Have you ever heard anyone say, "I don't eat meatloaf out because I don't know what's in it. I don't eat meatloaf at home because I do know what's in it."?

The February/March 2011 issue of "Fine Cooking" will make you wonder where this saying came from. The magazine offers up, not a recipe for the perfect meatloaf, but a list of numerous ingredients and the proportions to use to make meatloaf. Even if you're not a fan of meatloaf, I expect you can build a version to your satisfaction. Here's the one we came up with:

Ingredients:

• 1 pound 100% grass fed ground beef
• 1 pound sweet italian sausage in casing (about five sausage links)
• 1/4 cup celery
• 1/4 cup leek (white parts only)
• 1 medium yellow onion
• 2 large garlic cloves
• 1/2 cup pilsner beer (I used Pacifico)
• 1/2 tablespoon fresh sage
• 1/2 tablespoon fresh rosemary
• 1/4 cup bleu cheese
• 5 strips of normal to thin sliced bacon
• 4 oz. bread crumbs (about 1/3 cup)
• 1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt
• fresh ground black pepper
• olive oil
• 2 eggs lightly beaten

Recipe:
First, prepare all your ingredients. Chop the onion, leek and celery (O.K. to combine them together). Mince the garlic, sage, and rosemary (keep garlic separate; sage and rosemary can go together). Measure out the bread crumbs and bleu cheese. Crack and lightly beat the eggs.
Next, saute the onion, leek, celery, and garlic in a little olive oil until the onion is translucent. Add the beer and continue cooking until most of the liquid has evaporated, about 6 - 8 minutes. Set the pan aside to allow the mixture to cool. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.
Now put the ground beef, sausage, bread crumbs, rosemary, sage, salt, pepper, and eggs in a large bowl. Crumble the bleu cheese over the mixture. After the celery/leek/onion/garlic/beer mix cools, add it to the bowl as well. Mix all this together in the bowl with your hands until everything is combined.
Line a baking sheet with tinfoil, then form a rectangular mound with the combined ingredients. Next, overlap your bacon strips diagonally across the meat-mound. Of course, the bacon will shrink some during cooking, so if you care about the aesthetics of the loaf, you'll want to overlap each piece, and also tuck a little bit of the bacon underneath the loaf. I didn't really care so much about it looking perfect, so I just did my best to cover it.
Put the pan in the center of the preheated oven and cook for 40 to 55 minutes, until a thermometer in the center of the meatloaf registers 160 degrees (or close to it). Finally, turn your oven broiler on high and put the loaf about 6 inches from the top of the oven. Finish the bacon to a crisp under the broiler for about 3 minutes. Allow the meatloaf to rest for 10 minutes. Slice and serve!

The meatloaf was really flavorful. The bleu cheese adds a nice flavor and the sage and rosemary is really good. Frankly, the sausage added a lot of flavor to the meatloaf, so your sausage selection could play a big part in the success of this dish. I don't know what the beer in the sauteed onion, leek, celery, and garlic did, but the aroma from those veggies was great. This dish will definitely be one I cook again.

I feel like the book is like a mix of Hersey's Hiroshima and Heinlein's Starship Troopers both of which I enjoyed. World War Z contains some great social commentary. Because the book is told from so many perspectives, it feels really balanced. Brooks' style keeps the reader engaged and does a good job of footnoting and explaining things (such as "military" acronyms and historical or biographic references) that aren't immediately clear to the reader.

Some quotes:

I thought climbing the Devil's Thumb would fix all that was wrong with my life. In the end, of course, it changed almost nothing. But I came to appreciate that mountains make poor receptacles for dreams.

- Jon Krakauer (reflecting on climbing a glacier in Alaska when he was twenty)

you really should make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may have previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.

- Chris McCandless in a letter to his friend "Ron Franz"

Like Thud, The Fifth Elephant is a discworld novel that centers around commander Sam Vimes and the watch (the Ankh Morpork police force). In The Fifth Elephant, Sam Vimes is sent on a diplomatic mission upon which he must ensure that the new "low king" of the dwarves is crowned and save the foreign city from usurpation by an "old-school" werewolf.

Although the book is entertaining and humorous, I did not enjoy it as much as I did Thud. As I mentioned in that review, perhaps it's the reading (I listed to an audio recording) that made Thud so enjoyable. I would recommend Pratchett to someone looking for some light reading. He does provide some insight into human behavior and the dialogue and writing often contains puns and other humor. I don't count myself a Pratchett-fanatic (though I think there are some die-hard fans out there), but I've enjoyed what I've read of his.

I never ate beets growing up. Even though my mom grew fresh vegetables in our backyard garden, she does not like beets so they never crossed my lips. I may have tried some beets on a salad bar growing up, but I mostly eschewed beets.

I recently "discovered" beets in ordering beet salads. I found that with mixed greens, the addition of the soft yet slightly firm and almost crunchy beet was a nice addition to a salad. Beets are a little bit sweet, but with an earthiness that you don't find in a sweet vegetable like sweet potatoes or parsnips. Beets are a little like carrots in the way that a carrot has a litttle "bite" to tone down the sweetness. But, I really despise cooked carrots, so the comparison only goes so far.

Although I've eaten beets (both red beets yellow beets--apparently there are some other kinds too), I have never cooked them. The cooking of the beets has sold me on them. I followed the instructions from my well-used Joy of Cooking cookbook. All you do to cook beets is rinse the beets, cut the greens off leaving a little bit of the stem, and boil the beets (increasing the time with the size of the beet; I voiled mine about 30 minutess); you don't peel them (i.e., very low . Once the beets are tender when pierced (just like you'd check the doneness of a boiled new potato) you drain off the water and put the cooked beets in cold water. Here comes the really cool part: the cookbook said to "peel" the beets at this point. I pictured myself with a vegetable peeler "peeling" the beets like you would a raw vegetable. "Peeling" the cooked beets, however, can be done with your hands. You apply a little pressure to the skin and it comes right off! It doesn't really slide off in one big chunk, but it's easy to quickly remove the peel. Even the bit of the stem that you've left on just slides off.

When I compare the beet and the ease of cooking against another vegetable I "discovered" recently, the sun choke, the beet is far easier to prepare. Sun chokes require peeling when raw and have lots of crevices (kind of like ginger root or a really funky potato). This ease of preparation is a big plus and will probably mean that I have beets on the plate or in my salads with some frequency.

The carb-count on beets isn't super-low, but beets have about 2/3 the carb count of the equivalent amount of parsnips and are well below potatoes or onions in terms of carbs.

I know there isn't much of a recipe here. Tonight I just boiled the beets in some salted water, then sliced one of the beets into cubes and ate it as a side with my grilled asparagus and blue cheese filled hamburger patty. Super simple, but tasty.

Note the central assumptions we made in the coin-flip game that led to the proto-Gaussian, or mild randomness.

First central assumption: the flips are independent of one another. The coin has no memory. The fact that you got heads or tails on the previous flip does not change the odds of your getting heads or tails on the next one. you do not become a "better" coin flipper over time. If you introduce memory, or skills in flipping, the entire Gaussian business becomes shaky.

Recall our discussions in Chapter 14 on preferential attachment and cumulative advantage. Both theories assert that winning today makes you more likely to win in the future. Therefore, probabilities are dependent on history, and the first central assumption leading to the Gaussian bell curve fails in reality. In games, of course, past winnings are not supposed to translate into an increased probability of future gains--but not so in real life, which is why I worry about teaching probability from games. But when winning leads to more winning, you are far more likely to see forty wins in a row than with a proto-Gaussian.

Second central asssumption:no "wild" jump. The step size in the building block of the basic random walk is always known, namely one step. There is no uncertainty as to the size of hte step. We did not encounter situations in which the move varied wildly.

Remember that if eithe rof these two central assumptions is not met, your moves (or coin tosses) will not cumulatively lead to the bell curve. Depending on what happens, they can lead to the wild Mandelbrotian style scale-invariant randomness.

After reading the above passage (my apologies for the length of the quote, but it beats reading the entirety of the book, right?) I thought about how some games, even those with strict rules, the first assumption is almost never right. Consider card games. Even though with every new hand (assuming the dealer is not cheating, which, as Taleb and reality will tell you is not always a reasonable assumption) each player has the same chance at getting a "good" hand or a "bad" hand, and because there are only 52 cards and they always have the same thing printed on them each time, the chances of someone getting an incredibly good hand (e.g., a hand that would be impossible to beat, no matter how you laid down the cards -- such as getting all 13 spades in a four-person game of Spades) are slim to none. Yet, really good card players (who are either born with incredible abilities or who have gotten better by playing the game) may be able to win consistently with average or even slightly bad hands. Thus, the first central assumption is not met because the players (or at least some players) will likely become better over time.

Now to my discussion of how Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (hereinafter "CoD") approximates real life even more so than the card game because the game itself enhances the abilities of the skilled players.

In CoD, when you begin the game you have an avatar with a certain limited skill set: the avatar can only run so fast and so far, he changes weapons at a slow speed, and his aim is only so-so. In addition, the player has a limited choice of weapons and those weapons have no enhancements (such as a scope, silencer, or laser-sight). In the multiplayer online version of the game this beginning player gets thrown into a game with other players who not only would likely be able to defeat this newcomer (aka "nube" in gamer-talk) even if their avatar had the same slow running-speed, sighting-the-gun speed, etc. because the experienced player (1) knows the map, (2) has played the game and is more familiar and skilled with the controls, etc., but the changes of the experienced player defeating the nube is increased because the experienced player has things such as (a) a broader selection of weapons (some of which are 'better' because they are more accurate, fire faster, cause more damage) (b) weapons attachments that make it easier to kill other players (e.g., a thermal scope that makes it easier to spot and kill opponents), and (c) enhanced abilities such as running speed, speed in changing weapons, etc. Therefore, at least to some extent, the past winnings of the experienced players gives them an increased probability of future wins.

I was, at first, a little frustrated with the game because I felt that the natural advantages of having played the game for long periods of time (e.g., map knowledge, familiarity with controls, etc.) were sufficient to make the players better without giving them exceptional weapons or skills that the beginning players don't have (perhaps the game should give the beginners the "cool" weapons and make experienced players fight with "lesser" weapons to make the players more evenly matched, I thought). I felt like the game was not really fair in that respect. After reading Taleb's work, however, I realize that CoD is more a reflection of real life in that the winners get better: and the game actually enhances their ability to get better as time passes.

Beyond games, I tried to think about how this concept applies in real life. I thought about professions where relationships play a big part in success. Here I'll talk about stock brokers/financial advisors (hereinafter "FA's"). Taleb talks about "cumulative advantage" as the concept that those who have initial success tend to continue to have more success because the early success builds and creates future success. The examples he gives in The Black Swan are of academic authors: once a person gets published and cited by other authors, they are more likely to get cited more and hence, more likely to have their works more readily published when they submit new publicaitons (because journals value authors who are 'recognized' and cited frequently by others). Taleb argues that the initial publication and/or citations by others is due, frequently, to randomness rather than purely on skill. I think you can see the same thing in successful FAs.

Imagine two FAs starting out. They work at the same firm and receive the same training and they both have exactly the same opportunity for success. If FA1 lands a large account in his first week on the job and that client with the large account is well connected and really likes FA1, FA1 will likely add clients from the friends of this client. FA1s success will build the more clients he adds because his network (through those clients) will grow with each new client. The successful FAs become more successful through networking in addition to (we hope) picking up skills along the way, both in salesmanship and (maybe) in advising clients. FA2 might be smarter and better at giving financial advice, and FA2 might even be good at networking and good with people, but if FA2 does not "land a big fish" early in his career he may not make it through the training program and the firm may terminate him.

I hope to write more about this concept in future posts.

In regard to whether or not to read Taleb's The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, I think it is a must read for everyone. The book challenges the thinking we've been fed in psychology and statistics classes about bell curves and unlikely events. Taleb's book seems to give a practical and real description of randomness, and the book may provide some insight both into how "the real world" works as well as ways to find success in the real world that exists outside the bell curve. The Black Swan does tend to jump around a bit and I think Taleb could both pare down the book and make it more readable (he tends to go on unrelated tangents, or, at least fails to connect the anecdotes or thoughts to the point he's trying to get across). The concepts are too valuable to miss, though, and it's worth reading for the thought stimulation alone.

The result is thick and creamy, as egg nog should be. The use of the coconut milk instead of a dairy product probably removed it from closely resembling egg nog in anything but color, thickness, and texture. In other words, it did not taste like egg nog. That being said, it still had all the things I like about egg nog: slightly thick, cool, and refreshing.

I had my first taste right after we cooked it and chilled the drink. After about a 20 hour fast (read more about fasting here and here) I had my second tasting. Perhaps it was because of the fast, or maybe the time in the fridge allowed the flavors to meld together, but the drink was more flavorful and dynamic. The cinnamon and nutmeg topping recommended at Mark's Daily Apple

Collins is wonderful with metaphor. The "mockingjay" that adorns the cover of the book is great. Take this passage:
"A mockingjay is a creature the Capitol never intended to exist. They hadn't counted on the highly controlled jabberjay having the brains to adapt to the wild, to pass on its genetic code, to thrive in a new form. They hadn't anticipated its will to live."
Of course, the similarity between the jabberjay/mockingjay and the people in the districts is not hard to spot. Katniss herself, while oppressed by the capitol and forced to sign up for tesserae to sustain her family after her father dies in a mine explosion, is creative and defiant and hunts illegally in the woods - training that equips her perfectly for the Hunger Games she wins in Collins' previous book.
Overall, I'm impressed with Collins writing. As stated in my review of The Hunger Games, the writing is not juvenile. Although her primary characters are teenagers, they think in a more mature way. Their thoughts and experiences are believable, however, given the hardship they have faced. For example, Katniss has been forced to sustain her family after her father died and her mother fell into a catatonic depression. Further, Katniss has been forced to kill other children to spare her own life in the hunger games. Lastly, as is fleshed out in Catching Fire, Katniss must consider how to preserve her family and friends in light of the Capitol's anger at her rebellion in the hunger games (threatening suicide if she and her fellow tribute from District 12, Peeta, aren't allowed to win the hunger games and live)