Cheeses

[mindstalk]

Just went on a shopping spree at Bloomingfood's.
What's better than a soft cheese like Brie or Camember, or a blue cheese? One that combines them: Cambozola, a soft-ripened cheese with blue veins.

Actually whether it's better could be debated; the blueness is a lot milder than full blue cheeses. OTOH, it's spreadable, not crumbly.

Also picked up was a petit munster, which seems decent, and a very expensive Red Hawk brine-washed-rind cheese, which stinks quite a lot (at least up close) but seems mild in flavor. Though all the cheeses are still cool.

Links:
* Comparison of the House and Senate health bills (PDF, despite the URL)
* CIA helping with climate monitoring
* Average faces beautiful
* Full-body scanners run afoul of child porn laws
* (from shiver) American Law Institute abandons support for the death penalty; they'd been the main legal arguer in the US.
* More on the Big Zero decade in the US
* Pakistanis may like our drones? I don't know if I should jokingly compare to Culture drones or Berserker goodlife.
* Is Indonesia's democracy shallow?
* Nate Silver's harrowing flight home, and more terror statistics.

Comments

[nekomata.livejournal.com]

Camembert is the only one of those I can tolerate. Brie and I don't get a long and, thought I like the taste, bleu never sets well in my stomach.

I like their large variety of goat and sheep's milk cheeses.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Weird. I'm not even sure what the difference between brie and Camembert is, except that years ago the C at Trader Joe's was more reliably runny vs. brick-like.

[nekomata.livejournal.com]

Brie has a much stronger flavor to me, and I will politely not say what that flavor is...


Mmm, I love Trader Joe's.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I hope that the change in the ALI will help eliminate the death penalty.

As for Indonesia, I found one very interesting bit in the article:

"Recently, some Indonesians, including prominent retired generals, have called for welfare, not freedom, to be the yardstick"

This is actually a statement that I completely agree with - I think that democracy simply isn't going to work if you have sufficiently dire poverty, and Indonesia has lots of that. Democracy seems like something that's only reasonable when a significant majority of the population have the minimum basic needs met.

[dubaiwalla.livejournal.com]

Is Indonesia's democracy shallow?
I was rather unimpressed by the evidence presented by this article:

The military is one of the country's most popular institutions, a third of citizens don't vote, and most people disagree with the job the legislature is doing? Maybe, but all of this could be claimed of the United States, and nobody's claiming democracy is shallow there. It's absurd to fault Indonesia for voting falling from the 90 percent levels in its first free elections; compulsory voting isn't enforced. India is a large, more or less stable developing democratic country, and turnout is certainly nowhere near that high. (It also has comparable issues with vote-buying and rural voters being swayed by community leaders, while poverty is a far bigger problem.)

The figure of 'only' 70 percent supporting democracy should be plenty really. The Economist published a similar-ish poll showing eastern European states a few weeks ago, basically asking them if they were happy to have democracy and capitalism. Ukraine didn't even show majorities, and nobody came near universal support. But I doubt we are in imminent danger of seeing that country return to the bad old days, despite a political system that is probably far more fractious than Indonesia's.

There are a lot more graft cases, but is that because officials are more corrupt, or because laws are now being enforced?

I'm not claiming the article's thesis is wrong, merely that I'd like to see it backed up.

(My quibbles with this article notwithstanding, I generally enjoy the links you post, which is why I added you a little while ago. So, uh, hi.)

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I didn't say anything, but I had wondered about the turnout argument myself. "Only 70% vote!" Uh, sure. The US would kill for turnout like that, and Switzerland has even lower turnout than us -- of course, they also vote 4 times a year.

Good points, thanks. And hi.