Long and twisty road
The car leaps around the bend
Sound of tires gripping
Category Archives: Poetry
Cheese blends
I’ve been eating Cambozola lately and trying to figure out the odd pattern of little circles on the rind. They seem to indicate places where someone has inserted something and left a scar. The name of the variety apparently refers to a mix of Swiss camembert and Italian gorgonzola, and there are dots of blue on the inside that are roughly in line with the marks around the outside. So I suspect the gorgonzola is injected via a large needle…altogether it ends up having a very creamy and soft consistency with just a hint of the typical blue’s sharpness, which was probably the objective.
Well done, I say.
Hints to Cheese Makers
by James McIntyre (1827 -1906)
Addressed to Jonathan Wingle, Esq.
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All those who quality do prize
Must study color, taste and size
And keep their dishes clean and sweet,
And all things round their factories neat,
For dairymen insist that these
Are all important points in cheese.
Grant has here a famous work
Devoted to the cause of pork.
For dairymen find that it doth pay
To fatten pigs upon the whey,
For there is money raising grease
As well as in the making cheese.
Cloud Appreciation
I really like the Cloud Appreciation Society manifesto.
WE BELIEVE that clouds are unjustly maligned
and that life would be immeasurably poorer without them.We think that they are Nature’s poetry,
and the most egalitarian of her displays, since
everyone can have a fantastic view of them.We pledge to fight ‘blue-sky thinking’ wherever we find it.
Life would be dull if we had to look up at
cloudless monotony day after day.We seek to remind people that clouds are expressions of the
atmosphere’s moods, and can be read like those of
a person’s countenance.Clouds are so commonplace that their beauty is often overlooked.
They are for dreamers and their contemplation benefits the soul.
Indeed, all who consider the shapes they see in them will save
on psychoanalysis bills.And so we say to all who’ll listen:
Look up, marvel at the ephemeral beauty, and live life with your head in the clouds!“I love the clouds… the clouds that pass… up there… up there… the wonderful clouds!â€?
[The Stranger, Charles Baudelaire]
Inspiring. I especially appreciate the “blue-sky” reference as that’s something very true in information security and risk management. When you defocus on actual data and see only on the spots of blue, you end up missing the big picture and getting rained on “without warning”.
I’ll have to see about posting more of my cloud photos…
Voltaire Day
There should be one if there isn’t already. And unless someone objects, today seems like as good a day as any to celebrate the brilliance of his words, most of which I find useful in meetings about risk:
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“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.”
“Doubt is uncomfortable, certainty is ridiculous.”
“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers”
“The more I read, the more I meditate; and the more I acquire, the more I am enabled to affirm that I know nothing”
“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets” (a softer variation is that some think it’s ok to write buggy code if you write so much of it that your pride and profit keep it going in spite of inefficiency and harm)
and finally, with regard to today’s news that the FTC has fined ChoicePoint $15 million…
“Every man is guilty of all the good he didn’t do.”
Here’s to Voltaire and to his role in the age of Enlightenment!
He was a poet’s poet:
Understand idleness better. It is either folly or wisdom; it is virtue in wealth and vice in poverty. In the winter of our life, we can enjoy in peace the fruits which in its spring our industry planted. Courtiers of glory, writers or warriors, slumber is permitted you, but only upon laurels.
Perhaps Rousseau Day will be next?