The Atlas of True Names is a nice project to reveal the origins of place names, even if Language Log has to rain on their parade for etymological gullibility.

I got the impression at some point that a good portion of names for both places and peoples mean either some variant of "us, our people, our land" or "them, those people, their land." There are a few of these visible in the preview images, such as "Here are People!" for Nicaragua, "Land of Fellow Countrymen" somewhere in England, and "The People on the Other Side" for what appears to be the Appalachian mountains.

Tangentially related is the wide variety of names for Germany in different languages (Deutschland, Allemagne, etc.), stemming from the number of different tribes that have invaded or ruled it through the ages.

I was just called by a Gallup pollster with a survey about drinking and driving habits from the DOT. Overall it seemed like a pretty well-designed survey, but one formulation struck me as odd. I was asked about several measures that could be taken to reduce DUI, and asked to rate them on a scale of effectiveness:

1. Very effective
2. Somewhat effective
3. Neither effective nor ineffective
4. Not very effective
5. Not at all effective

I don't know what it's called as a concept, but it seems logically impossible for something to be neither effective nor ineffective. If it has no effect, then it is ineffective. The only thing that might fit the definition is something that is not intended to have any effect, like say, the color blue, but that was not the case here.

If I had to resolve this contradiction, I would say that 3 seems the same in meaning as 5, which was clearly not the intent. Better perhaps would be to make the scale from very effective to very counterproductive, with ineffective in the middle. Maybe I think some of the measures would increase DUI!

Had a nice birthday dinner at Sushi Yasuda. This was the first time for me eating at a three-star restaurant. We ordered omakase, something I've always wanted to do, and got toro, hiramasa yellow tail, sea trout, white king salmon, Tazmanian trout, Spanish mackerel, orange clam, anago, and a toro roll. Then we asked for a few more pieces and got some different varieties, including a freshwater eel called shirayaki that was really delicious.

For me the interesting question was, how would this differ from the ubiquitous new york sushi restaurant? For one, there is the greater variety of fish. It's not so much that there are crazy creatures you've never heard of (or maybe those are left off the menu), just more types of the species you already know, such as five different types of salmon, five of yellow tail, blue fin or big eye tuna, and five types of eel. Secondly, the rice is wonderfully soft, fluffy and seasoned, justifying the quote from Yasuda that in nigiri sushi, the fish is just a garnish for the rice. Thirdly, where lesser establishments sometimes produce unpleasantly tough cuts of some fish, at Yasuda it's always very thin and soft, never an overwhelming amount.

Probably a more knowledgeable person could go on, but this is what I thought most apparent.

* * *

Maya gave me two recently released cookbooks as gifts, both of which I had requested, but only after looking at them side by side did I realize how diametrically opposed they were. One is Alinea by Grant Achatz, and the other is Eat Me: The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin. Both authors are well-known characters that have been profiled by The New Yorker, and both books contain essays as well as recipes. At least at first glance, the similarities end there. Alinea is a six-pound behemoth containing recipes, ingredients and techniques so abstruse and complex that I doubt I will ever be able to make even one of them as written (but please don't dare me to try). It contains a lot of closeup, backlit "food porn" style photographs of gelees, spheres and emulsions. Eat Me contains a lot of creative comfort food, and Shopsin espouses a philosophy of being happy with whatever you have around you. The photos are very straightforward and unembellished, with bright construction paper backgrounds. He is known for kicking at least one party a day out of his restaurant for breaking his rules and endangering the atmosphere he wants to maintain, something I doubt happens much at Alinea. Also, the introduction contains a photo of Shopsin's naked rear end.

But after reading a bit of each, I think there are actually some similarities lingering under the surface. Despite what he says, Shopsin is not innocent of special techniques, ingredients, or equipment. It's not his fault, it's just that any restaurant cook finds ways of getting efficient and predictable results that are not always readily translatable to the home kitchen. Furthermore, Shopsin believes you can make the most workaday dishes into something special by taking the trouble to elevate them just a bit. He orders Lefses, Norwegian potato crepes, from a guy in North Dakota. When making a cheese steak, he slices the meat semi-frozen on a deli slicer to get it as thin as possible. He has modified his griddle to get ridiculously hot, and says not having that will pose a challenge to making good pancakes. But both books have chosen to present the recipes verbatim so that the reader can at least make informed decisions about compromises and substitutions.

Both of these books also display a lot of creativity and innovation. It's perhaps more obvious at Alinea, where they combine flavors in unpredictable ways, manipulate the textures of common foods, and try to evoke memories with scents. But in the first half of Eat Me Shopsin has already dispensed some serious thought about a dozen different topics. A big one is his approach to soup: he completely rejects the near-universal method of slow-cooking all the ingredients together because he doesn't think each piece should taste the same no matter what it is. Instead he cooks the broth separately from the other ingredients, and adds them just before serving, so they retain their own taste and identity. The casual style of the book allows Shopsin to really get across these ideas, rather than relying on the reader to figure them out from the recipes alone.

If you need any more convincing, Shopsin actually describes his method as 'deconstruction.' He takes a dish that he's curious about and makes it a whole bunch of times until he starts noticing what it's really made of. Then he takes it apart and finds ways it might be made better or more efficient. He has a lot to say about burgers, eggs and other stuff in this regard (and he's not a fan of Shake Shack's burgers, although he did perhaps take some insight from their example).

I suspect that in the end I will use these books in similar ways, as jumping off points to try new things, and as a reference for techniques to achieve certain desirable effects.

NIKON COOLPIX S610 ($197). Small, light and inexpensive, nice brushed-metal case. 4x zoom. Active Child mode in this camera supposedly tracks your children even if they move briefly out of the frame.

From the Times' camera roundup.

If I were a Times reporter I would write an entire article just to get in a paragraph like this:

Since its inception, the [federal Railroad Retirement] board has been so riven with conflicts that it took a half century to update what were supposed to be temporary disability standards, leaving in place until 1998 archaic diagnostic terms like “cretinism,” “imbecility” and "middle-class moronism.” Simply having a “repugnant” scar could qualify someone as disabled.

My idea for screenwriters: "The Wire" with pirates.

Exhibit A. Pirates are awesome.
Exhibit B. No onscreen depiction has done them justice, that I've seen.

Why can't we have a movie or a TV series about pirates that shows the same attention to detail and storytelling and realism as The Wire? (Maybe Deadwood is a closer analog, but I haven't watched it yet) Pirates have become too jolly and mischievous in our culture; I want to see something that makes me at least a little bit scared of them. Parellels abound: their specialized argot; the intricate connections to world commerce and politics; the way piracy became a whole shadow industry and how people were drawn into it. The tricks of their trade, and the endless chase by the authorities.

I thought of this after reading in Waterfront by Philip Lopate that there were quite a few pirates in New York in the late 1600s. He talks about William Kidd, who had a house on Pearl Street, was hired to catch pirates because of his experience as a privateer, then went back to being a pirate after sailing to Madagascar and not finding any to catch. (He claimed he was forced into it by his crew.) And several other nuggets that could be fodder: "There was such a thing as 'officially sanctioned piracy,' in which private merchants and governments subsidized buccaneering ventures." "The oyster cellars of old, where New Yorkers once guzzled oysters as their birthright." The rough democracy of pirate ships contrasted with abusive, authoritarian captains on legitimate ones. And the seedy waterfront areas.

Then you've got the modern relevance: pirates are somehow still confounding empires off the coast of Somalia. And it's a form of asymmetric warfare, like terrorism.

If someone doesn't write this, I will, and I don't think anyone wants that. Also, if anyone knows of a good pirate show or movie that I've missed, or books that would provide more in depth source material, please let me know.