, along with other services.

The plan is expected to put no new burden on California's general fund. According to the projections of the Lewin Group, an independent healthcare cost/benefit analysis firm, a model on which SB 840 is based could wind up reducing overall healthcare costs in California while insuring every resident at a high level of coverage.

"It's often the case that the most efficient solution to a problem is also the most compassionate solution," says Senator Kuehl. "And we must find a solution to our ballooning healthcare crisis. One in 5 Californians is uninsured. Those of us who have coverage are seeing everything rise: premiums, deductibles, co-pays and out of pocket expenses, while our coverage continues to decline. Half of the personal bankruptcies in this country are the result of medical expenses, and the majority of the people bankrupted for that reason had insurance at the time they became sick or injured.

"This issue affects all of us," Kuehl continued. "One bad traffic accident can wipe out a lifetime of careful financial decisions. Even the minority of people with good coverage can find themselves suffering in an emergency, because emergency rooms are choked with people who aren't actually in emergencies,but have nowhere else to go - or who wouldn't have needed emergency care if they'd only had the preventive care they needed.

"I am very grateful that so many of my colleagues in the State Senate saw the pressing need for this bill. This is what we should be doing - trying to solve the real problems of real people."

State Senate pro Tem, Donald Perata said, "The Senate's passage of SB 840, the California Health Insurance Reliability Act is a big step forward for healthcare reform in California. I wish to thank Senator Kuehl for introducing and working hard for this bill, which will provide all Californians with affordable, comprehensive health insurance, contain healthcare costs and preserve our freedom to choose our own doctors. The passage of this bill exemplifies the work that we, in the legislature, are doing to solve the real problems that people of California have entrusted us with a mandate to address."

Free Beethoven symphonies from the BBC

As part of The Beethoven Experience, the BBC is posting free mp3s of all nine of Beethoven's symphonies. The mp3s will only be available for a limited time:

Symphonies 1 & 3 will be broadcast on Monday 6th June, and available to download from Tuesday 7th June to Monday 13th June.

Symphonies 2, 4 & 5 will be broadcast on Tuesday 7th June, and available to download from Wednesday 8th June to Tuesday 14th June.

Symphony 6 will be broadcast on Monday 27th June, and available to download from Tuesday 28th June to Monday 4th July.

Symphony 7 will be broadcast on Tuesday 28th June, and available to download from Wednesday 29th June to Tuesday 5th July.

Symphony 8 will be broadcast on Wednesday 29th June, and available to download from Thursday 30th June to Wednesday 6th July.

Symphony 9 will be broadcast on Thursday 30th June, and available to download from Friday 1st July to Thursday 7th July.

(via BoingBoing)

Bush talks about the Downing Street Memo

Tony Blair and George Bush held a joint a press conference today, and during that conference they were asked to respond to the Downing Street Memo (or Downing Street Minutes, as some are starting to call it). Here's President Bush's response:

"PRESIDENT BUSH: Well, I -- you know, I read kind of the characterizations of the memo, particularly when they dropped it out in the middle of his race. I'm not sure who "they dropped it out" is, but -- I'm not suggesting that you all dropped it out there. (Laughter.) And somebody said, well, you know, we had made up our mind to go to use military force to deal with Saddam. There's nothing farther from the truth.

"My conversation with the Prime Minister was, how could we do this peacefully, what could we do. And this meeting, evidently, that took place in London happened before we even went to the United Nations -- or I went to the United Nations. And so it's -- look, both us of didn't want to use our military. Nobody wants to commit military into combat. It's the last option. The consequences of committing the military are -- are very difficult. The hardest things I do as the President is to try to comfort families who've lost a loved one in combat. It's the last option that the President must have -- and it's the last option I know my friend had, as well.

"And so we worked hard to see if we could figure out how to do this peacefully, take a -- put a united front up to Saddam Hussein, and say, the world speaks, and he ignored the world. Remember, 1441 passed the Security Council unanimously. He made the decision. And the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power."

While this is being billed as a response to the Downing Street Memo, CNN's article points out that Bush has still not responded to Rep. Conyers's questions regarding the memo.

It is also interesting to contrast Bush's answer with Tony Blair's, significantly more eloquent, response:

"PRIME MINISTER BLAIR: Well, I can respond to that very easily. No, the facts were not being fixed in any shape or form at all. And let me remind you that that memorandum was written before we then went to the United Nations. Now, no one knows more intimately the discussions that we were conducting as two countries at the time than me. And the fact is we decided to go to the United Nations and went through that process, which resulted in the November 2002 United Nations resolution, to give a final chance to Saddam Hussein to comply with international law. He didn't do so. And that was the reason why we had to take military action.

"But all the way through that period of time, we were trying to look for a way of managing to resolve this without conflict. As it happened, we weren't able to do that because -- as I think was very clear -- there was no way that Saddam Hussein was ever going to change the way that he worked, or the way that he acted."

Finally, the real justification for all that wiring work

From Penny Arcade (obviously)

While my SO and I are not early adopters, this struck quite a chord with me, and I'm still smiling over it hours later (to which my SO says, "it's not that funny"). I have no doubt that SC will appreciate it.

A complete lack of justice

On May 13, 2005 Amnesty International published "Guantánamo and beyond: The continuing pursuit of unchecked executive power", a lengthy report detailing the questionable detention practices of our current administration. It is well-documented (more than 500 citations) and a worthwhile, if horrifying and disheartening, read.

There's far too much in the report to attempt to summarize it all, but here are a few snippets.

"[O]n 28 June 2004, the US Supreme Court ruled, in Rasul v. Bush, that the federal courts in fact do have jurisdiction to hear appeals from foreign nationals detained in Guantánamo Bay.(5) Yet almost a year later, none of the more than 500 detainees of some 35 nationalities still held in the base – believed to include at least three people, from Canada, Chad and Saudi Arabia, who were minors at the time of being taken into custody – has had the lawfulness of his detention judicially reviewed."

In lieu of judicial review, detainees are evaluated by military/executive bodies, which Amnesty International describes in depth:

"Evidence extracted under torture or other coercion – the reliability of which will always be suspect – can be admitted by the Combatant Status Review Tribunals and Administrative Review Boards – executive bodies that, respectively, determine whether each Guantánamo detainee is an 'enemy combatant' and then, annually, whether he remains a security risk or of intelligence value.

"Similarly, the rules for US military commissions – set up under a presidential Military Order to 'try' only foreign nationals – do not exclude the use of evidence extracted under torture or other coercion, in violation of international standards against torture and ill-treatment and for fair trial.(77) These military commissions are executive bodies – not independent or impartial courts – whose rules are determined by the executive, whose personnel are selected by the executive, and whose final decisions the executive vets, including whether a condemned defendant lives or dies. Time spent in executive detention as an 'enemy combatant', however long, is not to be considered as time already served if an individual is sentenced to a term of imprisonment by a military commission. In the event of an acquittal, it is the executive who will decide whether to release the detainee or place him or her back in indefinite detention as an 'enemy combatant'.

[snip]

"In November 2004, a US federal judge ruled that, at least in one respect, the rules of the US military commissions were unlawful. Specifically, he noted, 'The accused himself may be excluded from proceedings ... and evidence may be adduced that he will never see.'"

How could we ever conceive of this as justice?

The report also includes a fine quote from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan:

"It would be a mistake to treat human rights as though there were a trade-off to be made between human rights and such goals as security or development. We only weaken our hand in fighting the horrors of extreme poverty or terrorism if, in our efforts to do so, we deny the very human rights that these scourges take away from citizens. Strategies based on the protection of human rights are vital for both our moral standing and the practical effectiveness of our actions."

And another from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe:

"Conformity with international human rights and humanitarian law is not a weakness in the fight against terrorism but a weapon, ensuring the widest international support for actions and avoiding situations which could provoke misplaced sympathy for terrorists or their causes… [T]he Assembly considers that the US Government has betrayed its own highest principles in the zeal with which it has attempted to pursue the 'war on terror'. These errors have perhaps been most manifest in relation to Guantánamo Bay." 26 April 2005

Debian Administration

Debian Administration is a user-run site that posts "tips and resources" for people who use Debian. I first found the site a few months ago, and have been reading it regularly ever since. Their main page lists posts chronologically, though posts are also sorted into a number of topics.

I'm also happy to report that Debian Administration picked up my recent post on upgrading my kernel, and, with a little modification from me, has posted it on their main page. Thanks Steve! [though if they let novices like me post there ...]

On a related topic, I've also created a Debian/Linux archive page, and have added a link to it over in the "recurring feature" area of the side bar. If you're an expert at using Linux, head over there to amuse yourself by reading about my failures.

Garlicky creamed spinach

I know it's hard to get excited about creamed spinach, but this creamed spinach is loaded with garlic, and has an ideal thick and creamy texture. My SO and I included this dish in our celebratory end-of-the-semester dinner, so it's this week's end-of-the-week recipe blogging post.

White sauce:
4 tablespoons butter
5 large cloves garlic, finely minced or pressed with a garlic press
4 tablespoons flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk, warmed

Other ingredients:
2 tablespoons butter
1 small onion, finely chopped
1/4 cup water
1 pound frozen, chopped spinach
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sour cream

To make this creamed spinach you cook up a white sauce in one pot, some spinach and onions in another pot, and then combine the two at the end. Making the white sauce and cooking the spinach can easily be done in parallel, and all told this recipe takes less than half an hour to make.

To make the white sauce:
1. Melt 4 tablespoons butter in a small non-stick pot over medium-high heat.
2. Add the garlic, and cook, stirring, until the garlic begins to brown (~1 minute, though it depends on your stove's heat and the size of the garlic bits).
3. Reduce the heat to medium, add the flour and salt, and, stirring constantly, cook until the flour begins to brown and starts to smell nutty/toasty (we don't time this process, but probably around 3 minutes).
4. Reduce the heat to medium low, and add the warmed milk to the flour mixture in two or three batches, whisking constantly until smooth. Do not add the milk all at once. When you're done, the sauce will be very thick.

To cook the spinach and onions:
1. If you desire, defrost the spinach; we do this by putting the spinach in a large bowl, adding a few tablespoons of water, and then microwaving it until it's no longer icy (but still not cooked).
2. Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a large non-stick pot over medium-high heat.
3. Add the onions and cook, stirring frequently, until the onions turn clear and start to brown (at least 5 minutes, though again it will vary).
4. Add the spinach, water, and 1 teaspoon of salt, and cook, covered and stirring occasionally, until the spinach is done. If you've defrosted the spinach, this will be about 5 minutes; if you're using frozen spinach, this will take longer.

Assembling the dish:
1. Add the white sauce and sour cream to the cooked spinach, and stir to mix thoroughly.

If you don't really like garlic, I might suggest reducing the amount of garlic a bit. The recipe can be made quite successfully without garlic, but then it wouldn't be "garlicky creamed spinach," now would it?

We based this recipe on a creamed spinach recipe we found online years ago (I believe it was trying to mimic Boston Market's creamed spinach), but we have long since lost the link.

[Updated Nov. 23, 2005 to reduce the amount of time required to cook the garlic.]

Serving suggestion: mashed potatoes with bacon and cheese

This past Friday my SO and I decided to try making mashed potatoes with bacon and cheese. Without posting our creation as a full recipe (most people know how to make mashed potatoes, right?), here's the basics: we added one pound of bacon (fried until crisp) and half a pound of grated medium cheddar cheese to about five pounds of mashed potatoes (made with the skins still on the potatoes), and then sprinkled extra grated cheddar cheese on top when we served it.

The potatoes were absolutely delicious, even if they were horribly unhealthy. So, if bacon and cheese in your mashed potatoes sounds good to you, give it a try.

What does it take to get your signature verified?

Zug has a two-part series, The Credit Card Prank and The Credit Card Prank II, wherein they report the results of an experiment to test how frequently people check credit card receipt signatures. (via BoingBoing)

Bombing in Iraq

The Sunday Times has an article, RAF bombing raids tried to goad Saddam into war, describing evidence that suggests the US and Britain were set on a course of war long before President Bush ever asked Congress for war powers.

"THE RAF and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war, new evidence has shown.

The attacks were intensified from May, six months before the United Nations resolution that Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, argued gave the coalition the legal basis for war. By the end of August the raids had become a full air offensive."

The same report is discussed in an editorial by Jeremy Scahill, The Other Bomb Drops, which discusses this report in the context of the recently released Downing Street Memo.

When Bush asked Congress to authorize the use of force in Iraq, he also said he would use it only as a last resort, after all other avenues had been exhausted. But the Downing Street memo reveals that the Administration had already decided to topple Saddam by force and was manipulating intelligence to justify the decision. That information puts the increase in unprovoked air attacks in the year prior to the war in an entirely new light: The Bush Administration was not only determined to wage war on Iraq, regardless of the evidence; it had already started that war months before it was put to a vote in Congress.

Linux starts to take over ...

Yesterday afternoon I unplugged my primary Windows PC while I did some work on my Linux box. Only this evening did I realize that I'd forgotten to plug it back in.

If it worked for Bush ...

The website for Bret Schundler, a Republican candidate for governor in New Jersey, appears to have had a manipulated photograph from a Howard Dean campaign stop that makes it appear as though Schundler is standing in front of a crowd of his own supporters. PoliticsNJ has the original images, including a screenshot of the website before the image was removed, and NorthJersey.com has an article on the topic.

Here're the images:


Image from 2004 Howard Dean campaign rally.


Image from Bret Schundler's website.


The two images superimposed, with Schundler's image partially transparent on top.

I'll leave it up to you, my fair reader, to play the "find the changes" game. It's hours of endless fun!

Via the Democratic Underground (on their front page; the article doesn't have a permalink).

p.s. If you're confused by the title, see my Yakuza post, as well as this post.

A painless kernel upgrade

The core of any Linux-based computer is the Linux kernel, and like any other operating system, there are multiple versions available. When I first installed Debian, I used their stable distribution, which installed a relatively old version (2.2.x) of the kernel (in hindsight I should have started with the testing distribution, to which I eventually upgraded). If you're curious, the file /proc/version lists the kernel version you're currently using.

Linux powerusers pride themselves on being able to compile their own kernel from the source code; doing this allows the user to eliminate all the elements of the kernel that they don't need (e.g., remove support for hardware they don't have), thus increasing performance.

I didn't want to go through all the work and stress of compiling my own custom kernel (I have no clue what most of the options do), but I did want to upgrade my kernel (2.4 has better sound support, among other things). Debian came to the rescue, as their apt package management system has pre-complied kernels ready to install, via the many kernel-image packages. I had trouble finding good documentation on how the kernel-image upgrade process worked (most sites focus on how to compile a kernel from source), so I'll describe what I did here.

The Debian kernel images come pre-compiled for every processor architecture that Debian supports, so the first step was to choose the image that matched my processor. I wanted to make absolutely certain that I chose the right processor architecture, so I used the command "lspci" to get information on my hardware, and then looked in the file "/proc/cpuinfo" to figure out exactly what my processor was. The hard part was now over.

I determined exactly which package I needed to use (e.g., kernel-image-2.4.27-2-686), and then used "apt-get install" to install it. The install script downloaded the kernel image and all other required files, installed the files, asked me if I wanted to create a link to initrd.img and install a boot block (I went with the default of yes for both), and ended by instructing me to do two very easy things (add a line to my lilo.conf file, and then run lilo).

After rebooting I had a brand-new kernel. There were no problems, and everything seems to work just fine. Why didn't I do this sooner?

As a side note, after upgrading the kernel I was able to get my sound-card to work (which I'd been having trouble with). To do this I downloaded the appropriate kernel modules (e.g. alsa-modules-2.4-686) and then ran "alsaconf" (I already had alsa-utils installed). Now I can now hear all of frozen-bubble's cute noises.

Education and science, always a good pair

Two carnivals came out today, and both of them are huge:

• Carnival of Education #17 - hosted by The Education Wonks.
  
  
• Tangled Bank #29 (The Natural History Museum edition) - hosted by Organic Matter.

Amnesty International USA petition

Amnesty International USA, as part of its Denounce Torture: Stop It Now! campaign, is hoping to get 250,000 signatures on a petition condemning the use of torture by the United States. You can view, and sign, the petition here.

Grades are in!

The spring 2005 semester is now officially complete. Yay!

Cheney responds to Amnesty International

Dick Cheney was interviewed on Larry King Live yesterday, and in the interview Cheney responded to the recent Amnesty International claims that the US is violating human rights:

KING: Amnesty International condemns the United States. How do you react?

D. CHENEY: I don't take them seriously?

KING: Not at all?

D. CHENEY: No. I -- frankly, I was offended by it. I think the fact of the matter is, the United States has done more to advance the cause of freedom, has liberated more people from tyranny over the course of the 20th century and up to the present day than any other nation in the history of the world. Think about what we did in World War I, World War II, throughout the Cold War. Just in this administration, we've liberated 50 million people from the Taliban in Afghanistan and from Saddam Hussein in Iraq, two terribly oppressive regimes that slaughtered hundreds of thousands of their own people. For Amnesty International to suggest that somehow the United States is a violator of human rights, I frankly just don't take them seriously.

KING: They specifically said, though, it was Guantanamo. They compared it to a gulag.

D. CHENEY: Not true. Guantanamo's been operated, I think, in a very sane and sound fashion by the U.S. military. Remember who's down there. These are people that were picked up off the battlefield in Afghanistan and other places in the global war on terror. These are individuals who have been actively involved as the enemy, if you will, trying to kill Americans. That we need to have a place where we can keep them. In a sense, when you're at war, you keep prisoners of war until the war is over with.

We've also been able to derive significant amounts of intelligence from them that helped us understand better the organization and the adversary we face and helped us gather the kind of information that makes it possible for us to defend the United States against further attacks. And what we're doing down there has, I think, been done perfectly appropriately. I think these people have been well treated, treated humanely and decently.

Occasionally there are allegations of mistreatment. But if you trace those back, in nearly every case, it turns out to come from somebody who had been inside and been released by to their home country and now are peddling lies about how they were treated. (from the CNN rush transcript)

Let's summarize Cheney's responses to the Amnesty International accusations:

1) I'm offended.

2) The US has done lots of good things.

3) The administrations we overthrew did lots of bad things.

4) We're at war, so we have to keep prisoners of war.

5) These prisoners have given us lots of information.

6) I think we're treating people well.

7) The allegations are only coming from people who have been released. They are liars.

Most of these responses have absolutely nothing to do with the statements made by Amnesty International that human rights violations are occuring in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Let's deal with them one at a time:

1) This has nothing to do with the issue (of course he's offended, they're accusing his administration of crimes).

2) Doing good deeds does not excuse criminal behavior.

3) Just because someone else does bad things doesn't mean you can do bad things too.

4) Being at war may justify imprisonment of certain persons, but does not justify torture or other cruel treatment.

5) The ends do not justify the means.

6) This is a somewhat relevant point, yet he provides no evidence for his belief.

7) That allegations of misconduct come primarily from released persons should not be surprising, since accusing your captors of misconduct is unlikely to elicit positive reactions from them. While it's possible the accusers may be lying, Cheney provides no evidence that they are.

Later in the interview Cheney says that we'll be out of Iraq by the end of Bush's term, and that the insurgency is in its "last throes":

KING: When do we leave?

D. CHENEY: We'll leave as soon as the task is over with. We haven't set a deadline or a date. It depends upon conditions. We have to achieve our objectives, complete the mission. And the two main requirements are, the Iraqis in a position to be able to govern themselves, and they're well on their way to doing that, and the other is able to defend themselves, and they're well on their way to doing that. They just announced that in the last day or two here, there've been stories about a major movement of some 40,000 Iraqi troops into Baghdad to focus specifically on the problem there.

KING: You expect it in your administration?

D. CHENEY: I do.

KING: To be removed. It's not going to be -- it's not going to be a 10-year event?

D. CHENEY: No. I think we may well have some kind of presence there over a period of time. But I think the level of activity that we see today, from a military standpoint, I think will clearly decline. I think they're in the last throws, if you will, of the insurgency. We've had reporting in recent days, Larry, about Zarqawi, who's sort of the lead terrorist, outside terrorist, al Qaeda, head of al Qaeda for Iraq, may well have been seriously injured. We don't know. We can't confirm that. We've had reporting to that effect.

So I think we're making major progress. And, unfortunately, as I say, it does involve sending young Americans in harm's way. But America will be safer in the long run when Iraq and Afghanistan as well are no longer safe havens for terrorists or places where people can gather and plan and organize attacks against the United States.

English muffin bread

Now that the semester's functionally over, I finally have more time to cook. So, this afternoon I made my favorite bread recipe from Beard on Bread (Beard 1973): English muffin bread. English muffin bread has the texture and taste of English muffins, but is baked as a loaf; it tastes divine when cut into thick slices, toasted, and covered with butter (which fills all the nooks and crannies).

One reason I love making this bread is that it's easy. There's no kneading, and it only requires basic ingredients. All you need is a few minutes to mix up the dough, and then the yeast and oven do the rest. Making bread by hand could hardly be simpler, and thus this bread is this week's end-of-the-week recipe blogging post.

Here's what my loaf looked like today:




I wish all my loaves looked like this.

1 package (1 tablespoon) active-dry yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 cup warm water (~100-115F; warm but not overly hot on your wrist)
2 1/2 cups white flour
2 teaspoons salt
7/8 cup warm milk (I heat it up briefly in the microwave)
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon warm water
Butter or shortening for greasing the pans

1. Mix the yeast, sugar, and 1/2 cup warm water in a large bowl and wait for it to proof (~5 minutes; wait for the yeast to start actively metabolizing, signaled by the formation of a froth on the surface of the water). I do this in the mixing bowl of our stand mixer.
2. Mix the flour and salt in a small bowl.
3. Alternately add the flour mixture and warm milk to the proofed yeast, mixing well between each addition. I typically add about 1/4 of the flour and then 1/4 of the milk with each addition, though the amounts don't seem to be critical. We use our stand mixer with a paddle attachment for mixing (which makes the bread very easy to make), but you can also use a wooden spoon (which gives you a workout in addition to tasty bread). When finished, the dough should be a cohesive, smooth mass (that is much moister than typical bread dough), and should appear as though it's pulling away from the sides of the bowl when stirred. Do not knead the dough.
4. Once the dough is mixed, scrape the dough off the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula, cover the mixing bowl with a moist kitchen towel, and let the dough rise until it has doubled in volume, typically 45 minutes in our kitchen (Beard suggests 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours; maybe he kept his kitchen much colder than ours).
5. Once the bread has doubled in volume, mix it briefly with a wooden spoon (to collapse the dough).
6. Combine the baking soda and 1 tablespoon water in a small bowl, and then add it to the dough, mixing thoroughly.
7. Transfer the dough to a greased loaf pan; I use a 11.25" x 4.5" x 2.75" pan (interior dimensions; l x w x h), which makes a long, shallow loaf, though you could use whatever size loaf pans you desire (dividing the dough between two standard 8" loaf pans works well).
8. Cover the loaf pan(s) with a piece of plastic wrap (lightly oiled to prevent the plastic wrap from sticking to the dough), and let the dough rise until it's doubled in volume (~45 minutes in my kitchen, though Beard suggests 1 to 1 1/4 hours). Don't let the dough over-rise, as it may collapse during or after baking.
9. When the bread is close to finished rising, preheat the oven to 375F.
10. Once the bread has risen, bake the bread in the preheated 375F oven until the top is a dark golden brown, approximately 30 minutes.
11. When the bread is done, remove it from the oven and place it (still in the pan) on a cooling rack.
12. After five minutes of cooling, remove the bread from the pan (sliding a knife around the edges can help release the bread), and put the bread back on the cooling rack.
13. Let the bread cool completely. This is the most difficult step of the entire recipe, as your kitchen (and house) will be filled with the scent of freshly baked bread, but you can't have any. My willpower rarely holds out until the bread is completely at room temperature.
14. Cut into thick slices, toast, and butter generously.

As a side note, regular readers may recognize that this bread served as the base for our smoked salmon eggs Benedict.

Reference:

Beard, J. 1973. Beard on Bread. A.A. Knopf, Inc, New York. pp. 156.

Back to the blogs ...

My semester is almost wrapped up; on Saturday I finished most of my grading, and with any luck I'll formally turn in my grades on Tuesday. So, today I got to spend a few solid hours surfing blogs, with no work-related distractions. Amazing. Here's some posts of note:

• Scalzi explains why online piracy won't lead to the demise of writers in Writing in the Age of Piracy. He uses Penny Arcade, and his own site, as examples of how modern writers can make money in a world with pirates: both sites give away all of their content for free, yet end up making heaps of cash every year. The comments are an excellent read as well.
  
  
• Preposterous Universe has a graph of the national debt from 1945 to 2004, adjusted for inflation.
  
  
• Science and Sensibility has found a number of botany blogs.
  
  
• Angry Professor is looking for suggestions on how to teach a pre-statistics class to math-phobics.
  
  
• Bsag talked about CiteULike, a site that lets academics share links to journal articles they're currently reading (much like del.icio.us).
  
  
• Science and Politics posted the 16th Carnival of Education, and Organic Matter has put out a call for submissions for the next Tangled Bank.
  
  
• Tycho and Gabe (of Penny Arcade) have started posting some of their earlier works (for both links, scroll down to "The braying and neighing of barnyard animals follows"). Their exchange on May 27 (the first link) is hilarious.

Gov. Schwarzenegger digs pothole, then fills it

Gov. Schwarzenegger is trying to promote his recent decision to fund transportation (at the expense of education and other state programs). To show just how much he cares about transportation, on Thursday he staged a media event wherein he helped a road crew fill a pothole in a San Jose street.

There was only one problem: the pothole Gov. Schwarzenegger filled was dug a few hours earlier by a city work crew (reported in the SF Chronicle).

"But neighbors in the area said while they welcomed the work by the governor, they weren't sure the repairs were so critical.

"Greco, who used his video camera to record the crews ripping up his street, said Laguna Seca Way had 'a few cracks,' which he termed 'unsightly,' but they weren't as bad as the 'major potholes' a few blocks away.

"'The street was very drivable,' Vujevich said."

The article also discusses how the Governor has started announcing some of his appearances only a few hours in advance, most likely to help him avoid protesters (who are typically protesting for such radical causes as better support for teachers, nurses, police, and firefighters).

"The governor, asked Thursday whether the stealth schedule suggested he has been bothered by his vocal opponents, blithely dismissed them, saying most 'are paid by the unions to protest.'

"'These are all people who want to stop progress. These are all people that are fighting for the status quo ... all the people that have created the problems in the first place,' he said. 'So we don't pay very much attention to that at all. We're paying attention to millions and millions of signatures that people of California have given us in order to change the system.'"

The charge that protestors are "paid union protesters punching the clock" has been made before (e.g., this Chronicle article on protests in San Francisco), and it seems as though the Schwarzenegger administration has no evidence for their claims.

"Union organizers denied that workers were paid to attend the protest, and Stutzman [the governor's spokesman] declined to offer any evidence of payments from the unions."

Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association, says about the San Francisco protest,

"We didn't even do a mailing to get people here. We just talked to our members and had them call their families and friends."

So our governor ignores people who are spending their own time and money to protest to bring attention to our woefully underfunded educational system (and other state programs), and instead considers the protesters to be "the people who created the problems in the first place." Excuse me? Who's shorted education by $1.5 billion, at a time when we could desperately use the money? Who wants to destroy the retirement plans of public employees? Oh, that's right ... our governor.

Instead of hiding from the public and filling fake potholes, there's a much easier way to stop people from protesting: give our state programs the funding and support they need (and have been promised).

(via BoingBoing)