The Thursday Gourmet: Hungarian Goulash

When we lived in Arizona, my folks noticed that I had an affinity for mud.  Not the nice clean loamy mud of Maryland, but the sticky gluey clay mud of the high desert and pinyon-juniper forests.  The kind of mud which can pull off a pair of canvas All-Stars and then pull of the socks for good measure.  I loved the mud.

After a heavy rain, or as the snow melted, I could spend hours creating canyons, alluvial fans, oxbows and rapids in the muddy rivulets.  So my parents bought me a pair of galoshes.  And I galoshed through the mud for the five years we lived on the Coconino Plateau.  And, being a kid, I conflated Goulash and Galosh. 

So here is my recipe for

Hungarian Galoshes Goulash

I Don’t Need to Know This: Mythology and the Protection of World Views

Over at the Spanish Inquisitor, SI brought into the discussion about the recent study showing that religiosity and teen pregnancy are closely linked a view into the willful ignorance of faith.  Faith, the willingness to believe something despite no or contrary evidence, requires ignoring certain aspects of the world around us.  And to protect the worldview of the faithful, almost anything – the beliefs of other religions and cultures, any contrary world view, even the findings of scientists  – can be relegated to myth.   The thing of it is, though, every religion teaches that their mythology is fact, and all others are myth.  Maybe they are all correct.

A Power Greater Than Jesus: the Adolescent Sex Drive

It surprises me (why, I don’t know, since it has happened often enough) when an anecdotal experience from my (rather boring) youth serves to perfectly illustrate something happening in the world today.  For instance, take this story of  narrow-minded authoritarian zealotry:

Healthcare: Profits and Prophets

I have some weird friends.  They’re good people, but some of them are severely disconnected from reality.  I find myself trying to explain things calmly and rationally.  And with no effect.

I’ve told her that yes, Obama really is an American.  His mother is a citizen, therefore, no matter where he was born (that would be Hawai’i (an actual state of the United States)) he would still be a US citizen and no, he does not kill babies.  I’ve told him (yeah, more than one) that high tax rates on the rich, massive public investment in infrastructure, and strong labour unions have, historically, lead to much more rapid economic expansion than supply side economics.  And I have, patiently, explained to both of them that ‘death panels’ already exist — they are run by for-profit insurance companies.

And here is a case in point: 

Cutest Cat Video Ever

This is the cutest cat video of all time.  I want one of these vacuums (of course, our cats would just scream, run away, and piss on a carpet somewhere, so maybe not).

An Addendum to A Kentucky Hat Trick of Stupid

Oddly (and this is from Ed Brayton’s Dispatches from the Culture Wars), kids from Breckinridge High School, in Kentucky, do not need parental permission to be taken to a  Baptist revival by their football coach.  The kids did  need a signed permission slip from their parents to listen to Barrack Obama’s education pep talk!

Another Year Gone By

A year ago, I wrote about memories of September 11, 2009, and the stench of zealotry.  I cannot really add much to what I wrote, except to say that the memories brought to the surface by the smells I experienced while driving to work that morning are still with me, as strong as before.  The images from my time in New York 8 years ago are bearable.  The smells are tougher.

A Kentucky Hat Trick of Stupid

I guess I am just not jaded enough.  I can still be surprised.  Case in point?  The state of Kentucky.  I really am beginning to wonder about Kentucky.  There seems to be a veritable plethora of stupid seeping out of the state.

I, like every other civil servant, make a sacrifice.  Any time that I am in uniform, or on duty, my freedom of speech and of action is limited.  I must, while in contact with the public, avoid certain topics and actions.  If I were to  make public statements about politics or religion, while in either work status or in my government uniform, it would be very easy for a member of the public to interpret my personal views as an official stance of the government of the United States of America.  It really does not matter if a person is an employee of a state, federal, county, local or city government, their freedom of speech is similarly constrained while on duty. 

The Right is Wrong Again: Gay Marriage Does not Hurt Marriage

Six years ago, the state supreme court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts handed down the utterly radical decision that human rights applied to all humans.  Not heterosexual humans.  Not Christian humans.  Not conservative humans.  All humans.  Including Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered humans.  Which meant, of course, that gay marriage, which is a civil human right (not a religious right), had to be legal in the commonwealth.

And, of course, the reaction of the radical right fringe of America was quick:

The Shark Jumping GOP

There was a time, long ago, last century, to be exact, that the Republican Party, the GOP, was a party of ideas.  The ideas were bullshit, but they had ideas.  Cut taxes for the rich, raise taxes on everyone else, and the economy will improve.  Cut taxes and the tax revenue will increase.  Punish people for being poor and the poor will bootstrap themselves right up.  Deregulate industry and industry will  regulate itself.  These policies have given us huge deficits, a wider gap between rich and the rest of us, businesses bankrupting themselves for lack of regulation, and a government which does not have the money to provide the basic services Americans expect.  This is all the direct result of the GOP’s ideas.

Now, the GOP has become the party of no.  No ideas.  Just say no to everything.  Loudly.