Sous Vide set to get a lot cheaper. The Kickstarter project has surpassed its' goal. Test units have been produced and favorably reviewed. Will supposedly ship in October for $199.

tonight is the night. its the Guinness International Champions Cup final in miami!!! 

whats that? youve never heard of the Guinness International Champions Cup?

well, neither had i until i just googled it but it is one of the most important least important summer tournaments ever conceived as a warmup for football in the fall. yes, i said 'football'. deal with it, america!!

the matchup tonight between real madrid and chelsea, two of the teams with the deepest pockets and not coincidentally the deepest rosters, is particularly interesting because the former real madrid head coach burned his bridges in madrid and then scooted over to chelsea where he had formerly worn out his welcome but was brought back this summer with open arms and open checkbooks. 

9 o'clock on fox soccer channel, soon to be fox sports1 since they lost the rights to most of their soccer coverage. but thats a post for another day. (what a tease.)

Sound City / fascinating for the lore of the actual room, mixing board and associated owner, staff, technicians and musicians. Alas eventually one grows tired of Grohl (net worth $25m) and his big bucks music friends.

See it anyway.

if the nfl couldnt get a stadium in manhattan i dont see how the mls could. this would be at houston st.

comment about the boston redsox owner buying the boston globe for $70 million...

To put things into proper perspective, John Henry just agreed to a contract with Dustin Pedroia for about 100 million.

Amazon launches Amazon Art Marketplace with over "40,000 pieces of fine art from over 150 dealers and galleries." I'm not sure anybody actually wants to "demystify the world of art," but we'll see.

Parmesan crisps / this is an MB specialty, but I just saw Ruth Reichl make them on diary of a foodie, although differently than the recipe provided. No paper, large grate on the cheese, add black pepper and one tablespoon of flour.

Superbaby’s story is one among a number of tales of athletic irregularity in “The Sports Gene,” a new book by David Epstein, who holds a masters in environmental science but now covers the science of sports for Sports Illustrated. Like a good academic, Epstein weaves a thicket of studies and double-blind tests into anecdotes like Superbaby’s. Beware, those who enter seeking a quick answer to whether or not your son or daughter has an athletic scholarship in his or her future: the book is heavy on talk about stop codons and VO2 maxes and bivariate overlap zones, and short on easy answers. It is, however, long on difficult questions. Can nature predict athletic performance? What about nurture? Is it possible to create a Superbaby from scratch? If we can, should we want to?

The answers, in brief, are “yes,” “yes,” “not quite,” and “ask your conscience.” But a bit of exploration of each proves fruitful.

geneology roadshow on pbs this fall.

Mycelial information networks:

When some plants are attacked by sap-sucking aphids, they emit volatile compounds into the air. These volatiles serve as a defense mechanism, and in more ways than one. First, they serve to repel the aphids attacking the plant. Second, they attract the aphids natural enemies, wasps. But there’s more to that: a team from the University of Aberdeen and the James Hutton Institute show that some plants use fungi to communicate the presence of aphids, allowing those plants to emit wasp-attracting and and aphid-repelling  volatiles even before they have been physically attacked.

object of the day du jour

Our friend Megan, who runs Marble Valley Farm, told us an interesting story the other day. Her tomato plants are infested with tomato hornworm. This has always been a very difficult infestation for her to deal with (she is totally organic, so can't just drop death spray on them.) But after much research she came across a brief mention on the internet of using a black light in order to find them. She consulted several of her farmer friends and all were skeptical of this technique since none had heard of it before. Still, out of desperation, she made a trip to Spencer Gifts at the local mall, bought a black light, and went out into the fields with it that night. Amazingly, the black light light up the bugs perfectly. She said it was like picking lights off a Christmas tree. In a few hours they picked over a thousand hornworms off the plants (over 10 pounds!) And thus the tomato crop was saved.

One of her hippie workers fried one up and ate it, claiming it was "not too bad". Lucas was unsure of this verdict.

Made a dr pepper/pickle juice ham yesterday. Approximately this recipe

single family home made country ham, a friend brought back from his hometown Wakefield Va. This is my new thing. Next one i do is a Calhoun ham from Culpepper Va.

Speculation on Capitol Hill has included the possibility the U.S. agencies operating in Benghazi were secretly helping to move surface-to-air missiles out of Libya, through Turkey, and into the hands of Syrian rebels.

Dutch light
“Human, All Too Human” is a three-hour BBC series from 1999, about the lives and work of Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Paul Sartre. The filmmakers focus heavily on politics and historical context — the Heidegger hour, for example, focuses almost exclusively on his troubling relationship with Nazism. / with links to other stuff too

just watched the first episode of broadchurch which is a season long murder mystery in the vein of the killing or top of the lake. certainly compelling enough to keep watching and the reviews seem to echo that. its about to run on bbc america but has already aired in britain. so....

diy cronuts

long shooting day for girls on orchard.

Orchard Street Hell Hole Consumes 2 Parking Cones and a Biker

Built-in bottle necks