Ahh, April.

Posted on 8 April 2012 by brian

There are many, many reasons I love living in Zürich, but the weather, I think, is rather a deterrent. Call it the reverse Los Angeles effect. Eighth of April (happy Easter, everyone!), and it’s cold, grey, and snowing. It’s enough to drive even the flowers to drink.

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Bagels, redux

Posted on 4 December 2011 by brian

The apparent secret to getting bagels that look like bagels: broil them slightly before boiling them, and add way more salt and a little sugar to the boiling water. Bonus: these actually taste like bagels, too…

Bagels, Wallisellen, 4 December 2011

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Taipei for Distracted Beginners

Posted on 21 November 2011 by brian

It’s bad form to draw generalizations about a place and a people from a tiny little sample of experience. And my sample last week in Taipei, Taiwan, was particularly tiny: first, I was there for an IETF meeting which kept me inside the convention center for most of the week, which resembled nothing so much as every convention center I’ve ever been in. And the times I wasn’t kept in the convention center by work, I was kept inside otherwise by a persistent rain that wasn’t so much rain as simply dampness-as-atmosphere: I literally saw the sun for only fifteen minutes the entire week, and that while it was between the horizon and the cloud deck one morning. I stayed in bed.

That said, here are a few notes on observations that came to mind while I was there. Continue reading →

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Bagels

Posted on 7 November 2011 by brian

Bagels boiling, Wallisellen, 7 November 2011

The problem with taking a week in New York and coming back to Zürich is that you miss the bagels. Bagels, however, are made by humans, and we are humans, so how hard can it be?

Turns out, quite. Basing our recipe on one we found on an American cookbook written in German (the author’s blurb assurs us that her husband is a real, actual American from Bedford, Pennsylvania, of all places), the results of our first attempt are shown here. Ariane gets most of the credit for these, she made the dough while I was still reading the Economist on the 751. I just did the photography, and formed a couple of rings.

Bagels finished, Wallisellen, 7 November 2011

What we got were a little too soft on the inside, a little too hard on the outside, and, while they were certainly among the best-tasting bread to come out of this kitchen, they weren’t really bagels. Things to try next time:

  1. tweak the recipe (the Internet has a lot of opinions on how to make bagels, because the Internet has a lot of opinions on everything; sadly, most of these are wrong.)
  2. boil longer (two minutes a side seems a bit short) with saltier water
  3. let them rise a bit less (because they fell quite a lot in the oven)
  4. buy bagels in New York like everyone else (the flight’s not free, but hey, the dollar’s cheap…)
Posted in Nonfiction, Photography | 3 Comments

Klingnau

Posted on 28 October 2011 by brian

Wake (Klingnau) Just before the Aare (Switzerland’s longest river, which begins on the moon) joins the Rhein, it’s held back in the Klingnauer Stausee. This lake, about 45 minutes from Zürich by car, is a birder’s paradise, and a nightmare for photographers’ budgets.

Gull (Klingnau)This is the best I could do with only 200mm reach, but ducks like humans and I don’t think gulls are even capable of perceiving you if there’s bread to be fought over. Further out in the lake there were more exotic visitors, but there’s not much you can do with a twenty pixel image of what’s probably an egret.

Next stop, B&H, to stare wistfully through the window at too much glass…

 

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The Light at the End

Posted on 11 October 2011 by brian

Dupont Circle, Washington DC, 6 October 2011

Perhaps it is hasty to simply dismiss the swamps of the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers as blighted by the pernicious lies spewing forth from the numerous bullshit factories lining their banks. There is beauty to be found there after all. Continue reading →

Posted in Nonfiction, Photography | 2 Comments

Ten years on

Posted on 11 September 2011 by brian

On December 7, 1951, the New York Times – then as now as close to a paper of record as you’ll find in America – devoted a relatively limited amount of space to the tenth anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Imperial Japanese Navy, which drew the United States into the Second World War: an editorial noting the occasion, and an article noting that a ceremony would be held in Pearl Harbor to note the occasion.

Continue reading →

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Driving to the Moon in a VW Golf

Posted on 14 August 2011 by brian

An hour south of Zürich by car is Sachseln, on the Sarnersee in Canton Obwalden, a few kilometers down a hill from Älggi, the geographical center of Switzerland.

An hour south of that is the moon.

The Moon in Switzerland

Oberaargletcher, Berner Oberland, 13 August 2011

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Comic-Book Supervillainy

Posted on 17 July 2011 by brian

I opened the NZZ am Sonntag (the Sunday edition of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, the paper of record for German-speaking Switzerland) today to read of yet another threat from Switzerland’s current favorite comic-book supervillain: Starker Franken. Continue reading →

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The Zürich Model and the Domestic Audience

Posted on 4 July 2011 by brian

The New York Times ran a story last week, essentially detailing the Zürich Model: increase the usage of non-automotive transportation by simultaneously making public transit more attractive (through increased frequency and punctuality though e.g. transit-priority usage of shared corridors) and automotive usage less attractive (via lowering the capacity of throughways via street and lane closure, the “red wave” of worst-case traffic-light timing, traffic calming, lowered speed limits, and so on). Continue reading →

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