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ChristmasDialer.com promises to make a free call "from the North Pole!" to one kid on your list. After inputting the phone number, you choose from these three messages:

1. I am holding a long list with all the names of the girls and boys who would like presents for Christmas. And I see your name right here! My Chief Elf tells me you have been very good to your family this year. I'm so proud of you and I am telling my Elves to make a very special gift for you. Be kind to everyone and remember to always help others.

2. I am checking my list and I hope you've been very good this year. All the Elves are working very hard to make fun toys for the good boys and girls all over the world. I've got some ideas for something special just for you but I need you to send me a letter with your list so I'm sure to get it right. Remember to be good!

3. I've heard you have been trying to be good, but sometimes you get into a little trouble. Just try your hardest to do what is right so I can bring you something very special for Christmas. On Christmas eve I'll be flying all the way from the North Pole to your living room. My reindeer always get hungry so I hope you'll remember to put out a carrot or two for them. Remember to be good!

You get one free call. For more, you must purchase a token (56 to 95 cents, depending on how many you buy) that also permits international calls and calls scheduled at a time you know the child will be home and can be told to answer the phone.

I sent one to my daughter to test it Saturday morning, and she mentioned they returned home to find a confusing voicemail from Santa, a bit muffled. She saved it to listen to when they had time to figure it out.

That's what may happen when they're not expecting it.

It does seem that the call happens quickly after you order it, and Santa will leave a message.

70's photographs: Rock stars at their Parents Houses. Zappa, Clapton, Grace Slick, etc at | Noise Addicts music blog audio blog

The photos were shot by John Olson of Life at the newly opened Google-Life Archives. The "etc." in the headline are David Crosby, Elton Johh, Donovan and The Jackson Five.

The houses seem oddly bare -- not a book or newspaper in sight, although David Crosby's father has a short stack of National Geographics and a New Yorker on a rattan chest.

Outtakes and alt-takes of the shoots are available too, without proper captions. They're all mislabeled in Google as "Grace Slick - Jefferson Airplane." A few of these really are Grace, and, along with a few other John Olson photos in black and white of her with Kanter and Phil Graham, this is the entire Life history of Grace.

John Olson, Life
Virginia Wing outside her Palo Alto, Calif., home in 1971 with her daughter Grace Slick and granddaughter China Wing Kantner; whose father is Jefferson Airplane guitarist Paul Kantner.

Other that Noise Addict doesn't mention:

· Ritchie Havens with his parents Richard and Mildred at his parents home in East Flatbush in 1971.

· Peter "Ginger" Baker, drummer with the rock band Cream, posing with. his mother, Ruby Streatfield, outside her home. Location: Bexley, United Kingdom, 1971.

· Singer Joe Cocker with his mother Marjorie. Location: Sheffield, United Kingdom Date taken: 1970.

Maureen Dowd interviews Tina Fey for Vanity Fair: What Tina Wants. Maureen is reporter here, not her NYT columnist self at all. Read...

Folks all over photographed the moon with bright Jupiter and brighter Venus tonight. Flicker has thousands of photos that all look more or less like this one.

Cyber Monday" was invented in 2005 by Shop.org, part of the U.S. trade association National Retail Federation, which hosts CyberMonday.com. Cyber Monday is not actually the biggest online shopping day of the year; last year it was only ninth, with eight days in December yielding larger online sales.

Whatever. Start your engines. There's a Deals of the Hour promotion going on at CyberMonday (like Today's Deals on Amazon, featuring different stores):

Below that are some "special offers" from large participating online stores -- $10 off a purchase of $50 or more at Discovery, for instance; 25 percent off any one item at Dick's Sporting Goods; 50 percent off coats and designer suits at Lord & Taylor, and lots of free shipping. Many merchants are discounting a small selection of items. Here's a list of those participating, from big-box stores to "never heard of them."

Today only, at GameStop's CyberMonday page, you can get free shipping and $10 off the Shaun White Snowboarding game for Xbox or Wii, making them $49.95 and $39.95, respectively. ("Flying Tomato" White is an Olympic medalist and X-Games champion.) Shortly after this showed up at GameStop, Amazon dropped its price $10, too.

eCost offers the Nintendo Wii Fit and Balance Board for $129.95, perhaps the last one near that price. (Some places listed as having it in stock actually don't, and will bounce it out of your shopping cart if you try to buy it.)

Wii Fit is selling on eBay for more -- sometimes much more -- than that, and you do need this balance board to play the Wii snowboarding game. While I've been researching this, 10 have sold at prices ranging from $142 to $167.50. This is not the fuzzy mom-and-pop eBay you remember; be careful out there.

J&R is having a Blu-ray Blow Out sale today: The hi-def format's video discs start at $4.99. (You might want to check out Friday's blog post, Hot-selling Blu-ray video: What it is, if you're curious about the difference between Blu-ray and regular DVDs.)

Where to start? Besides cybermonday.com, check out the sites keeping track of the Cyber Monday deals that Mark Sullivan recommends in PC World's A 'Cyber Monday' Tech Shopping Primer. Some of them haven't updated as I write this, but probably will when the workday gets under way.

And just before you push the button to order, you might Google for coupons for the site you're on, if you see a form for a coupon or promotional code. What you find might just work.

But be careful. You can get caught up in the hunt, and end up spending a lot without intending to. At one point, as I waited for the strike of midnight, I was deep into a page of solar outdoor Christmas lights, ready to order, when my rational self dragged me away from that cool but unnecessary purchase. (Solar lights are generally tiny and very faint, and relatively expensive.)

Staying up hunting for deals is not fun for me, and not only because loud retail sites are hard on the eyes. But I ran into a reward at the gentle shopping blog Green Stew: An offer at Bedmo Vegetables for a free sample bottle of Sabatino Tartufi Black Truffle Gourmet Olive Oil.

Shipping is also free, you must be 18 and a U.S. resident. They ask how you found out about them.

If you've been waiting for a price drop on an item that's gone on sale today, you'll probably think Cyber Monday is worth all the hype.

But free is the very best.

Kurzweil: "Technology is a double-edged sword" is a new interview with futurist Ray Kurzweil, by Natasha Lomas at silicon.com.

Will super intelligent machines ever have souls?

The soul is a synonym for consciousness... and if we were to consider where consciousness comes from we would have to consider it an emerging property. Brain science is instructive there as we look inside the brain, and we've now looked at it in exquisite detail, you don't see anything that can be identified as a soul - there's just a lot of neurons and they're complicated but there's no consciousness to be seen. Therefore it's an emerging property of a very complex system that can reflect on itself. And if you were to create a system that had similar properties, similar level of complexity it would therefore have the same emerging property and this would be more than an abstraction because these future entities... will be convincing.

It also won't be clear - you won't be able to walk into a room and say, 'OK, humans on the left, machines on the right', because it's going to be all mixed up. You'll have biological humans but they'll have machine processes in their brain, there may be a lot more complexity in the machine intelligence in their brain than the biological portion of their brain. It's not going to be a clear distinction of where humans or biological intelligence stops and machine intelligence starts... [So] we will attribute consciousness to entities even if they have no biology, even if they're fully machine entities: they will seem human, they will seem consciousness, we will attribute souls to them but that's not a scientific statement...

I think he trips over words when he calls consciousness an "emergent technology" while equating it with "soul."

Nevertheless, it's easier to understand merging machine and consciousness in some form when you play around with something like Nintendo Wii. Its earliest apps are interactive games, but it need not be limited to that use. Games and the Wii Fit workout exercises promote mass adoption of a platform in which gestures can be interpreted as actions in a virtual world. All sorts of other uses can follow, with input devices so much less clunky than keyboard, mouse and joystick.

via Slashdot, with hundreds of comments.

Related: IBM to build brain-like computers

IBM will join five US universities in an ambitious effort to integrate what is known from real biological systems with the results of supercomputer simulations of neurons. The team will then aim to produce for the first time an electronic system that behaves as the simulations do.

The longer-term goal is to create a system with the level of complexity of a cat's brain

I'm not sure that's a good plateau to linger on.

Degrees of separation: :

Michael Edwards
Dean Kamen, with his electric car on his private island off Connecticut, North Dumpling, which author John H. Richardson visited to profile him for the November issue of Esquire.

How Dean Kamen's Magical Water Machine Could Save the World begins,

Here comes Dean Kamen on a Segway, zipping down the hill of his private island like something out of a Bond movie. He floats past his private helicopter. Past his amphibious landing craft. His lighthouse rises up behind him. He's wearing his uniform, the one he wears whether he's tinkering with an engine or visiting the White House: work boots, blue jeans, and a short-sleeved work shirt. He's fifty-seven but still skinny as a ten-year-old, with a lean face and full head of Superman hair. He wears a dead-serious expression as he's perched up there on his electric gizmo, even looks a bit regal, which is sort of appropriate when you consider the rules of his alternate universe -- on his tiny private island off the coast of Connecticut, he's not just the man who invented the Segway and the stair-climbing wheelchair called the iBOT and the first portable dialysis machine and a new water filter called the Slingshot that could literally change the world, if he could only get the damn world to cooperate. He's also Lord Dumpling, leader of the Empire of North Dumpling. Dumpie to his friends. He sort of seems serious about this, in a whimsical way, and now Lord Dumpling sweeps right by on his royal scooter, heading down to the landing to greet his guests from America....

He has seceded from the United States, you see, having notified the president himself...

Soon there may be an opening for all sorts of visionaries-in-waiting, now that we may need what they've built for us.

The 21-st century finally seems about to begin.

A short list: More from Esquire:

The 7 Greatest Stories in the History of Esquire Magazine... in Full. The first is The School by former marine C.J. Chivers, at right, a former Journal colleague now at the New York Times.

The blurb for Chris's story:

On the first day of school in 2004, a Chechen terrorist group struck the Russian town of Beslan. Targeting children, they took more than eleven hundred hostages. The attack represented a horrifying innovation in human brutality. Here, an extraordinary accounting of the experience of terror in the age of terrorism..

Others are by Gay Talese, Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe.

via Kottke, who blogs links and leads for each.

Remembering Jazz Pianist Dave McKenna. Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air on Thanksgiving Day. You can stream the 47-minute show at that link, as well as two "unreleased 1965 demo tracks featuring Dave McKenna on piano, with his sister Jean McKenna on vocals."

Earlier: Oct 20, 2008, on this blog: Dave McKenna, jazz pianist and Woonsocket native, dies at 78.

I got a note from downtown saying, "Lots of people were buying (Blu-ray) in the stores today...But we don't really know what it IS."

Blu-ray video discs play high-quality movies (1080p) on high-definition TVs. Compared to regular DVDs, a Blu-ray disc's capacity is huge, even though both are physically the same size: 50 gigabytes, roughly six to ten times more than DVD capacities.

Their manufacture uses a blue laser (hence the name; DVDs use red) whose shorter wavelength can make many more "dots" (think pixels), so more information can be stored on the disc. Hi-def movie files are seven or eight times larger than regular movies, so this capacity is important.

Blu-ray (Wikipedia overview) won the format war -- not VHS v. Betamax but Sony's Blu-ray v.Toshiba's HD DVD -- for optical disc storage when Wal-Mart opted for Blu-ray in February over HD DVD, which Wikipedia now calls an "obsolete high-density optical disc".

So do you have to buy a Blu-ray player if you want to buy or rent high-def DVDs for your high-def TV? Yes. But the reverse is not true.

Walter Mossberg at WSJ wrote, just before the Wal-Mart decision,

I never saw any significant quality difference between the two high-definition formats, I never recommended one over the other. But most of the major studios have defected to Blu-ray, so industry experts believe HD DVD is likely to recede as a movie format, though it may find a market as a data format for computers. However, the companies backing HD DVD haven't given up, so the battle isn't formally over.

Meanwhile, I have found that, for everyone but videophiles, "upscaling" DVD players are effective at making most regular DVDs look better on high-definition TV sets. And name-brand models can be found for as little as $45, which is less than Blu-ray players are likely to commonly cost for quite awhile.

Blu-ray disc players at Amazon start around $200. (They play your old DVDs.) Blu-ray movies are more expensive than DVDs (16.99 vs. $12.99 at Amazon for Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, for instance).

All hardware becomes obsolete, and at some point you'll want to upgrade, if you're still using hard media at all. Eventually, prices will drop and newer titles will be hard to find in the older format. But not yet.

Grinch Kyle Buckley at tech-help site Nillabyte (Blu-ray Is Overrated):

When you watch a movie being played from a Blu-ray disc and a DVD side-by-side, you will definitely notice that Blu-ray has a much sharper image. However, the added lines of resolution in Blu-ray are hardly worth upgrading your entertainment system. The number of movies available in Blu-ray format, although growing, is still pretty small....

Background: Reuters reported in February (Wal-Mart picks Blu-ray in HD DVD disaster),

Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, announced the move as a phase-out at 4,000 U.S. Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores by June, saying it was responding to consumer preference.

Wal-mart's on-staff movie and gaming blogger put the future of HD DVD in stark terms.

"So ... if you bought the HD player like me, I'd retire it to the bedroom, kid's playroom, or give it to your parents to play their John Wayne standard def movies, and make space for a BD (Blu-ray disc) player for your awesome Hi Def experience," Wal-Mart blogger Susan Chronister wrote in a posting.

Consumer electronics chain Best Buy Co Inc and online video rental company Netflix Inc defected to the Blu-ray camp earlier in the week.

Kale and Butternut Squash Gratin

I sniffed at kale:

...Kale and Butternut Squash Gratin, at right, from the Washington Post, looks intriguing, but kale can be tough, so I may use fresh spinach instead.

After a family discussion, we decided to make it, with kale, and it was the superstar of our Thanksgiving dinner. Even the guest who never eats anything orange loved it.

The kale was superb, the perfect foil, holding its own without being a bit tough. It gave the dish a subtle balance I associate with better restaurants than my home cooking. Spinach would have been harsh.

We assembled it the night before (it spent the night on the deck covered in plastic wrap, since the fridge was full), baked it in the morning before the turkey took over the oven, then reheated it while the turkey was resting and being carved.

You'll notice that my photo seems to have a more solid layer of topping than the Post's. This was deliberate. At the step that directs, "Discard the foil from the gratin dish and use a spatula to press down on the mixture" I urged Joe, who was manning the spatula, to press hard so the cream would rise over the vegetables. It was an inspired impulse -- the crumb and cheese mixture followed, and it all browned into a cheesy blanket. Be sure to use freshly grated strong cheese -- its modulated sharpness is an essential component.

Kale and Butternut Squash Gratin

2 medium butternut squash (about 3 pounds), cut in half and seeded
2 tablespoons canola oil
8 ounces kale (stems trimmed and large ribs removed), rinsed and cut into thin slices
4 medium cloves garlic, minced
Coarse salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
Pinch allspice
Leaves from 4 sprigs of thyme, coarsely chopped
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
3 tablespoons panko (Japanese) bread crumbs
2/3 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Use butter to lightly grease a large (2 1/2-quart) gratin dish.

Peel the squash, then cut it crosswise into 1/4-inch-thick slices.

Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the kale, still slightly damp, and cook, stirring occasionally, for about 3 minutes, until it has wilted. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, for 45 to 60 seconds, until it is fragrant.

Place half of the sliced squash in the prepared gratin dish; season with salt and pepper to taste.

Combine the nutmeg, allspice and thyme in a small bowl.

Place the kale over the squash and sprinkle with half of the nutmeg-thyme mixture. Top with the remaining squash and sprinkle with the remaining nutmeg-thyme mixture.

Pour the cream over the vegetables; cover the gratin dish tightly with aluminum foil. Bake for about 45 minutes, until tender.

While the vegetables are baking, combine the panko bread crumbs and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese in a small bowl.

Reduce the oven temperature to 375 degrees. Discard the foil from the gratin dish and use a spatula to press down on the mixture. (Press hard, so the cream rises over the vegetables.) Sprinkle the bread crumb-cheese mixture over the vegetables. Return to the oven and bake, uncovered, for about 10 minutes, until golden brown. Transfer to a wire rack to cool for at least 10 minutes before serving.
About Kale:

It's best to buy kale just before you are going to use it, because it tends to get flabby and bitter after a few days' refrigeration. Store it in an open plastic bag in the coldest part of the fridge.

Source: "Uncommon Fruits & Vegetables," by Elizabeth Schneider (William Morrow, 1986).

Photos by Sheila Lennon
Pecan Pie

Mama's Pecan Pie, also from the Post, makes two pies, and we needed both -- some had seconds, and everybody wanted a piece to take home. Easy, outstanding because it's packed with pecans. My daughter, who made the pies, reports that this is the recipe on the Karo syrup bottle with twice the pecans. Perfect.

Chef Virginia Willis says too many pecan pies are mostly goo without enough pecans, making them far too sweet. The secret to the success of this pie is that its pecan-to-goo ratio is just right.

Mama's Pecan Pie

3 large eggs, slightly beaten
1 cup sugar
1 cup light corn syrup
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
3 cups (two 6-ounce packages) pecan halves, coarsely chopped

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Combine the eggs, sugar, corn syrup, butter, vanilla and salt in a medium bowl, stirring until mixed well. Add the pecans, stirring to incorporate. Divide the filling evenly between two chilled pie shells.

Place the pies on a large baking sheet and bake, rotating once, for about 55 minutes, until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. Transfer the pies to a wire rack to cool before serving or storing.

Adapted from Willis's "Bon Appetit, Y'all" (Ten Speed Press, 2008).

Any pie crust will do, or perhaps none. Ours (frozen, store-bought) was overbrowned, didn't matter. This is all about pecans.

Our aggressive oven left nothing underdone, but there were no disasters and many dishes were more excellent than usual. The salted turkey was moist and not salty, the gravy -- made in the roasting pan from drippings and flour, and chicken stock in which turkey gizzards simmered all day -- was perfect, needing no rescuing this year by canned gravy or bouillon cubes.

We never did make the cheese balls -- just put out cheese and crackers. One of the guests brought an appetizer of dried apricots wrapped in bacon. He wraps each in a third of a slice of bacon and bakes them in the oven, securing them with toothpicks. These were new to me, and they're delicious.

Here's Joe giving the potato-peeling 11-year-old lessons from long-ago k.p.:

To make this full screen, click the box to the left of the triangle, under the "ou T" in YouTube.

The audio is quiet crackling.

It should loop indefinitely.

Source

Happy Thanksgiving, let's hope it's a good one. Thanks for coming by.

Chocolate Mousse. For Andrea, from Toriello-Nicosia Thanksgiving Traditions at Midwest Living.

Ingredients

8 oz. milk chocolate
2 blocks (2 ounces) unsweetened chocolate
5 Tbs. water
2 Tbs. rum or brandy
2 egg yolks
1/4 cup butter
1 cup heavy cream
18 ladyfingers, split
4 egg whites
chopped almonds, if desired for garnish

Break chocolates into pieces; combine milk chocolate and unsweetened chocolate with water and rum in top of double boiler. Place over hot water and stir until melted and smooth. Remove from heat; blend in egg yolks. Add butter, a little at a time, stirring until blended. Whip cream; carefully fold into chocolate mixture. Chill 1 hour or until mixture begins to set.

Meanwhile, line bottom and sides of an 8 or 9-inch springform pan with ladyfingers. Beat egg whites until stiff but not dry. Carefully fold into chocolate mixture. Pour into lined mold and chill 8 hours or overnight. Garnish with chopped almonds, if desired

The pig's the thing: Somewhere in France, there's somebody with oaks, access to a pig and a really nice seasonal gig.

Quel Objet offers Fresh Black Perigord Winter Truffles for 1 oz. Whole truffles $125

With pigs and dogs chomping at the bit, the French truffle season opens the last week of November.

Lovely site, lovely stuff. Not in my budget. I have no idea what a truffle tastes like, just that it's awfully precious for a Tuber:

...their smell has been described as similar to deep-fried sunflower seeds or walnuts, although it has also been described as "a foul aroma."[3] Not all people are able to smell the odor of this fungus. People have noted that water in which truffles have been soaked can taste similar to soy sauce.

Thanksgiving Dinner Fantasy Draft: What dishes would you pick? at Denver's Cafe Society.

From a list of 27 traditional dishes on the table,"we drew straws for draft order, and picked until they were all gone, to see whose final meal roster would result in the most satisfactory food coma."

The three choose, they explain.

That girl gets Thanksgiving dinner. The two guys get unsorted lists. Nobody took the tofurkey, a tofu substitute.