Moonlapse

Well, I don't have a recipe for the green chile, I use this : http://www.505chile.com/greenchile/ It has the best flavor in my opinion. This is for a large batch, so you might want to cut everything in half. Everything is cooked in a large pot. I use 2 of the regular jars of medium heat green chile sauce (the jars on top in the picture on the website). I puree them in a blender but if you like a chunkier texture its not necessary. The green chile is about the same texture as chunky salsa. I use about 1lb of chicken breast. I usually season the chicken with a little salt/pepper/onion powder/garlic powder and sear it on both sides in a little oil in the bottom of the pot, but that's optional of course. After searing the chicken, pour the green chile into the pot along with about an equivalent amount of chicken broth. Stir it up and let it simmer for a couple of hours (you can also make it in a crock pot). Its done when you can push a spoon or spatula through the chicken. Fish the chicken breasts out of the stew and cut them up. They should basically fall apart as you cut them. Put the chicken back into the stew. That's the basic stew. I usually make some instant rice and put it in there if I'm going to eat it as stew. The rice will tend to thicken it up a bit so if you do this you might want to use more chicken broth. You can use the basic stew as a topping for just about anything that goes with green chile. Its also good to have when you have any sort of congestion or sore throat because it will seriously clear you out.

Hell yes I want lasagna. I cook the same way. My wife says I'm a good cook, but I think its just that I know what I like when it comes to flavors. Like you said, its a creative process and you get better at it over time. I got my start when I was a poor bachelor trying to make a meal when all I had was stuff like the heel from loaf of bread and some condiments. lol Do you like green chile? I have a good recipe for green chile chicken stew.

You have to take into account that Washington D.C. is overrun with worse clowns than that.

I would have thought that in ancient times and up to the point when modern governments abandoned the gold standard, the 'price of gold/silver' was impossible to asses. That would be like saying 'What is the price of a dollar? the answer - a dollar'. Maybe there is documentary source which gives an idea of prices in the pre hellenistic and hellenistic periods, then a more definitive statement can be made. Exactly. That's why I said that its not the money that matters but the real wealth that the money servers as a medium of exchange for. The 'price' or value of money is the value of the goods that it can purchase. Historical changes in the value of gold, such as one involving Alexander or the Spanish discovery of American gold, are the result of the increase in the supply of money (gold) relative to the real wealth (goods) that it served as a medium of exchange for. Prices are just a ratio between the medium of exchange and real wealth. Converting historical economic values into modern ones does not take into account the increases in real wealth brought about by technological progress and the results are therefore arbitrary for the most part. The concept of value in itself is subjective and relative, and at some point in the calculation there will be the assumption of 'all other things being equal' when in fact they are not.

Ooooohhhhhh, nice cat!

According to me? You're about the same age as one of my brothers, so I guess when I think I'm old, you'll be old too.

Nominal prices are entirely relative measurements and can be very misleading. The only real way to understand how much 'money' they had is to look at what they used as money (gold, silver, copper, etc), estimate the total quantity and fineness of the money, the total quantity and quality of the goods it could purchase and compare it to the total supply of those materials throughout the world at the time. If you try to convert it into modern money, the point is missed. Its not the money that matters but the real wealth that the money servers as a medium of exchange for. A Roman could have had a billion US dollars worth of gold, but he could never possess anything like a jet airplane or a factory that produces microprocessors. The gold and silver that was used as money was valuable precisely because of its suitability as a universal medium of exchange, as determined over the course of thousands of years by innumerable different economic participants. Kosmo: I would say that the recent fluctuation in the nominal price of commodities has far more to do with the value of the fiat paper currency that the prices are measured in, than with the intrinsic value of of the commodities. If you price commodities in terms of other commodities, the prices tend to be very flat over time. Even though banking is an institution that has spontaneously evolved over time, complex banking certainly existed in the Roman empire. The following is quoted from Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles by Jesus Huerta de Soto where he discusses legal principles pertaining to banking in ancient Rome. Also see Chapter 2, Section 2 of the book, "Banking in Greece and Rome." Its a little too long to post here.

I just remembered a concert I went to some years ago. It was Opeth at the Fox Theater in Boulder and I don't remember exactly what year it was. Opeth is what you might call progressive death metal from Sweden. In Opeth's case, its death metal blended with 70's prog and jazz. Anyways, right before the show starts, I turn around and right behind me is a 70-something year old man and his wife, both looking very excited to be there. You might think that they'd be old hippies or perhaps adhere to some sort of darker subculture, but they looked like they came straight from church. He had on his button up shirt and a vest with slacks and loafers, she had what could have been a hand-knitted sweater over a button up shirt and slacks. The white hair surrounding his bald pate was short and combed back, her hair was short and permed. Their eyeglasses looked outdated. They gushed about how much they enjoyed Opeth's music and had driven quite a ways to make it to the show and they enthusiastically but gingerly bobbed their heads during the performance. I wonder how many elderly couples in rural towns are sitting in their favorite chairs, knitting a sweater or perusing a Harriet Carter calatog, and rocking out to death metal. Opeth - The Drapery Falls Yes, that's Cousin It on the bass.

Happy Birthday! I'll now drink some rum in your honor.

And the post wouldn't be complete without some YouTubage http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2CrF_yXH0k

Keep the Aspidistra Flying is one of my favorites, perhaps because it really hit home at the particular time that I read it.

Shitty, I hope you continue to feel better.

Nope, I haven't had a hangover yet. I usually drink just enough and I also drink a couple glasses of water before I go to sleep. The video is definitely one of the better ones that I've seen, it makes you think.

So I'm totally wasted, and I feel like writing something. I'm not drunk because it's New Year's, I'm drunk because I had to spend my New Year's Eve with in-laws and I find that I'm far more indifferent with some beer and liquor in me than I would be otherwise. That's only half of the reason though, the other half is that I've decided to be a drunk while read a giant tome of four Ernest Hemingway novels that I picked up at Barnes and Noble for a fucking pittance. The idea might be ridiculous or it might just be the best way to read a drunk's literature. Usually, I'd put away a 6-pack of beer in a week at the most. With my affinity for microbrews and Belgian style beers, you'd think that I'd be drinking a lot of beer. Well, you'd be right, but again, that's only half the story. I've been drinking a lot of whiskey and rum, straight up and in cocktails. Early morning projectile vomiting during my younger years had instilled in me a great nauseating aversion to the mere whiff of any liquor. However, after a decade or so, I have been de-conditioned. I find that not only can I tolerate the flavour of a fine liquor, I can lucidly pay attention to it's flavor and appreciate the reasons why one merits a greater cost than another. I'm also a big fan of mead. The drier, the better. A strange side-effect has been that I am becoming much more motivated... something that has been seriously lacking in my life since I more than doubled my income by working for our joke of a government. If you thought Catch 22 was just humorous fiction, then you really don't understand the severity of the situation. Anyways, motivation for long neglected projects in addition to entrepreneurial ideas have been welling forth recently, which sort of frightens me. It's definitely something I want and need, but I don't plan on drinking like this for more than a few weeks... Aaaaannnd you may recognize this as the song from the Geico commercial

I'll take over Axl and Slash any day.

I like this one http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?img...d17a3994ddd524a

Similar to the Library of Congress' Flickr page, but goes back to the 1860s. http://images.google.com/hosted/life

Bad ass.

Balancing form and function? Looks more like the function was sacrificed to the form.

Photoshop may not be the best software for map making, but it is a very good program for many different types of graphic work. Learning and understanding all of the functions and capabilities of Photoshop can take quite a bit of time if you have no experience with graphics software. http://www.getpaint.net/ and http://www.gimp.org/ are free applications that have similar functionality to Photoshop. High quality geographic data is probably the most important part of map making. There is a lot of public domain satellite topography data that you can find if you dig deep enough. DEM (Digital Elevation Model) information is probably the most common and is a good search term to use to find when you Google (along with GIS and SRTM). Sometimes you can find blank pre-rendered topography available for free use, otherwise you'll need a program to render satellite data. http://www.landserf.org/ and http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/ are decent freeware. Also see http://www.terrainmap.com/ Perhaps you just need to start with a coastal outline or something similar. Sometimes you can find some that are for free use, otherwise you can probably trace over a copyrighted work with Photoshop/GIMP. As Primus Pilus said, I use a 6x8 Wacom tablet. I find it difficult to create precise motions such as tracing with a regular mouse, not to mention that it wil fatigue your hand very quickly. Hope this helps.

Thanks for the heads up!

The only time I've ever handed money over to someone else to do charity for me was to buy a care package for deployed troops. I really prefer to directly help people that I know, for a variety of reasons. I do this because I owe much of what I have now to several people who chose to help me out in the past and I'm obligated to do the same.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It seemed more like an extended short story than a novel, but it was a very entertaining read. I devoured it over the course of a couple days even though I often caught myself blankly staring at the book, lost in a train of thought provoked by the story. Not related to Roman history, BTW.

Next year, Wal-Mart should just put a very deep pit on the other side of the doors and let the whole flock of sheep jump into it.

You can take a look at the black men's shirt here: http://unrv.spreadshirt.com/us/US/Shop/Art...-Shirt--3035366 The front is a small UNRV logo over the silhouette of the Augustus of Primaporta, the back has a small 'unrv.com'