Corn and shiitake congee recipe

Shannon Martinez has a recipe for Corn and shiitake congee.

Vegetarian haloumi hash burgers with kale aioli recipe

Warren Mendes' Vegetarian haloumi hash burgers with kale aioli recipe.

Try using reduced salt haloumi.

Meat-free mushroom and lentil bolognese recipe

Jill Dupleix has published a Meat-free mushroom and lentil bolognese recipe.

Glute exercises

Trevor Bachmeyer's Fix Your Glutes and Your Knee Pain Vanishes

And Runners Knee, Patellofemora Pain, and Your Hips

No, Nazism isn't Socialism

Some in the right have been arguing that Nazis were socialists. Historians Matthew Fitzpatrick and A. Dirk Moses argue why this is false in Nazism, Socialism and the Falsification of History.

Healthy Apple Crumble (I hope)

The Healthy Chef's Apple Crumble.

Making Sourdough

Patrick Ryan shows how to make sourdough How To Make Sourdough Bread Masterclass:

Alex French Guy Cooking has a series:
A Frenchman's Guide to Making Sourdough Starter

Which Flour for Baking Bread ? Sourdough Bread Series

A Non-Baker's Guide To Making Sourdough Bread

3 Lazy Ways To Put Your Sourdough Starter On Hold ! Sourdough Bread Odyssey

Are American political differences due to regional cultural attitutes of settlers

In The Maps That Show That City vs. Country Is Not Our Political Fault Line Colin Woodard argues that the divide in American politics can best be explained by the different European cultures that settled various areas of the USA.

Sectionalism isn’t, and never has been, as simple as North versus South or an effete and domineering East against a rugged, freedom-minded West. Rather, our true regional fissures can be traced back to the contrasting ideals of the distinct European colonial cultures that first took root on the eastern and southern rims of what is now the United States, and then spread across much of the continent in mutually exclusive settlement bands, laying down the institutions, symbols and cultural norms later arrivals would encounter and, by and large, assimilate into.

Rear Admiral Chris Parry with some lessons on preparing for war, and risk

In Warfighting at Sea: What Has Changed Since the Falklands War of 1982 Rear Admiral Chris Parry and Arthur Herman discuss the Falklands War and modern conflicts.

A couple of things to note from this video.

Parry basically states, to paraphrase, that you shouldn't buy equipment that's only suitable for peacetime because you won't get the chance to change it if you go to war.

At 19:10 in the video Parry states:

We accept things in peace time which we would never go to war with.

At 19:56:

And I'm afraid to say that there is a consipiracy of silence in peacetime about whether you would take stuff to war or not. Now if you won't take stuff to war you shouldn't be fitting it, you shouldn't be putting up with it and you shouldn't be reporting to Congress that you know what it's alright for current level of provision and the technical specification is ok. If it isn't you should say so because you'll kill your young people.

At 21:10:

And so we put up with a lot of things in peacetime, you do in the United States Navy as well, which you would never dream of going to war with. It's all in the shop window but should not be with you in wartime.

Later Parry, in answer to a question, makes some points about risk. I think these hold true for many other areas and not just the military.

At 1:06:44:

Strategy is always a tricornered fight between policy, what you thing you want ..., resources, what you can afford and  miltary practicality. But I'm afraid those decisions are made on the basis of what you would do today, not in any future war. So you take risk in peace time which you pay for with your sailors lives and your ship's hulls in wartime, and you get it right and you may not.

At 1:05:09:

We have to anticipate, we have to incorporate technology, we have to have contingency plans for saying this is where our risk is, we need to know about that between friends, and we need to have that for a contingency both technologically and resource terms against the day that risk gets its bluff called.

In another presentation 8 Bells Lecture | Rear Adm. Chris Parry: Falklands War and the Importance of Naval Corporate Memory Parry states at 55:15:

You plan for war and you adapt for peace, not the other way around.

Value or Marginal Cost and Price?

Carmela Chivers discusses Mariana Mazzucato's book The Value of Everything in Makers and takers.

If neoliberalism is dead, what should take its place?
In her new book, The Value of Everything, Mariana Mazzucato draws a roadmap to an alternative economic future — one that measures productive activity by the outcomes it generates rather than the money it makes.

In a brave and uncompromising take on the economic developments of the past forty years, Mazzucato calls out the shallow economics that allowed rent-seekers to proliferate and caused policy-makers to lose sight of the public interest. To change our economic system for the better, she says, economists need better tools to distinguish productive from unproductive activity. In other words, we need a new theory of “value.”

...

The book is full of examples of how we’ve got this wrong. Three whole chapters are dedicated to the explosion since 1980 of the finance industry, which Mazzucato sees as more a value extractor than a value creator. And she shows how confusion about value has masked the real story of how value is created. Innovation is mistakenly seen as the result of a few smart inventors tinkering in their sheds, rather than a collaborative and iterative process, often supported by public funds.

The implications are large. Without a strong idea of what sort of activities are productive, policy-makers are at risk of being “captured” by stories of wealth creation. The policies that result (such as tight intellectual property laws) may favour incumbents, inhibit innovation and promote “unproductive” entrepreneurship.

...

Mazzucato offers a glimpse of an alternative: a framework that puts value back at the heart of economics. Leaving behind the labour theory of the early economists, and moving beyond simply linking of value to prices, she suggests a new way of identifying productive activity: the notion that value comes from actions that promote the sort of economy and society we want.

Writing Tips for IT Pros

Lenny Zeltser has put together some Technical Writing Tips for IT Professionals.

38 Ways To Win An Argument

Schopenhauer's 38 Stratagems, Or 38 Ways To Win An Argument

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), was a brilliant German philosopher. These 38 Stratagems are excerpts from "The Art of Controversy", first translated into English and published in 1896.

I don't endorseany.

Some Pasta Recipes

Baked meatballs and pasta

Pastitsio

Gnocchi topped beef bake

Lasagne recipe: Meatball lasagne

A tale of modern slavery

This is the most moving story I have read this year: My Family’s Slave by Alex Tizon.

Healthy substitutes when baking cakes

In How I had my daily cake and still lost weight Georgie Churchill discusses healthy substitute ingredients that can be used when making baking cakes.

Kings Park Honour Avenues Plaques

Kings Park in Perth has plaques dedicated to Western Australians who died in service and who are either buried overseas or have no known grave.

Honour Avenue plaques sit poignantly against a backdrop of eucalypt trees. Each bears details of service personnel who died during war service and were either buried overseas or have no known graves.

I have often wondered if there is a database of these plaques and it turns out there is.

Garlic, sweet potato and chickpea soup recipe

Dan Lepard's Garlic, sweet potato and chickpea soup.

Achieving more by doing less

In The Secret to Success: Do Less, Then Obsess Morten Hansen interviews Eric Ries on the subject of doing less instead using a narrow focus to succeed.

Morten: Yes, I set out to get at the question, “Why are some managers and employees performing far better than others?” Of course, talent plays a role, education plays a role, how hard they work plays a role. But I studied 5,000 people to find out what really makes a difference, and one key factor is that those who really excel are incredibly good at applying intense focus. They choose a few activities, they say no to others, and then they obsess over those activities. I call it the “Do less, then obsess” principle.

...

Eric: Absolutely. We have a concept in the Lean Startup movement called “minimum viable product,” or MVP. And the idea is, we want to do the least amount of work necessary to start learning from customers, and we descope as much as we can to get that simple initial thing in the market. Many famous companies began with a very humble initial product, and only added features and became more complicated later.

I enjoyed this bit because I think most reports are a complete waste of time. Either no-one reads them, or those that do are probably wasting their own time as well as the authors. This comment is by Morten:

One of the things I discovered in my research is how you need to innovate your own work. I did an academic study in a large company, and I traveled to their Colorado site to meet with this project manager. He was very busy, and he was waving me off—“I’m very busy, can’t talk to you today. Come back tomorrow.” I said, “What are you working on?” [He said,] “I have to finish this quarterly report to headquarters, which is due tonight,” and he told me what the report was about.
What he did not know, which I knew since I was coming from headquarters, was that nobody read that report anymore. It was an outdated report. He finished the report, and he met his objective for his job, but he produced zero value because nobody read the report.

Income: Tennis vs Golf

In Tennis players want more money? It's not as absurd as it sounds Greg Jericho compares the income of top tennis players to top golfers. In summary, for men, unless your right at the very top (think Federer or Nadal) you're better off being a golfer. Women, however, are better off playing tennis.

The main problem with the NBN

Greg Jericho identifies The main problem with the NBN lies within the government’s intent.

When your objective is to provide an internet service that’s good enough just to download Netflix, there will be problems