What to look for when buying olive oil, by Tom Mueller

From Tom Mueller's blog - EV (Extra Virginity) - Truth in Olive Oil

Key concepts

• Olives are stone fruits, like cherries and plums.  So real extra virgin olive oil is fresh-squeezed fruit juice – seasonal, perishable, and never better than the first few weeks it was made.
• Bitterness and pungency are usually indicators of an oil’s healthfulness.  Sweetness and butteriness are often not.
• There are 700+ different kinds of olives, which make thousands of different kinds of oil.  Asking “what’s the best olive oil?” is like asking “what’s the best wine?”  The answer is, “depends on what you’re eating it with.”
• Know the when, who, where of your oil:  When it was made (harvest date), who made it (specific producer name), and exactly where on the planet they made it.
• Read my book Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil
  to understand the bigger picture about where olive oil, great and bad, comes from, and who is making it.
• Like everything on Extravirginity.com, this guide is work in progress, and will be upgraded soon.

Buyer’s guide

• Unlike many wines, which improve with age, extra virgin olive oil is perishable:  like all natural fruit juices, its flavor and aroma begin to deteriorate within a few months of milling, a decline that accelerate when the oil is bottled, and really speeds up when the bottle is opened.  To get the freshest oil, and cut out middle-men who often muddy olive oil transparency and quality, buy as close to the mill as possible.  If you’re lucky enough to live near a mill (in California, but now also Texas, Oregon, Georgia, Arizona and Florida – and of course throughout the Mediterranean, Australia, South Africa and beyond), visit it during the harvest to see how olives are picked, crushed, stirred, and spun into olive oil.  I’ve included many profiles of millers and oil makers in the US, the Mediterranean, Australia and elsewhere to be found in my book Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil, which captures their remarkable craftsmanship and perfectionism despite a day-to-day struggle with fraud.

...for the rest of the report, please click here.

Nellie McKay - "A World without Love"

How to increase Youtube views

Yes, watching paint dry can fetch plenty of Web views

The Times paid two online video-promotion sites to generate tens of thousands of views for a nearly two-minute video of a streak of blue paint drying.

By Jack Leonard and David Sarno, Los Angeles Times
10:47 PM PST, March 3, 2012

Who says no one wants to watch paint dry?

In an effort to find out how easy it is to buy YouTube views, The Times posted two identical videos of a wet streak of blue children's paint. The 1-minute 47-second videos were given similar titles with deliberately misspelled words to lower the chances they'd be found in regular searches by Web users. One was uploaded to reporter Jack Leonard's YouTube account and the other to reporter David Sarno's.

The Times randomly chose a pair of websites touting quick and cheap views for any video and purchased 40,000 views for Leonard's clip. WorkingYouTubeViews.com charged $46 for 20,000 views; IncreaseYouTubeViews.com was paid $57 for another 20,000.

After eight days, the views on Leonard's video had hit 60,000 — far more than had been paid for. Sarno's video had only 13 views.

Emails sent to the two sites seeking explanations were unreturned. Information embedded in Leonard's video showed that thousands of the views originated on Facebook, suggesting the view boosters might have bought cheap ads on the social network to shotgun the view out to users, a small percentage of whom might have clicked.

Google searches showed that the video had been embedded on a yoga website in the United Kingdom and on a separate video-sharing site registered in Ulan Bator, Mongolia. It was not clear how much traffic those sites generated.

jack.leonard@latimes.com

david.sarno@latimes.com

Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times

That the native does not like the tourist is not hard to explain. For every native of every place is a potential tourist, and every tourist is a native of somewhere.

From A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid.

“That the native does not like the tourist is not hard to explain.  For every native of every place is a potential tourist, and every tourist is a native of somewhere.  Every native everywhere lives a life of overwhelming and crushing banality and boredom and desperation and depression, and every deed, good and bad, is an attempt to forget this.  Every native would like to find a way out, every native would like a rest, every native would like a tour.  But some natives – most natives in the world – cannot go anywhere.  They are too poor.  They are too poor to go anywhere.  They are too poor to escape the reality of their lives; and they are too poor to live properly in the place where they live, which is the very place you, the tourist, want to go – so when the natives see you, the tourist, they envy you, they envy your ability to leave your own banality and boredom, they envy your ability to turn their own banality and boredom into a source of pleasure for yourself .” 

What is a secret, neurobiologically? And why are people more likely to tell their secrets to total strangers? by David Eagleman.

From Incognito, by David Eagleman





What is a secret, neurobiologically?  Imagine constructing an artificial neural network of millions of interconnected neurons---what would a secret look like here?  Could a toaster, with its interconnected parts, harbor a secret?  We have useful scientific frameworks for understanding Parkinson's disease, color perception, and temperature sensation---but none for understanding what it means for the brain to have and to hold a secret.


Within the team-of-rivals framework, a secret is easily understood:  it is the result of struggle between competing parties in the brain.  One part of the brain wants to reveal something, and another part does not want to.  When there are competing votes in the brain---one for telling, and one for withholding---that defines a secret.  If no party cares to tell, that's merely a boring fact; if both parties want to tell, that's just a good story.  Without the framework of rivalry, we would have no way to understand a secret.*  The reason a secret is experienced consciously is because it results from a rivalry.  It is not business as usual, and therefore the CEO is called upon to deal with it.


The main reason not to reveal a secret is aversion to the long-term consequences.  A friend might think ill of you, or a lover might be hurt, or a community might ostracize you.  This concern about the outcome is evidenced by the fact that people are more likely to tell their secrets to total strangers; with someone you don't know, the neural conflict can be dissipated with none of the costs.  This is why strangers can be so forthcoming on airplanes, telling all the details of their marital troubles, and why confessional booths have remained a staple in one of the world's largest religions.  It may similarly explain the appeal of prayer, especially in those religions that have very personal gods, deities who lend their ears with undivided attention and infinite love. 


....


As you have doubtless noticed, venting a secret is usually done for its own sake, not as an invitation for advice.  If the listener spots an obvious solution to some problem revealed by the secret and makes the mistake of suggesting it, this will frustrate the teller---all she really wanted was to tell.  The act of telling a secret can itself be the solution.  An open question is why the receiver of the secrets has to be himan---or human-like, in the case of deities.  Telling a wall, a lizard, or a goat your secrets is much less satisfying.

* Some people are constitutionally incapable of keeping a secret, and this balance may tell us something about the battles going on inside them and which way they tip.  Good spies and secret agents are those people whose battle always tips toward long-term decision making rather than the thrill of telling.

Engineering Flow Chart

Les Demoiselles de Rochefort - Chanson de Maxence / You Must Believe In Spring

Je l'ai cherchée partout j'ai fait le tour du monde
De Venise à Java de Manille à Hankor
De Jeanne à Victoria de Vénus en Joconde
Je ne l'ai pas trouvée et je la cherche encore

Je ne connais rien d'elle et pourtant je la vois
J'ai inventé son nom j'ai entendu sa voix
J'ai dessiné son corps et j'ai peint son visage
Son portrait et l'amour ne font plus qu'une image

Elle a cette beauté des filles romantiques
Et d'un Botticelli le regard innocent
Son profil est celui de ces vierges mythiques
Qui hantent les musées et les adolescents

Sa démarche ressemble aux souvenirs d'enfant
Qui trottent dans ma tête et dansent en rêvant
Sur son front, ses cheveux sont de l'or en bataille
Que le vent de la mer et le soleil chamaillent

Je pourrais vous parler de ses yeux, de ses mains
Je pourrais vous parler d'elle jusqu'à demain
Son amour, c'est ma vie mais à quoi bon rêver?
Je l'ai cherchée partout je ne l'ai pas trouvée

Il pourrait nous parler de ses yeux, de ses mains
Il pourrait nous parler d'elle jusqu'à demain
Son amour, c'est sa vie mais à quoi bon rêver?
Il l'a cherchée partout il ne l'a pas trouvée

Est-elle loin d'ici? est-elle près de moi?
Je n'en sais rien encore mais je sais qu'elle existe
Est-elle pécheresse ou bien fille de roi?
Que m'importe son sang puisque je suis artiste
Et que l'amour dicte sa loi
**************************************

Jacques Perrin (Maxence)
Versione restaurata curata da Agnes Varda.
Colonna Sonora di Michel Legrand

Music written by

Michel Legrand

Lyrics written by

Jacques Demy

 *****************************************



When lonely feelings chill
The meadows of your mind,
Just think if Winter comes,
Can Spring be far behind?

Beneath the deepest snows,
The secret of a rose
Is merely that it knows
You must believe in Spring!

Just as a tree is sure
Its leaves will reappear;
It knows its emptiness
Is just a time of year

The frozen mountain dreams
Of April's melting streams,
How crystal clear it seems,
You must believe in Spring!

You must believe in love
And trust it's on its way,
Just as a sleeping rose
Awaits the kiss of May

So in a world of snow,
Of things that come and go,
Where what you think you know,
You can't be certain of,
You must believe in Spring and love

INSTRUMENTAL INTERLUDE

You must believe in love
And trust it's on its way,
Just as a sleeping rose
Awaits the kiss of May

So in a world of snow,
Of things that come and go,
Where what you think you know,
You can't be certain of,
You must believe in Spring and love

You must believe in Spring and love
You must believe in Spring and love
**********************************

Song

You Must Believe in Spring

Lyrics written by

Marilyn Bergman, Alan Bergman

Original music written by

Michel Legrand

Original lyrics written by

Jacques Demy