The NY Times article on the artisanal cheesemakers north of San Francisco made me want to drop everything and go make yummy cheeses for a living. But then I realized that I’d have to get up early to milk the goats and I am just not capable of becoming an early bird. But I do have an unhealthy love for cheese and a healthy curiousity about the wonders of helpful molds.

Space Shuttle Endeavor’s countdown to a Thursday launch is underway. “High security” is an understatement in describing the protections in place for this event. “We are going to take all measures to protect ourselves whether it be land, air or sea threats,” said Major Mike Rein, a spokesman for the Air Force’s 45th Space Wing.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, we visited The Naval Undersea Museum in Keyport, Washington. Outside the museum is the Trieste II, which has descended to 20,000 feet. Inside are interesting things like diving outfits, scary looking torpedos, remotely operated vehicles, seafloor maps, ocean ecology exhibits, and the history of the adjoining naval base. It is intimidating to comprehend the amount of warfare that has taken place on (and under) water.

“How strange!” I thought as I searched in vain through Amazon.com’s new magazine category for Cook’s Illustrated. They have everything else “Illustrated”. I poked around a little more, and then found that Amazon is running a special Cook’s Illustrated feature. They have “how to” do things like bake a waffle, kill a lobster, make universal cookie dough. And, mystery solved, there’s a link to a “free trial issue” of the magazine. The link goes offsite to a fulfillment company. I assume that Amazon had to omit Cook’s Illustrated from their regular magazine database because of this cross-marketing deal. They should’ve put in a special case for their search engine, though.

I’ll be taking a break for Thanksgiving. Back next week.

While searching for what high society calls “social stationery”, I stumbled upon a lovely Atlantic essay on engraved writing paper. Corby Kummer, a food and travel writer, expounds on the distinctly personal touch of acquiring and using stationery designed and engraved just for you. He returns to the Italian stationer where he ordered his block capitals in gray ink twenty years earlier. He also visits Crane’s in Massachusetts where he had ordered stationery for his sister’s new home. He learns that the art of hand-etching engraved dies is fading away as computers and machines have taken over to precisely duplicate the classic fonts. But the process of creating each die still involves much human intervention, with the designs carefully tweaked to perfection before they go to the machines and flaws fixed by hand afterwards. Thermography has taken the place of engraving in most cases now; it is much cheaper. But many discriminating buyers still request engraved papers. It has a definitive look and texture that can not be replaced.

The American Museum of Natural History (that’s the one in New York) currently has an exhibit called Pearls. The website, mostly Flash, is informative and beautifully designed.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Jeff Hawkins, of Palm and Handspring fame, has been keeping up with his interest in neuroscience. Jeff spends one day off a week from Handspring pursuing his theory that a framework for the human brain should be modeled more on pattern recognition than input and output. His plausible theories have been tested a bit by a professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory who studied whether rats recognized patterns of music (I would’ve started with simple rhythms instead of melody, but I’m no expert on the auditory system). I remember being very uncomfortable with many of the common models for studying the brain; most of my weekly cognitive science “prove you did the reading” assignments resulted in naive critiques of how silly it was to compare the brain to a computer. It is perfectly fine to model a computer after a brain, but to model a brain after a computer still seems short-sighted to me, though it is a useful start for understanding what goes on up there. It surprises me that this article does not mention Jeff’s work on his handwriting recognition algorithms, as that activity is pure pattern recognition. It appears that Jeff is planning to put his money where his mind is. It will be interesting to see what progress he can make partnering with academia to alter a primary paradigm of cognition.

I felt the 3.3 quake on Sunday, but it didn’t set off my earthquake detector (which is actually a lovely set of windchimes I have hanging indoors).

The bridal industry has been pleasantly surprised by a rise in business during a traditionally slow season. Dress and ring sales are up. There are more bridal registries being started. It appears that the terror in the world has caused some people to assess their lives and decide that they don’t want to wait.