I read that meat thread over again, ... So many lovely names going by, though -- wonderful to remember them.
I particularly enjoyed the exchanges between nonsuch and Slick Willy -- what firework, what passion!
Didn't Markbo have a bet on with rasmus about the coming economic collapse in the U.S.? As in, Markbo didn't believe there was one coming, and rasmus was explaining to him how it was?
Yes, they bet $5 -- I wonder if rasmus ever collected? Somehow I doubt it.
Remember how we used to post recipes instead of claiming to be offended by someone and running to the moderator? It was anarchy in action.
I believe babble banned that practice after some high-profile lawsuits involving food poisoning.
[URL=http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/moroccanlambtagine_6696]BBC:[/URL]
Moroccan lamb tagine
No recommendations. Sign in to recommend
Preparation time: overnight
Cooking time: over 2 hours
Serves 4
Ingredients
1 tsp cayenne pepper
2 tsp ground black pepper
1½ tbsp paprika
1½ tbsp ground ginger
1 tbsp turmeric
2 tbsp ground cinnamon
1 x shoulder of lamb, trimmed and cut into 5cm/2in chunks (about 1.1kg/2½lb meat in total)
2 large onions, grated
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp argan oil
3 cloves garlic, crushed
570ml/1 pint tomato juice
2 x 400g tinned chopped tomatoes
115g/4oz dried apricots, cut in half
55g/2oz dates, cut in half
55g/2oz sultanas or raisins
85g/3oz flaked almonds
1 tsp saffron stamens, soaked in cold water
600ml/1 pint lamb stock
1 tbsp clear honey
2 tbsp coriander, roughly chopped
2 tbsp flat leaf parsley, roughly chopped
Preparation method
Preheat the oven to 150C/300F/Gas2.
Place the cayenne, black pepper, paprika, ginger, turmeric and cinnamon into a small bowl and mix to combine. Place the lamb in a large bowl and toss together with half of the spice mix. Cover and leave overnight in the fridge.
Heat 1 tbsp olive oil and 1 tbsp of argan oil in a large casserole dish. Add the grated onion and the remaining spice mix and cook over a gentle heat for 10 minutes so that the onions are soft but not coloured. Add the crushed garlic for the final 3 minutes.
In a separate frying pan, heat the remaining oil and brown the cubes of lamb on all sides then add the browned meat to the casserole dish. De-glaze the frying pan with ¼ pint of tomato juice and add these juices to the pan.
Technique: De-glazing pan gravy
Add the remaining tomato juice, chopped tomatoes, apricots, dates, raisins or sultanas, flaked almonds, saffron, lamb stock and honey to the casserole dish. Bring to the boil, cover with a fitted lid, place in the oven and cook for 2-2½ hours or until the meat is meltingly tender.
Place the lamb in a tagine or large serving dish and sprinkle over the chopped herbs. Serve.
Top recipe tip
Argan oil is a Moroccan oil from the argan tree, you should be able to find it in specialist food shops.
I believe babble banned that practice after some high-profile lawsuits involving food poisoning.
Now it is replaced by quoting Vogan poetry!
Remember how we used to post recipes instead of claiming to be offended by someone and running to the moderator? It was anarchy in action.
Now that you mention it, most of the anarchists appear to have moved on as well since then. There's been a noticeable decline in the number of gardening threads.
Tolerating 9/11 threads damages the credibility of the entire board.
I posit the theory that there are a modest number of people who find babble, take one look at the 9/11 threads and say "I'm outta here".
What if they were allowed in "banter" but not in "Science"?
[quote=skdadl]
[quote=Fidel]
[quote=alien]Markbo, with whom I had a friendly rivalry (we disagreed about almost everything -- he still believed in Sadam's WMD![/quote]
I'll bet he's changed his handle and now supports the Can-Am disinformation campaign to re-write history since 9.11.01.
[/quote]
Didn't Markbo have a bet on with rasmus about the coming economic collapse in the U.S.? As in, Markbo didn't believe there was one coming, and rasmus was explaining to him how it was?
[/quote]
I know who he is in real life. I should email him about that. I always liked Markbo. My favourite capitalist on the board. He actually posted here about 3 months ago.
Tolerating 9/11 threads damages the credibility of the entire board.
We can be sure that a few medieval Church officials felt the same way. They didn't even think that Jewish disputations should be tolerated and instead favoured direct punishment for those who challenged government sponsored truths of the day. This was some time before the period of enlightenment, before that great leap into modern thinking when people were encouraged to thnk rational thoughts. And besides, even the Ceeb has produced an occasional refutation of the official narrative. The union of concerned scientists say the 2000s was a decade of bad crazy George II science in general, and even they have instructed whistleblowers on how to survive the inquisition.
The reality about the events of 9/11 almost doesn't matter, at least in terms of this board. What does matter is people's behaviour on those threads, and there is not an agreed upon interpretation of the nature of that behaviour.
Anyway, yeah, I guess you can't have a pemanent ban on discussing the subject. I'll raise the issue with the powers that be. Actually, I was sort of hoping everyone would forget about it, but I guess that wasn't to be.
The biggest improvement in Babble over the years has been the distinct drop in the participation of Zionist apologists. This is particularly evident over the last year. Perhaps they have just given up?
Having to deconstruct all that misinformation time and time again was a very tiresome challenge.
Inshallah.
Well I must admit that I was probably the worst offender and probably contributed to spoiling it for the more serious posters, like jas who tends to avoid mocking and deriding anyone in favour of sticking to the facts and areas in question. But I really do think the building collapse end of it is a serious subject matter for which hundreds of licensed engineers and architects are simply striving to know more about regardless of whether it was an inside job or not. I think that particular group of truth enthusiasts have a stronger case than most of us know including myself. But the math is surprisingly not that difficult to understand considering the degree of error in official theories pointed out by truth seeking skeptics. They have uncovered enough reasonable doubt to question the official narrative IMHO, and enough to warrant a transparent investigation into the worst building collapses in history. Overall 9/11 is a serious subject that could well end up being the genesis fable for the start of WW III and perhaps globalizing descent into a new dark ages. And there are other aspects of the 9/11 tragedy leading to liquid war that beg answers to.
What does matter is people's behaviour on those threads, and there is not an agreed upon interpretation of the nature of that behaviour.
That sounds like a legitimate concern for moderators. We must try harder.
When it happened, the real 9/11 had a major effect on babble. I left the compy for the TV and didn't come back through the rest of the day; others talked all the way through, and those are classic threads; but afterwards, like people everywhere else, I guess, you could tell that a general depression was setting in.
Some great people left because of 9/11, sometimes -- as in the case of our beloved 905er -- for political reasons, but sometimes just because they felt too depressed to argue politics for a while. I got depressed and strange for a time because 9/11 coincided with a personal shock that went on for a long time. That was a very dark fall, and we had to rebuild for the first time.
But some great new people showed up for just that reason, as Timebandit says above. At some point this guy called Slim appeared, and for some reason, he and I just became friends. And then he became my tech adviser. And then he became my boss. Somewhere in there he changed his handle to pogge. babble has given me many great things and many good friends, but above all, babble gave me pogge, and I am teh lucky.
I remember the day vividly. My supervisor in Ottawa was cursing in French. We all gathered around his desk and watched the news reports on his monitor. Then we went to the lobby to the TVs. I had been exchanging emails by laptop with a client in Chicago about a minor tech problem. In the middle of that was my Sun sparc machine in pieces on the floor of my corner office awaiting a new component. I forgot all about the client, and apparently he forgot about me for a couple of hours, too. There were things happening in New York in a city I've never been to. Maybe I'll visit there some day.
ahem ... clearly not an oldtimer, and have no experience with other online communities. Catchfire, your post depressed me and I hope it is not true. I am very late to the party.
I didn't have time for the tagine, but I do have some lovely spicey lamb sausage, which I will serve with this:
Ingredients
1 cup white kidney beans
1/2 cup chick peas
1/2 cup fava beans
3 tablespoons tomato paste
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon ground cumin
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup beef stock
Directions
1.In a large pot combine the beans, tomato paste, garlic, onions, cumin, lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper. Mix until the beans are coated. Pour in beef broth, and top off with enough water to completely cover the beans.
2.Cover, and cook on medium-low for an hour or two, or until the beans are tender and the liquid is thickened. It should not be soupy.
Anyway, thanks to the "old guard" and the "old, old guard." I'll drink a toast to you sometime soon.
The community seems to be pretty reslient to me.
I joined Babble a few days after 911 -- the situation was so scary and the American response was so irrational that I needed to discuss it with intelligent people. I think it was a reference from the CBC website that sent me here and I instantly felt at home. I remember long sessions by the computer, stretching into the night when we tried to make sense of what was going on. And then the bombs started falling in Afghanistan and all hell broke loose between the leftists and the trolls. Markbo was trying to justify the American response and we all (almost all) piled on him -- we felt that we were actually accomplishing something by talking about it, as I am sure we did it on our personal level. After the crises cooled down then Babble opened up for me into all areas of philosophy, science, religion, art and many examples of personal living and coping. It was great!
Cueball, there are several old battles we've moved from fighting again and again. The one you mentioned, abortion and same sex marriage, to name three off the top of my head.
I'm glad we've moved on, too.
Fidel, go down to Ground Zero, before they make it all pretty. The last time I was in NYC, I was walking all over the place. I turned a corner, and just started lightly crying as I moved along. Didn't really know why. Then I walked another block, and saw where I was standing. That day in 2001, and the people with me - here - came back in a flood. The realities of what followed also came back. The opportunities squandered. The lies hatched.
So many reasons to cry, good and bad.
Yeah, I was in a waiting room outside my wife's room on the top floor of the hospital where they had made up a temporary psych ward for people with grievous mental issues (turned out to be bi-polar overlaying a fronto-temporal dementia).
I'm waiting outside the room and a nurse coming by asks if I've seen what is happening on TV. I joined the crowd in the TV room. What a compliment to the day. Not only is your partner going mad, the whole bloody world is taking part.
The yatata of everyday has not seemed as fundamental or central since. Just the same old, same old, but somehow it is comforting.
Not only is your partner going mad, the whole bloody world is taking part.
Yes. We even have our own novel, us 9/11 dementia widows and widowers: Moral Hazard, by [URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Jennings]Kate Jennings.[/URL] It's the kind of book that just leaves you wondering.
Wierd. I was either on holidays or off work for Wako, the Oaklahoma bombing and 9/11. I often wondered if the FBI was going to come calling to ask me what the hell I was doing those days.
I was just getting into Babble in those days, dividing my time with another message board that had an international flavour. Just a collection of people on Yahoo, and we used a love of books as a pretext to talk about anything. Sometimes we talked politics and feminism and racism and stuff, but it wasn't heavy. I'm still friends with a lot of those people. I miss the people, but 9/11 destroyed the rapore we had there. I started going less and less there, and more and more here.
It was freer, not knowing as many people very closely in those days.
I was going through a personal transformation at home, too. Funny, as interested in history as I am, the events of my life mush together, dateless for the most part. I can't tell you the dates my parents died, and I have to think hard, or resort to notes in my wallet for my daughter's birthdays. Though, I remember the texture of light on those days, the smells, the way the blood flowed in my body... viscous with dred and sorrow or fast with quicksilver joy. The smile on my first wife's face when she held our daughter's for the first time... and the spray of blood on the bottom of the surgeon's scrubs... my father's blood, his last blood, when he came to tell us dad didn't make it out of recovery.
Was I going through separation before or just after 9/11? I can't remember... no, I think I was about a year separated and an inept single parent struggling real hard not to be the typical bitter divorced man with an ailing dog I never wanted but had come to love so much, and every time the myolopthia would cause her to fall and she would look at me... it was like a small jet would fly into my... whatever organ contains the real core of me.
Sceptics say that cold readers take advantage of the way people remember things by saying things like "you've recently lost someone close to you...." because you will always regard the loss of someone close to you as "recent". I suspect the same kind of phenomena is at work, people connecting personal tragedy to events like 9/11.
But it seems odd. Even accounting for this, many of us were going through some hard, transformative personal things at about the same time.
9-11 brought to my mind some work by American writer Muriel Rukheyser in which she wrote about how the US passed by greatness in favour of blind violence and hate. She had been writing about the aftermath of WW2, and the horrors of the so-called cold war, but the principles, in my mind, also applied to the present after 9-11.
Anyway, babble is stronger than American Xenophobia. I just wish I was the Marshall and could ... well, you know the rest I think. I'm actually a moderator on a number of other specialized discussion boards and behave myself, mostly.
I've had people identify me by my writing style on unrelated boards and it's a bit scary. But there's been no heavy knock at the door late at night. So far.
I suggest we simply change the infamous date in thread titles to read, in hexadecimal, 9.B.7D1 or simply 9-B. And we might swear on the lives of our pets to only ever use cardinal Zdenek Bazant's terminology for the buildings. ie. as parts A through C of T1&T2 and all manner of alphanumeric acronyms in clinical manner so as to throw off the less serious commentators and those who might still have have personal reasons to avoid any and all discussion of the events of that unmentionable day in recent history.
I was outside NDHQ having a puff, standing next to me was a Colonel that I knew, his face had a troubled, ashen look about it, as if he were unsuccessfully attempting to make sense of an assortment of horrors. He asked me if I had seen the news, the event was approximately half an hour old at that point. Wasn't much help to him I'm afraid in saying that I had, and what goes around has come around. Back at the desk a few minutes later, and get a call from the ex. Am I alright? Why do you ask? People were afraid everywhere it seems, and I work in a twin towered building as well you see. It was my first glimpse of the widespread irrationality that would follow that day.
So many friendships, even romance, were formed during the first years, babblers meeting in person, going on marches together, getting involved in each other's daily lives, small and big triumphs and setbacks -- how is it now I wonder -- I have not been around long enough this time to notice if any of it is still going on?
It is!
I can see oldgoat from my kitchen.
Wait a minute, doesn't your kitchen face south? I actually have to go out to my front porch to see you. I was by your place on my bike the other day. How d'ya like my front garden BTW?
Stalker!
But srsly, your front garden is a credit to the street. Mine is an embarrassment, although the back is a veritable Versailles, I swear. No really. Out front it could be said that I have the best crop of thistles in the 'hood.
If I ever get cleaned up (this week is not looking likely), you and Mrs oldgoat and maybe PB must come and see.
Vernacular update;
stalker = 'creeping on'
;)
I've been here for seven years and the tone of the board hasn't really changed. The number of posters may have dropped, but Babble is still a fairly reactionary place. I stick to posting youtube goodies and articles written by Israeli peacenicks. It keeps things simple.
I'm not the only babbler who would like to read you participating in a few more debates and I think you know that. But it's your choice.
Word, Beltov. CMOT, your contributions are invaluable. I was blown away by your commentary in the Avatar threads, for example.
Yeah, I'm really sorry you feel that way, CMOT.
Did reaction threads get closed prematurely as often in the old days?
Some times. Threads like that mind you, didn't get started very much in the old days, but Audra would close them. Some times they were left open as party or recipe threads, but that struck me as disrespecful.
writer thinks the caissa thread caissa is alluding to was not closed prematurely, but instead took the moderators far too long to close, and remembers the pithy zingers Audra would use to zap posters who were being annoying on a regular basis, almost always adding a little bit of adorableness to render the offender helpless.
Oh yeth, I be anything but pithy.
Awww, that's OK, OG, you'll always be a she-wolf to me.
Caissa thinks writer is wrong. Caissa really dislikes when a moderator criticizes a Babbler and then closes the thread. Caissa was simply responding to the criticism it what caissa believes was a polite manner. Caissa understands that moderators are doing the best job they can.
I believe the 'annoying on a regular basis' quip was aimed specifically at me, and not Caissa, potentially requiring a separate reactions thread in which to explore my thoughts on the matter.
Slumberjack! Totally! Go for it! writer thinks Slumberjack thinks that writer has a dubious plot to REMOVE ALL FLUSH TOILETS from Canada, and writer thinks Slumberjack is WRONG and EVIL.
Okay, now it's out there. Who do I send the cheque to?
edited to add: oldgoat, you KNOW you have your own charms. Don't go changin' ...
Well that was just too easy, and I've suspected that a plot to mobilize against scatology by replacing it with illeism was underway. That interrogator course I attended so long ago came in handy after all, and just in the nick of time. No reactions thread, 911 thread references, or inquisition required.
From certain angles, it looks like my cat has no head! My cat has no head!
100 posts of solitude
For the thoughtful inquisitor, truth is rarely achieved without a certain degree of theatre, and remorse where warranted.
Stalker!
But srsly, your front garden is a credit to the street. Mine is an embarrassment, although the back is a veritable Versailles, I swear. No really. Out front it could be said that I have the best crop of thistles in the 'hood.
If I ever get cleaned up (this week is not looking likely), you and Mrs oldgoat and maybe PB must come and see.
On that note, I was actually sauntering past both of the abodes on my way to a friend's and I must say that OG's garden is quite splendid.
I am a little confused here... was that a "Golden Age" of bablle, or a "Gilded Age"?
And with that zinger, I'm a gone close for length--sadly, a practice still held over from the [s]gilded[/s] golden age.
