Flavor Tripping!

UPDATE: See our full notes here on our experiences with Miracle Fruit.


$40 worth of Miracle fruit berries

There was an article in the NY Times this week about the "Miracle Fruit", a west African cranberry with psychotripic effects that make everything taste sweet!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/28/dining/28flavor.html?_r=2&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

"Albert Yuen, drizzled Tabasco sauce onto her tongue. She swallowed and considered the flavor: “Doughnut glaze, hot doughnut glaze!” . . .

limes were candied, vinegar resembled apple juice, goat cheese tasted like cheesecake on the tongue and goat cheese on the throat."

They are not cheap ($2 per berry), but flavor tripping has the promise to be far more than a flash in the pan.

Miracle Fruit "numbs your sour and bitter tastebuds for a couple of hours after eating it. That means that everything that used to taste sour now tastes sweet . . .

after eating one stout beers taste like chocolate milkshakes, grapefruits taste like pixie sticks, cheeses taste like frosting, it will make even the crappiest tequila taste like lemonade "

Miracle fruit is expensive and hard to find, we got ours from Thomas Vu Enterprises at http://www.miraclefruittab.com/ forty bucks for a handful of berries.

Now I ask you, how rare is this?

I got this e-mail from my son Andy Burleson today:

"I have all three coldplay albums if you want to borrow them, although i can't ethically let you burn them for copyright reasons."

Now I ask you, in this age of Pirates Bay, how often do you see young people with good ethics?

Great fleas have lesser fleas

I love this poen by Augustus DeMorgan, all about orders of magnitude:

Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.
And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on;
While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.

Memorial Day reflection

The true meaning of Memorial Day is in danger of being lost. This is a day to pause and reflect upon those who have suffered great hardships for the freedoms that we take for granted.

It’s sad that many Americans think of Memorial Day as just a day off from work, a day to relax and picnic.

Memorial Day is so much more than that. Most Americans cannot even imagine the hardships these brave people endure, every day.



Memorial Day is not only about those who made the supreme sacrifice, it’s also about the living and their families. It’s about the true patriots, people who endure great personal hardships in service to our country:

- Memorial Day is about the wives to give birth alone while her husband is half a world away.

- Memorial Day is about those who live in constant fear of a visit from the base chaplain.

- Memorial Day is about the child who has not seen their father in over a year.

- Memorial Day is about the soldier who will spend his life in a wheelchair

- Memorial Day is about those veterans who endure ridicule and discrimination from liberal hippie scum.

- Memorial Day is about those who gird their loins and charge into danger.

- Memorial Day is about those who take-on cowards who fight while hide behind the innocent.

America is the greatest nation in the history of the world, and let’s all take a moment to remember why . . . .



GOD BLESS AMERICA

Processing your own oak boards

We are blessed with an abundance of hardwood and we lost several giant oak trees during the drought last year. This Oak tree is almost a yard wide, and the rings indicate that it was about 160 years old when it died, probably born right before the Civil War. The ole Oak has seen a lot of history . . . .

I spent over $3,000 on emergency tree-age for it a few years back, but the elderly patient died anyway, (most red Oaks only live to be 100-150 years old, so I don’t feel too bad).



But now, I get my money back in lumber!



Most hardwood planers are only 2 to 3 feet wide and cost over $25,000, so I’m just going to haul the dried boards to the mill again for final finishing. A according to Travis and Dallas, this mega log weighs over 5,000 pounds, and it’s too heavy for my biggest excavator. It’s gonna be a real treat loading-up this hummer for the trip to the mill. . .

I’ve harvested several great cedar trees and a giant persimmon, and they are now ready for planing. As a follow-up to my post on processing your own hardwood lumber, I finally harvested the old persimmon tree, and I’ve got several more giant Oaks out on the back 40, enough for a whole new house. The persimmon came out great, a very fine blonde hardwood:



Now, I’ve got the issue of extracting the fancy burl from the stumps. They are too big to hand saw, and I don’t want to waste fine burl due to kerf lossage from a chain saw, so here they sit:



This Oak stump has the most promise, but she’s massive, I don’t know where to start:



We dearly love burl, but I cannot figure out how to slice her up:



Cousin Mac has some ideas, and it looks like I have no choice but to slice the stumps up into 24 inch slices. The big question is how?

The Jet TV Toy

My all-time favorite toy was “Jet TV”, an electromechanical precursor to today’s video games. Jet TV was very popular in the early 1960’s, quite sophisticated, even by today’s standards for mechanical devices.

For nostalgia buffs, the Jet TV has become extremely rare today, and you cannot find them at any price:



I think that I know why they are so scarce. I remember spend hundreds of hours playing with the silly thing, and eventually my curiosity got the best of me, and I dismantled it . . . .

Designer horse shoes

Our blind folks are very creative, creating custom designer horse shoes for their seeing eye ponies, check it out:

designer horse shoes

This is Cheryl with her guide horse Confetti. Confetti is wearing designer dress shoes to match her gown, very elegant.



Of course, the blind folks cannot see the shoes, and I don’t complain, even when they might look a tad “silly”.

Personally, I think that designer cowboy boots for horses is over-the-top, especially with spurs, it's so wrong:



We were at a restaurant last week, and a lady had a Yorkie with designer shoes. This is a bit too much:

Jennifer Burleson graduates Magna Cum Laude

Another scientist joins the fold

Congratulations go out to our daughter Jenny on earning her Bachelors of Science degree in Business administration (BSBA), graduating Magna Cum Laude with a GPA of over 3.9!

Jen has obviously inherited my brains, but I’ll forgive her 3.9. Everybody needs a few B’s to keep them humble. . . .



Jen was also inducted into the prestigious Beta Gamma Sigma honor society and Mu Kappa Tau national marketing honor society! With a degree in marketing, I expect her to be quite the saleslady.



She has snagged a good job as a junior systems analyst, and her future looks bright! I hear that her boss is teriffic. . . . .

Her brother Andy finished up last year and he continues to study for his MBA, just like Dad:



I just hope that she has her priorities correct, and understands the importance of making grandchildren.

As I see it, after spending enough cash to buy a new Mercedes, we have a right to be selfish, and she needs to re-pay her parents for their kind generosity!

Yard Beer: a yard of Ale

I've stayed in many Colorado resorts and the Broadmoor is far-and-away our favorite spot for a yard beer.



A very popular spot in the early 1900's, they even have a Maxfield Parrish original oil paining, very art deco:



It's quite a place, and they are dog friendly with their "Pitty Pat" club, an amenity which Noel appreciated:




They even provided a room service menu for Noel:




The Broadmoor also has an amazing colection of entique liquor bottle, many from the 1800's with the booze still intact:





A Yard of Beer

One of my favorite places at the Broadmoor resort is the Golden Bee, an authentic 19th century British pub which was relocated from England to Colorado Springs. It has a great Victorian feel, and they continue the tradition of the "yard beer".


The Golden Bee - A genuine British Pub in Colorado

True to their name, a yard of ale" is three feet tall. Designed for British stagecoach drivers, the yard-long beer glass was used to allow safe drinking and driving:

"The glass had to be long enough to hand to the driver without his having to leave the stagecoach. The design of the glass meant that the stagecoach driver could drive without losing control and drink at the same time. He could also have his glass refilled without letting go of the reins."

At 64 ounces, a yard of ale takes awhile to finish, and it's quite impressive when served:




The yard beers are somewhat tricky to drink, especially after about 48 oz, the most difficult part comes into play, the tipping-up of the yard beer to get the remaining beer at the bottom of the bulb:




See my other notes of the Baoadmoor hotel:

http://www.dba-oracle.com/golf_travel/broadmoor_resort.htm

The perils of home driving ranges

Despite lesson from a competent PGA master pro, I still suck at golf, although I'm dedicated to become proficient.



We build our home practice hole to avoid the embarrassment from watching people run away when we get on the tee box.



I hit so many wild shots that the squirrels run for cover when they see me on the fairway.

Even thougn we have a tee area, I decided that it was less effort to just go outside and launch some balls directly from under the car port:


Don't try this at home

Now, the farm hands run when they see me come out holding a golf club, and for good reason. Last week, an errant ball careened off of a column and trashed one of the glass doors. I like the "frosted" look, but Janet disagreed:



Now, I've been banned from hitting balls at my own home! But I'm a persistent fellow, and I'm determined to master golf.

I've been practicing religously for a year now, and I can barely break 100, but there is hope for me yet. . . . .

How to hire a genius

I’ve always been fascinated by the whole concept of “intelligence” and how IQ is measured and applied when byou want to hoire someone with a genius IQ.

Today’s measures of intelligence are sadly lacking, and the standard Simon Binet IQ tests only provide a rough guestimate of functional intelligence, making it tough to verify genuis during a job interview.



The average IQ is artificially adjusted to 100, and the average college student has a SB IQ of 120, while the typical graduate student clocks-in between 125 and 135.

The threshold for genius is arbitrarily set at 140.

For below average intellect, clinicians used to use the terms moron, imbecile and idiot, but these terms have become offensive over time, and have been replaced with more politically correct labels:

• 141 > - Genius or near genius
• 120 - 140 - Very superior intelligence
• 110 - 119 - Superior intelligence
• 90 - 109 - Normal or average intelligence
• 80 - 89 - Dullness (Moron)
• 70 - 79 - Borderline deficiency (Imbecile)
• Under 70 - Feeble-minded (an Idiot)

In my line of work (guru computer consulting), it’s my job to find the most intelligent people in the industry, people with IQ at the genius level, but identifying genius is fraught with challenges.
Hence, we have one of the most difficult job screening processes in the database industry, and we look for evidence of genius (graduating from schools that have a high number of geniuses, evidence of extraordinary achievement), but we must balance this with the social and interpersonal skills that are often lacking in extremely smart database experts.




In the geniuses I’ve known personally, they often suffer from a variety of neurotic disorders including borderline personality disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and Asperger's syndrome.

Genius employees are easy to spot but very difficult to formally define. Even today, we don’t understand the machinations of the human brain, and we have not come far since the 1880’s.

One of my favorite books about genius is Dr. Oliver Sack’s masterwork: “The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat”, a great investigation into the mysteries of the human intellect.

Click here to read my full notes on hiring geniuses.