Vulcans Aren’t Logical

I’ve started watching Star Trek: Enterprise recently, and it has dredged up all my all frustrations about Vulcans; specifically about how they are not at all logical. All the while being (probably) the least logical species in the universe, they claim that logic is central to their identities.

Interestingly enough, Enterprise episode 17 “Fusion,” depicts Vulcans that think everybody has been interpreting the whole logic philosophy too literally and that a balance of emotion and logic is needed. Never mind that the two are not mutually exclusive. But the strange thing about these characters is that they mostly seemed much more logical than all the other Vulcans. Especially the way Tavin (one of the “emotional Vulcans”) talks about sex – he talks about it in such a precise, open and clinical way whilst other Vulcans are embarrassed by discussions of sex and are reticent to discuss it. Indeed, Tavin is so open about sex that the humans around him feel a bit uncomfortable. But we are supposed to believe that you can only be open and honest about sex if you are illogical and emotional? This enrages me.

I know it is nothing new that TV (and movie) writers often misunderstand logic and how it works, but come on. I’ve also noticed that Vulcans seem to suffer a lot more from the problems of a monolithic patriarchy, compared to the human and Romulan societies as depicted. It seems to me that a purely logical society would have perfect gender equality, as subjugating one gender for the benefit of another is very illogical and harmful to the overall society. But that’s a subject for another post…

Set in Seattle

Seattle Skyline
The Seattle Skyline as seen from Dean’s roof

Doc and I were up in Seattle this weekend. He was judging a yo-yo competition, whilst I was wandering around looking at things and exploring. And eating brunch. I ate a lot of brunch.

It was fun exploring the city, but by far the best thing I got out of this trip (aside from seeing friends, of course) was a book. I had forgotten to bring a book to read on the flight, and I had forgotten my headphones so I couldn’t even listen to an audio book. So, literally the first thing I did after arriving in Seattle (after looking at all the flowers and things at Pike Place) was visit a cool little bookshop.

Right away, Omon Ra caught my eye. It depicted what appeared to be the Ancient Egyptian god Ra, wearing a space suit. It is no secret that I have long been obsessed with Ancient Egypt: its culture, its way of life, its religion, its architecture, its writing, etc. And, he was wearing a space suit. Come on. I read the back, and it didn’t mention Egypt or Ra or gods, but it described a dark absurdist comedy about a young boy in Soviet Russia that dreams of being a cosmonaut.

I read the first couple of pages, and I was immediately drawn in by its easy, whimsically poetic style. Not at all in the way that some poetic literature can be dense and difficult to parse, this read incredibly well.

After seeing how quickly I fell into Pelevin’s writing, I bought the book and read it pretty quickly. It was an amazing book, and not what I was expecting (although I wasn’t exactly sure what I was expecting). I’m always on the hunt for more good books, and buying them randomly rarely works out. I end up with lots of duds that way (that I read anyway because I paid for them, damn it!), and usually I can only find good books via recommendation.

So: thanks Seattle, for getting me to get this book!

Also, it turns out that it was not a coincidence that the title of the book has “Ra” in it, and the cover depicts what appears to be Ra wearing a space suit. So that made me happy, too.

But it is a coincidence that a blog post with “Set” in the title ended up talking about Ra (Set’s brother) so much. I set out just to talk about my trip in Seattle, and did not plan on talking about the book at all. I named it “Set in Seattle” as an inside-joke that my friends and I shared about the Ancient Egyptian god Set living in Seattle, and he starred in a sitcom called “Set in Seattle,” which was an intentional pun on the fact that the show was set in Seattle about Set in Seattle. OK, I’m not sure where I’m going with this anymore. You had to have been there.

Ancient Sauerkraut

You may remember when I embarked on my lactic acid fermentation, back in September 2014. Soon after the kraut was sufficiently sour for my taste (a month-ish), we binged on sausages and kraut for quite some time. I even bought a new head of cabbage, and back-sloshed a new batch of sauerkraut with the old culture. Well, it was technically back-sloshing, in the most basic sense of the term.

Back-sloshing is where you take some of the juice from your old culture and put it into a new culture. This speeds up the fermentation process, and produces a much more sour product. But instead of a dilution of 1:10 or anything like that, I just ate most of the sauerkraut out of the old culture, shredded up some more cabbage, and stuffed that into the same jar. The culture was technically diluted by the juice of the new cabbage, but that’s it. This back-sloshed kraut turned out super delicious, so we ate up most of that pretty quickly as well.

But then, I guess we stopped eating at home as much or something, and the last little bit of Kraut was forgotten about and abandoned in the jar. And yet, I still thought it could be more sour, so I refused to move the kraut to the fridge. I left it in the cupboard until today. So, about 5 months. I finally decided to crack it open and finish it off today because Doc bought some sausages. I was a bit curious, and a bit hesitant, about this culture I dubbed “The Ancient Sauerkraut.”

There was a huge film of beige sum on the top and on the bottom of the culture. But no mold, it looked like it was all just dead bacteria, so that was promising. Loads of dead bacteria. When I opened the lid of the jar, carbon dioxide bubbles burst to life, like they would when opening a beer. This surprised me, as I kept the water trap installed on the jar for the full 5 months, so I had assumed that any carbon dioxide would have escaped. But maybe the trap got jammed or gummed up with something? I guess it was a good thing I opened the Ancient Kraut now, before more pressure built up inside it.

And then, there was the flavor. The flavor had transformed more in those 5 months than I would have imagined (based on the trajectory of flavor changes that I tasted over the course of a month or so). There were so many intensely fruity, light, complex flavors going on in that ancient kraut. I’m assuming these were the esters that I’d read can be produced in late-stage lactic acid fermentation. The kraut really wasn’t even all that sour anymore – or at least, that wasn’t the main taste. The flavor really blew me away; the Ancient Kraut was the most amazing, complex, and delicious sauerkraut I had ever tasted. Of course I’m keeping the juice, to back slosh some cultures in the future.

The Ancient Brussels Sprouts and Carrots. Note the film of bacteria on the top and on the bottom of the culture.

And guess what? I also some some 5-month-old Ancient Brussels Sprouts and Carrots. Since the brussels sprouts had a high sulfur content, I had always found the fermented brussels sprouts’ flavor a bit more objectionable (and stanky) than the kraut, but now I am curious to see if they have been similarly transformed.