Happy Halloween!

Happy Fright Night, everyone!  Here's my Halloween roundup.

Eyes in Slow Motion



This has been going around the internets lately—it's a great celebration of everyday uncanniness that is perfect for Halloween.

Billy Cosby — Chicken Heart

A spooky tale from my all-time favorite storyteller, Bill Cosby.

Part 1

Part 2

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

Because no holiday is complete without a morality play staring our favorite blanket-wielding do-gooder, Linus van Pelt.

link to Hulu.com

But seriously, love this movie.

Rotting Pumpkin Time Lapse

Maybe more appropriate for a first week of November post?

Happy Halloween!

It's still not too late to carve up a jack-o-lantern and bake some Spiced Pumpkin Seeds.  Yum!

Stay safe, everyone.  See you in November!

Spiced Pumpkin Seeds

If you're a pumpkin-carving type like me, than you should try making these tasty Spiced Pumpkin Seeds.  Just save the seeds from the pumpkin pulp for a delicious, healthy(ish) snack.

Also pictured is the Happ-O-Lantern (Team effort by Kelsey and I).

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Spiced Pumpkin Seeds (adapted from allrecipes.com)

Mix in a bowl

• 2 tbsp melted butter
• 1/2 tsp seasoned salt
• 1/8 tsp garlic salt
• 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

Add and stir until coated

• 1 cup raw pumpkin seeds

Remove pumpkin seeds to baking dish.
Bake at 275 F for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

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Pumpkin Trivia

Did you know that the average pumpkin has 500 seeds?!  More pumpkin trivia, courtesy of the History Channel:

Best Challah

This one comes from my grandfather's kitchen—he does a lot of baking, but he advised me that this was the best challah recipe he's ever made.

I'm used to making the Joy of Cooking challah, however I can confirm that this one tastes better. And while it is a little more work I think it's definitely worth it!

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Best Challah (from The Silver Palate Cookbook)

Ingredients:

• 2 c milk
• 6 tbsp sweet butter
• 1/3 c sugar
• 2 packages active dry yeast
• 4 eggs, at room temperature
• 2 tsp salt
• 6 c unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1/4 c cornmeal
• 1 tbsp cold water

Directions:

1. Bring milk, butter, and sugar to a boil. (I use a double boiler to avoid burning the milk)
2. Remove from heat, pour into a large mixing bowl. Let cool to lukewarm, 105-110 F.
3. Stir yeast into milk mixture, let stand 10 minutes.
4. Beat 3 eggs well in small bowl. Stir eggs and salt into milk-yeast mixture.
5. Stir in 5 cups flour, one cup at a time, until you achieve a sticky dough. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface.
6. Sprinkle flour over dough, begin kneading, adding more flour as necessary until you have a smooth, elastic dough. (Remember to coat hands with flour, this helps with the mess)
7. Grease the inside of a large bowl (with butter, shortening, or cooking spray), add ball of dough, turning to coat it lightly with oil, cover bowl loosely with towel (or plastic wrap) and set aside until tripled in bulk, 1 1/2 to 2 hours.
8. Turn dough out onto lightly floured surface. Cut into halves, cut each half into thirds. Roll thirds out into "snakes" about 18 inches long. Braid into two loaves, tuck ends under.
9. Sprinkle large baking sheet with cornmeal, transfer loaves to sheet. Leave room between loaves for them to rise. Cover loaves with towel (or plastic wrap) and let rise until nearly doubled, about 1 hour.
10. Preheat oven to 350 F.
11. Beat 1 egg with 1 tbsp cold water together. Brush egg wash over loaves.
12. Bake 30-35 minutes, or until golden brown and sounds hollow when bottoms are tapped.
13. Cool completely on racks before wrapping.

Enjoy warm, but allow loaves to cool completely before wrapping. 

Recommend serving with butter and honey. Also makes excellent french toast!

Call Me Professor

My blog has been quiet for a few weeks as I have been adjusting to my new part-time position as Adjunct Professor at a private liberal arts college in New Jersey. I've had so much fun coming up with lesson plans and lectures for my course, Introduction to Psychology. This was one of my very favorite classes as a psyc major, so being able to teach it myself is quite special. And I'm not gonna lie to you, after spending the last six years in college, being called "Professor" is unexpectedly cool.

A photo of me teaching¹

I feel very fortunate to have a job that I enjoy—especially after the Summer of Unemployment (hereinafter referred to as the "Darkness"). While I'm still trying to find another part-time job to pay the bills, I'm much more optimistic than I was before.

I realize that real life has gotten in the way of my blogging, and while I'm not terribly distressed about that I do find myself missing this little creative outlet. In the coming days and weeks I will try to find time to post here more often.

You can expect more of the odd and interesting diversions that I stumble upon and reshare, the occasional life update, and even a recipe or two (I've been busy in the kitchen lately, so stay tuned). I'll probably create posts that reflect my adventures as a naive psychology professor, too.

And on that note, I'll leave you with a brief but fascinating demonstration.

The Bouba/Kiki Effect

Consider the following shapes:

Tell me, which of these shapes is named bouba and which one is kiki?

Odds are you're one the of 98% who identify the curvy figure on the right as bouba and the pointy figure on the left as kiki. This demonstrates a strange effect first discovered in 1929 by psychologist Wolfgang Köhler. As it turns out, regardless of culture or native language, just about everyone identifies these two figures the same way.

The Bouba/Kiki Effect illustrates how the human brain can extract abstract properties from simple phonetic sounds that are otherwise meaningless. Many believe this ability is vital to the development of language, symbolic thought, and ultimately consciousness, which are the very qualities which seem to separate humans from other species.

You can read more about bouba and kiki at Wikipedia.

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¹Not of photo of me teaching. This is actually a photo of me teaching.^2
2Honestly? I probably look more like this when I teach.

Starlings: God's Screensaver

Starlings are one of many species which exhibit swarm behavior.  In swarming species, emergent behaviors arise from relatively simple rules, like each starling adjusting to the average position and speed of the handful of birds around it.

The Adventures of a Cardboard Box

The Adventures of a Cardboard Box from Studiocanoe on Vimeo.

Today, find joy in something simple.

Rise of the Retronauts

Salon recently published an article titled Will Nostalgia Destroy Pop Culture?  It's interesting reading, but a brief summary might go something like this:  For reasons not entirely clear, the current generation of young people is increasingly obsessed with rehashing and repurposing retro culture—a trend which threatens our capacity for innovation.

At first glance this article (which promotes author Simon Reynolds's new book Retromania) is the same "we've reached the end of history" story we've all heard many times before.  In fact, there are some excellent arguments being made which support the idea that almost nothing is original.  But it seems like Reynolds may have a point.  Since reading this article a week ago I can't help but see retro everywhere I go (see gallery below).

There is another startling aspect to pop culture's current obsession with the past as well.  Never before in human history have science and technology progressed so rapidly.  Technologically, we are living in a golden age of innovation with no end in sight.  So why are we living in the past?

Reynolds offers one possible reason which makes a lot of sense to me:

The past has taken the place of the future in people's imagination. That might have something to do with politics as well ... No one can quite picture a future that seems positive or exciting. At one time the future seemed to suggest grand projects. Now the space shuttle program has been shut down. If I look at what young people are watching on TV and at the movies, when they're looking for heroism and romance, they're watching quasi-historical fantasies, it's not future fantasies. It's "Game of Thrones," "Harry Potter," and that kind of thing, as opposed to going to outer space or the year 3000.

Speaking as a young adult struggling to enter the professional world in the Great Recession, I can report that it is much more comfortable reminiscing about an idyllic past than wondering where my next first paycheck is coming from.  It is no marketing accident that Nickelodeon is promoting its heavily publicized 90s throwback programming block ("The 90s Are All That") with the slogan "Remember When Life Didn't Suck?"

Reynolds also points to the 1960s—the cultural yardstick we've been using to gauge progress for the last fifty years—to illustrate all the momentum we've lost:

In terms of how it was covered and how it was felt at the time, the '60s was just a long period where there was a sense of hurtling forward. It was happening on multiple fronts simultaneously -- the beginning of feminism, civil rights, the space race, the Beatles and all that. In the early-to-mid-'60s, there was a lot of very modernistic space age-looking fashion. On every cultural front, people were breaking down barriers. In pop music, it's the decade the other decades have all defined themselves against. Punk was the inversion of the '60s in a lot of ways, but it still kept a little of that idealism and the belief in change. The '80s were defined in a lot of ways as a repudiation of '60s ideas, and '90s rave culture was a return to drugginess and all that.

And as turbulent as that decade surely was, maybe there was an optimism then that we lack now.

Reynolds also suggests that our stagnation (too strong a word?) may have something to do with the very same technological innovation which is juxtaposing our backwards looking culture:

It was gradual, but with the arrival of the Internet, and broadband access, and the rise of this kind of strange collective archiving thing, [looking backward] became irresistible. Now people put stuff on YouTube because it feels like they're doing something worthwhile and this enormous archive has developed ... Now all the records in the known universe are basically accessible at the click of a mouse ... I remember living in a culture of cultural scarcity.

Perhaps our collective pessimism combined with our unprecedented access to all things passed is too tempting for today's youth—why live in the depressing present when it's so easy to re-experience the twee trends of yesterday?

I'll admit that there is an abundance of nostalgia nowadays.  I consider myself as guilty of perpetuating retro culture as anyone—recent blog posts have covered snacks of the 90s, Jim Henson, Mad Men, and I Love Lucy, not to mention my weekly-ish series of classic cartoons.  But I'm not sure I buy Simon Reynolds's conclusion, that our fascination with the past is going to corrupt our future.  Some might argue that never before has a generation of people been so aware of their roots.  And isn't that something to be proud of?

The Atlantic responded to all the retromania with The '90s Are All That' and the Ever-Accelerating Nostalgia Machine, a sound rebuttal to cautionary voices like Reynolds, arguing that the latest wave of affection for the near past is nothing new.

What are your thoughts?  Are we too obsessed with the past?  Too afraid of the future?  Or are we just as creative (and nostalgic) as we have always been?

For more, you can check out my visual diary of retro culture after the jump.