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Don’t Trust; Verify

Every time I hear someone–especially medical professionals who should know better for many reasons–mispronounce words such as “tinnitus” I bemoan the state of “edumacationism”. (Many medical “professionals” mispronounce “tinnitus” to rhyme with “artritis,” an inflammatory condition, hence the “itis” suffix. Medical professionals, of all people, should know better in the case of tinnitus. Just sayin’.)

When one runs across professionals in a field who aren’t even literate in their own field, turn around and walk away.

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Quick Meal

OK, NOT authentic, but Good Enough in a pinch.

Ingredients:

  1. Emergency can of enchilada sauce (the real stuff takes a while to make; traditional method takes eight or so hours of soaking the peppers to start)
  2. CORN tortillas
  3. Shredded cheese
  4. Diced or minced onion

Directions:

  1. Dice or chop the onions, then place them in a covered, microwave-safe bowl and nuke ’em for about a minute. It’s a sort of faux saute technique. I usually add a wee tad of olive oil.
  2. Place a bit of enchilada sauce on a plate; place a tortilla (flat) on top; a few onions; cheese, another tortilla, etc. Last one in the stack gets sauce and cheese, only.
  3. Nuke the plate. Three tortillas will cook in a wee tad over a minute in a 1000W microwave oven. Four? Add another 20-30 seconds.

Yes, the texture is substantially different to regular, traditional rolled and baked enchiladas, but the favor and nutrition is the same.

Serve with rice (LEFTOVERS! *heh* Remember: QUICK meal, mmmK? 😉 ), refried beans (from leftovers or a can) and some shredded lettuce.

A note about canned enchilada sauce: most is based on tomatoes and water and merely favored to approximate real red sauce. IOW, most canned enchilada sauce is crap. Avoid it religiously. Around here, the only canned enchilada sauce that’s worth buying is this:

Las Palmas

Note that it contains NO tomato product and the only ingredient present in a greater amount than dried red chiles is water, which is normal for real enchilada sauce consisting of simply dried red chiles (rehydrated, softened and blended) and water. The other ingredients listed don’t detract greatly from the flavor. *heh*

SUPER fast faux enchiladas: take some of those frozen flautas that are available nowadays (I think I’ve seen ’em called “taquitos” or some such stupid thing). Cover ’em in an appropriate enchilada sauce you have on hand (red for beef, green for chicken), add shredded cheese and then nuke. I’ve done this when I was in a rush (my Wonder Woman likes to have those frozen things to take with her for lunches, so they’re around). Turns out. . . edible, but not as good, IMO as the “flatpacks” above.

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Is It Just Me?

A quick Q for both of my readers: am I the only one to attach heat sinks to notebook power supplies to dissipate heat in an attempt to make them last longer?

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Everyone’s A Criminal

. . . if the feds want ’em to be.

If you get a pay check as an employee of ANYONE other than a government agency (or as the officer of a corporation), any time the feds want to “get” you they have a neat lil technicality to allow them to charge you with falsifying a “feddle gummint” document. U.S. Code Title 26 Subtitle C Chapter 24 § 3401 (c) Employee: “For purposes of this chapter, the term “employee” includes an officer, employee, or elected official of the United States, a State, or any political subdivision thereof, or the District of Columbia, or any agency or instrumentality of any one or more of the foregoing. The term “employee” also includes an officer of a corporation.”

You filled out a W-2 form attesting to its accuracy, claiming to be an “employee.” Gotcha, if they want. . .

OTOH, if you DON’T fill out the form, they’ll get you anyway.

And that’s just one of many thousands of lil “gotchas” the feds have in store for anyone they get a hard on for.

Welcome to the wonderful world of “feddle gummint” anarcho-tyranny.

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Trad-Pubs Just DGARA, Now

I’m used to seeing execrably poor editing from ~80% of self-pub books. I can almost understand lone writers either eschewing the expense of paying for good editing (content, line editing), because it’s expensive. Almost. Some, relying of “beta readers” from among their friends and acquaintances (or merely from semi-random tightwads who want a free read) think they can substitute such beta readers’ comments and observations for decent editing. They’re almost always wrong, since most of their acquaintances are no more literate (well-read) than they are, but sometimes they get a wee bit of help that way.

OK, I can almost understand that mindset, almost tolerate it. I can’t excuse it, though.

But what is worse is that books by established authors from traditional publishing houses are starting to read more and more like sloppily edited (or UNedited) books from self-pubs. Seriously, what’s up with that? Purchasing a book from a tad-pub should come with the expectation of value added in editing, at the very least! The last two hardcopy books I read by [a well-established bestselling author who shall go unnamed] had me wondering if the publisher had simply eaten its editorial staff. In the past, this writer’s books had far, far fewer errors of fact (stupid errors that kick suspension of disbelief off the rails in police procedurals/mysteries), grammar and word mis-usage than I ran into page after page after page in these last two books.

Seriously, is trad-pub simply giving up or does it expect readers to just swallow the crap anfd keep buying its over-priced, value-subtracted offerings?

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No True Scotsman

“No true Scotsman” is “a kind of ad hoc rescue of one’s generalization in which the reasoner re-characterizes the situation solely in order to escape refutation of the generalization.”1

Example:

Smith: All Scotsmen are loyal and brave.

Jones: But McDougal over there is a Scotsman, and he was arrested by his commanding officer for running from the enemy.

Smith: Well, if that’s right, it just shows that McDougal wasn’t a TRUE Scotsman.

Now, once or twice I’ve been accused of this fallacy–of “redefining” terms–when discoursing on the differences between Christians and Muslims, Christianity and Islam. The problems my interlocutors have had is that I “defined” Christians and Muslims by the standards set forth by the founders and documenters of both Christianity and Islam. Hmmm, that would seem to me to be fair, not fallacious.

When someone claiming to be a Christian acts against the teachings of Christ and the Apostles (say, the Papal legate, the Abbot of Citeaux Arnaud Amalric commanding that the inhabitants of Béziers be massacred), that would seem to very legitimately impeach that person’s claim to be Christian or to be acting in the name of the Founder of Christianity, would it not?

When someone claiming to be a Muslim acts in accordance with the life and teachings of Mohamed (say, mass murder, rape and enslavement of those who disagree with the teachings of Islam, as Mohamed’s first “victory”–the massacre of the Banu Quraysh Jews–and his explicit teachings demand), one would legitimately consider that person to be a legitimate follower of Mohamed. OTOH, “peaceful” Muslims violate both the commandments of Mohamed and disrespect his life example.

Based on the life and teachings of these two men, and the explicit commands they left their followers, reason would dictate one evaluate those claiming to be their followers based on whether or not they actually do follow those they claim to follow.