What is cooking...

Well, a short and sweet update. Politics: I still think the Tories should be concerned about their weakness, given Michael Ignatieff has proven a weak leader. Despite all the criticisms and political missteps(i.e. bad communications) the Grits are only 2 to 4 points behind the Tories.

Academically, I am looking at the intersection of video games and performance art. I have an idea that developing a more sophisticated critical language around video games will give us new critical insights of previously existing genres and art works. I hypothesize  that existing insights into 'ritual' as discussed by scholars like Catherine E. Bell will help explain much of how digital games work. Is the time ripe for introducing ethnography( with it's phenomenological dimensions) to the examination of art works?

Personally, I ran the rather modest distance of 5 km in about 30 minutes. This is the first work out that will culminate in my completing the Montréal Marathon in early September.

Tonight, Anton and I dined on pork chops marinaded in rosemary, olive oil and balsamic vinegar. But what I want to try is cooking sous-vide. This entails heating the food to the appropriate temperature by wrapping it in vacuum sealed bag which is then submerged in hot water. Meats may be grilled after removal just to brown the exterior.  This method promises to avoid over- cooking because the food cannot be heated beyond the correct temperature. For example, the water is heated to 124deg F for a rare steak. The steak can't over cook because 124F is as warm as it will get. I will experiment myself with a pot, thermometer and beef, to see if I can avoid buying the ludicrously expensive sous-vide cookers.

A big shout out to Mennonite Girls Can Cook blog, which gave a great recipe for home-made hamburger helper. Balancing nutrition with what little boys will eat without a stern beating means looking for recipes like this.
Lower in sodium and tailored for the taste of the family in question, it makes me wonder why bother with the Hamburger helper product at all- it is not easier to make than home made(ok, you have to saute the onions and spices, first)
Having searched MGCC I can't wait to try their Perishky recipe(a delicious looking, turnover-like dainty)

I am coming to terms with being single, and feeling my heart un-thaw, a bit. But that emotional release is accompanied by many emotions both light and dark. Seeing my wife, as we pass our son from one another puts me in a foul mood. Childishly, she still denies that this has any more significance than change brands of soap powder. Her home-wrecking lover still denies he owes child support to his ex-wife.

So a bitter ending to a sweet beginning.

Facts Versus Notions, Hypotheses, and Theories

The word theory is generally meant to express what is more technically referred to as a notion; an idea that people have that is either vague or grossly unproven. This gives rise to comments like; "it's just a theory".

In academic circles, a theory is an explanation for the relationship of all known example of something. For example, evolutionary theory accounts well for all known fossils- it gets refined when new examples appear. Darwin, for example didn't have a science of genetics to help explain how traits where passed on. He also couldn't as efficiently account for animals that looked similar. For example, Auks(living in the arctic) and Penguins(living in the antarctic) look similar but genetically are very different species. This fits nicely with the idea that a bird that adapts to living in cold regions might eventually take on the overall form shared by the two species.

A hypothesis arises when, after looking at a limited number of examples, a possible and testable explanation arises. Experiments and methods are used, adapted or devised to test the hypothesis. Early research is a bridge between a hypothesis and a notion. For example, in the current research I am involved with, we are looking at how people interact and behave when playing video games, especially Wii. If you ask, we haven't collected enough data to formulate a hypothesis. Some of us have some notions as to what kind of social behavior will arise, but we haven't nearly enough data collected to see real patterns emerging. In time patterns will start to appear and we will have hypotheses that we can test to explain the social behaviors that emerge.

At later stages, we may do things like creating digital games to see how people interact with the game and each other in specific situations. This will allow us to test those hypotheses and give explanations for the behavior that emerges. However, those theories will be subject to revision as new ways of playing games and social pressures cause new behavior to emerge in the future. In the hard science's Isaac Newton developed his theories of physics, and these work well for describing objects bigger than atoms and slower than about 6% of the speed of light. His theory is accounted for by the Einsteins' theory of relativity, that accounts for really fast motion, up to the speed of light. and Quantum theory, that describes actions from within the atom. As yet, no theory has been able to account for all three. The facts seem to contradict each other, but the behavior of very fast and very small objects have been seen and described.

Evolution or Culture

Is culture an evolutionary development or is evolution a cultural construction? In so far as our culture developed thev theory of evolution to describe things like fossils and more recently DNA sequences, yes evolution is culturally constructed. However, given that organisms change and adapt to an ever changing environment it seems a valid hypothesis that culture has evolved out of biological imperatives.

Apparently whales have culture. These cultures offer different approaches to coping with environmental challenges as do other adaptations.

theory, experience and Malcolm Gladwell

"Gladwell explains his success is more succinct: “People are experience rich and theory poor. My role has been to give people ways of organizing experience."
-'Geek Pop Star' by Jason Zengerle in New Yorker Magazine online November 17, 2008

What a great way to explain what theory is. It expresses the idea that people impose a sense of order on things (negative examples include creationists, conspiracy theorists and the like) but don't necessarily do this rigourously. Their theories, or explanations for the facts on the ground are guilty of logical fallacies or lack falsifiability.