short takes (link round-up, mostly)

[cellio]

Pesach has been going well. Tonight/tomorrow is the last day, which is a holiday like the first day was. Yesterday Rabbi Symons led a beit midrash on the "pour out your wrath" part of the haggadah; more about that later, but it led me to a new-to-me haggadah that so far I'm liking a lot. (I borrowed a copy after the beit midrash.) When I lead my own seder (two years from mow, I'm guessing?) the odds are good that it will be with this one.

Tangentially-related: a short discussion of overly-pediatric seders.

Same season, different religion: researchers have found that portion sizes in depictions of the last supper have been rising for a millennium, though I note the absence of an art historian on the research team.

Same season, no religion: I won't repeat most of the links that were circulating on April 1, but I haven't seen these new Java annotations around much. Probably only amusing to programmers, but very amusing to this one.

Not an April-fool's prank: xiphias is planning a response to the Tea Party rally on Boston Common on April 14: he's holding a tea party. You know, with fine china and actual tea and people wearing their Sunday (well, Wednesday) best. It sounds like fun.

Edit (almost forgot!): things I learned from British folk songs.

From nancylebov: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality looks like it'll be a good read. Or, as siderea put it, Richard Feynman goes to Hogwarts.

Real Live Preacher's account of a Quaker meeting.

Thanks to jducoeur for a pointer to this meta community over on Dreamwidth.

I remember reading a blog post somewhere about someone who rigged up a camera to find out what his cat did all day. Now someone is selling that. Tempting!

In case you're being too productive, let me help with this cute flash game (link from Dani).

Comments

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

The English folk song motifs quiz is making me wonder how well a TV show about a Janet going around untangling the various catastrophes would work. It could either be like Buffy or like Murder, She Wrote depending on whether Janet comes in before or after the event.

Random question I am reminded I wanted to ask, because I brought to work a bunch of leftover brownies only to find that all the Jewish guys couldn't eat them because of the baking soda: Is a cookie containing only {flour, egg yolk, butter, white sugar, almond extract} chametz? How about if I ditch the almond extract (which has water in it, probably) and use ground almond instead?

[cellio]

Actually, the problem is the flour. :-) More specifically, chametz results when any of the five grains have been combined with liquid (that's enough to start things rising) except under controlled circumstances. Matzah has to be completely made within 18 minutes, from first stir to taking out of the oven. Cakes made for use during Pesach either don't have flour in them at all or are made from matzah meal, which is matzah that has been ground up to flour consistency. (That process of turning it into matzah in the first place covered it against future combination with liquid, I guess, though I've heard of a stringency in this space that I think most people don't follow. If your coworkers are going to be at work tomorrow, which is a no-work holiday, then they'd probably eat cake made from matzah meal too.)

I do not claim to fully understand the Pesach food restrictions, particularly questions that begin with either "why" or "what about this corner case".

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

Huh. I have no idea how a cake made from matzoh meal would work--it seems like it shouldn't be able to achieve anything like the right consistency. Perhaps it's an egg-related thing.

[cellio]

I think it involves lots of eggs -- maybe separated and whipped to let the whites help? I'm not really sure; I don't bake much in general and have never baked for Pesach. (Even if I did bake, I'd probably just decide I could live without cake for one week.) Oh, I think potato starch is also involved sometimes.

Googling for Pesach cake recipes might turn up some clues.