Following post was originally entered on Friday evening 27-SEP, but went into Blog vapor.  I'm still trying to get it to the right category (hence a broken link this weekend), but I'm sure I'll solve the XML mystery shortly.  Bear with me, thanks!

 

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With my best regards to the folks at Epicurious, I'm going to give this recipe a shot this weekend:

 

CRANBERRY-APPLE CRISP WITH OATMEAL STREUSEL TOPPING

 

Topping

1 cup (packed) golden brown sugar

1 cup old-fashioned oats

3/4 cup all purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup (1 stick) chilled unsalted butter, cut into pieces

 

Filling

2 12-ounce packages cranberries

1 1/4 pounds Golden Delicious or Fuji apples (about 3 medium), peeled, cored, cut into 1/2-inch cubes

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 tablespoons apple juice or cider

Vanilla ice cream

 

For topping:

Combine brown sugar, oats, flour, and salt in large bowl; toss to blend. Add butter and rub in with fingertips until mixture comes together in moist clumps. Cover; chill while preparing filling. (Topping can be prepared 1 day ahead; keep chilled.)

 

For filling:

Preheat oven to 375°F. Generously butter 13x9x2-inch glass baking dish. Combine cranberries, apples, sugar, and apple juice in heavy large pot. Bring to boil over medium heat, stirring often. Boil until cranberries are tender and juices thicken slightly, about 5 minutes. Transfer filling to prepared dish. Sprinkle topping over.

Bake crisp until filling bubbles thickly and topping is crisp and deep golden brown, about 40 minutes. Let cool 10 minutes. Serve with ice cream.

Makes 12 servings.

  

Bon Appétit

November 2001

 

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I'll make a couple of modifications -- I'm using Jonathans (yes, the Heavenly Code Geek smiled on me and granted my request for Jonathans!).  I use reduced-fat margarine instead of butter (we're watching cholesterol here) and use a pastry cutter to blend dry ingredients with margarine.  And of course, the juice/cider will be swapped out with apple brandy.  I'm also skeptical about cooking the filling before baking; that's more commonly done with a cobbler than with a crisp.  It's probably intended to sweeten up the cranberries and soften the apples so fruit has more consistent texture.  Check it at 40 minutes, bake until bubbly at the edges.

 

Maybe serve this with vanilla ice cream AND a drizzle of caramel sauce, a sprinkling of toasted walnuts to gild the lily?

  3:20:26 PM    comment []

Tropical storm Isidore is clouding our skies.  How apropos, I’m feeling kinda’ cloudy myself…

Stayed up entirely too late reading Wolfram.  Read more again too early this morning, just so I could respond with a modicum of intelligence to Rob's Rant.  Hope I did it justice, Rob.  I don’t know if I responded to your concerns, but I frankly have a bunch of my own.

I complained to my spouse last night about my feelings of inadequacy – I’m not a math major, I’m quite blue about having to plow repeatedly through Wolfram to make sense of his work.  And while I’m fairly gifted with words, I’m struggling to make a coherent statement about A New Kind of Science.  Not good for the self-esteem.  Guess maybe I was liking myself too much, needed to pop the ego bubble, get my level re-set.

 

Mentally dusting my self off and moving on to something else.  Maybe something more wholesome, earthy, to chase away Isidore’s clouds.

 

Apple crisp, anyone?  (psssst: I'm going to use Calvados, apple brandy or dark rum instead of the apple juice!)

  11:50:38 AM    comment []

Thanks again to Rob Salkowitz’ for the salvo which pushed me back at Wolfram.  I’m going to try to respond to Rob’s comments in Emphasis Added, but don’t take away that I’m a Wolfram apologist.  (Wolfram needed an editorial staff to work with him, period.  I don’t care how much time or money you have to put into a pet project, if it’s not presented with straightforward simplicity, it’s a dead pet on arrival.)

 

My understanding of Wolfram's position is that what we see in the universe can be replicated using numerous different repeatable codes/ scripts/ programs (like the Fibonacci series) that occur over and over, regardless of the initial conditions; these simple scripts may be more accurate in depicting results than the linear equations that science uses.  Many can be calculated out to a finite outcome, and most of what we see around us is small scripts run to many iterations.  Scripts that are irreducible are those for which the time and resources to run to a finite or end iteration would be equal to allowing the script to run - no point in modeling.  And perhaps the entire story of humanity is one of those irreducible scripts – but individual human actions may be just memes, replicable scripts.

 

Ack…that’s so incredibly loose, isn’t it?  I’ll try again, since that sounded so Wolfram-ish…

 

§         Instead of solving for X using an equation, science may now “run for X”.  Events can be expressed and modeled using smaller scripts and graphic examples instead of more awkward and cumbersome mathematic equations.

 

§         Simple programs may yield simple outcomes, and surprisingly, extremely complex outcomes as well.  Much of the randomness and complexity we see in nature is a result of a simple repeated pattern (program), run to many iterations.  (Again, think Fibonacci series – like leafing on a tree.)

 

§         Programs are not necessarily deterministic.  One such example in the book (Rule 30, page 30) demonstrates a very simple program which after 1500 runs yields something entirely random.

 

§         The phenomenon of Computational Equivalence reduces humans to the same level as the rest of the universe – we’re fabricated of, can be represented by the same cellular automata from which the universe arises.  Yet we are as complex as the universe around us, according to this same phenomenon.

 

I don't think that Wolfram subscribes to any intelligence either at the initial condition or at the outcome of any script, but that's where I think Rob and I can agree – what’s the origin of the scripts in the first place, and why scripts?  And with the depth of our ignorance of the universe becoming clearer every day, is there really a big script over all of this, or only a compilation of many small ones, or is scripting only a part of the answer?  Wolfram does not respond to this.  He also suggests (not very directly, I might add) that intelligence may exist in the universe besides ours, but we may not see it because it follows rules outside of those which we as humans recognize readily.

 

Another issue I’ve avoided bring up – if some of these scripts are so small and so sensitive at one end of the spectrum or if the scripts or outcomes are so large and irreducible, what’s to keep either the intrusion of intelligence through inquiry, or the act of observation, from impacting the script?  Poor Schrodinger’s Cat in a Box…what if someone suddenly inserted a change in the script through observation, and changed the outcome?  Would Schrodinger’s poor cat be not alive nor dead, or both, but none of the above?  (Actually, this can describe genetics and biology – random events insert changes into the gene, changing the program.  Make sense?  All the more reason to explore this concept.)

 

Wolfram’s discussion of Computational Equivalence is a kind of slap-down to humanity’s belief that we are somehow unique and special in the universe.  We’re the same as the stardust around us, so to speak.  After some consideration, I’m not certain that we’re the same – is stardust conscious, can it act and make choices based on its intelligence?  Does stardust have the potential to control its future?  Maybe we can’t see that it does because of the blinders of Computational Equivalence?

 

No answers here, only speculation from me.  I'm only wading around in this, thankfully not exploring this for a living.  As an unqualified science-dabbler/wader, I'm reaching an opinion that Wolfram's theory only works within a range - just as Newtonian and quantum physics each have a range within which they work, can be applied, beyond which there are no known answers.  Most likely there's a holonomic theory of science, which incorporates linear equations and Wolfram's cellular automata (scripts), and whatever else we can’t yet resolve with either.  Perhaps a more constructive discussion addresses that which may not already be under that holonomic umbrella.

 

I’ll leave that to the real geniuses – after, they’ve been looking for a unified theory of physics for quite some without a lot of convincing success.  It’s enough for me to try and stay abreast, so that I can either make use of most current knowledge, or be prepared to support funding for further pursuit.

 

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For more examples and information about cellular automata, try the following links:

 

A link-rich site produced by Tim Tyler, including a definition of cellular automata and a number of example scripts; be sure to check out the link to John Conway’s “The Game of Life”

http://cell-auto.com/

 

Paul Callahan’s overview of cellular automaton, “Game of Life” (created by John Conway)

http://www.math.com/students/wonders/life/life.html

 

Stephen Wolfram’s own site, including a compilation of papers on his work

http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/articles/ca/

 

Wolfram’s site dedicated to his text, A New Kind of Science

http://www.wolframscience.com/

  11:33:08 AM    comment []