So it’s been about 24 hours since I deactivated my Facebook account and admittedly, when planning this whole (virtual) life changing experience, I had hopped that by this point I would have been able to utilize my new found energy to fuel a rant against the evils of the social network giant. It had, after all, taken me over a year and a half of planning to overcome theloss aversion that caused me to fear that I would somehow be left out of the loop of some important (but in reality likely mundane) piece of information. To be honest, I feel a little dirty admitting that, but it’s the truth. Sadly though, at this point I feel no more empowered or disconnected from the Internet monster than before because, I discovered upon the deactivation of an account, Facebook still maintains your page indefinitely. Should I decide to return, all I have to do is log back in with my user name and password and I can continue right where I left off. I’m a little bummed about this.
Anyway, that being said, it has still been 24 hours and I have not returned, nor do I plan to anytime soon. I’d like to tell you that I have some sort of revived energy to read or pursue hobbies now that I am no longer focused on my virtual interactions, but that would be a lie. Truthfully, in my first 24 hours, I filled the gap with the revival of my Google Reader RSS feeds and an increase in Twitter usage. At the end of all this, it appears that nothing has really changed… yet.
This of course was not what I hoped for when I decided to undertake this adventure. However, I know now that I can no longer blame Facebook for the things in my life I that I am unhappy with. Facebook was merely my drug of choice, not the root cause of my addition. Perhaps I use those words carelessly; I know people who are truly addicted to Internet based social networking and I don’t believe I was ever try addicted (to date I still do not own a smart phone, and fortunately never felt the need to buy one so that I could constantly check in while on the go). But, that being said, Facebook was something that I constantly left open on my computer and it often provided me with a brain dead alternative to undertaking more stimulating and beneficial activities in my limited free time. So, although I cannot condemn Facebook the way I wanted to at the beginning of this experiment, I still feel that it is worth reflecting upon the problems that got me here in the first place.
I often liked to tell people that Facebook made me a crappy friend, and while that is not entirely accurate, I do credit Facebook with providing an alternative to direct, personal interaction through it’s use of the ‘news feed’ (or what is more commonly known as the “Stalker Feed”) which I believe served as an enabling capability. Rather than actually reaching out to individuals to have a substantive conversation about life events and our actual relationships, I could simply watch the news feed as it spoon fed me the mundane details of all of my connections. I didn’t need to participate any longer, I could just watch. Now, nothing about this technology actually prevented me from being able to pick up the phone and call people… that part of the problem lies only within myself… but being the lazy, homo economicus that I am, I deferred to the ease of watching the news feed as I killed more braincells multitasking with Angry Birds or YouTube online. All together it was a bad combination and it consumed significantly more of my free time then I am willing to admit to.
Sadly, because I could receive these minor, often insignificant updates on my ‘friends’, I no longer felt the psychological need to reach out and actually connect with anyone, and this is unfortunate because the virtual posts that I used to justify my “friendships” lacked the substance that inspired me to become friends with these people in the first place. There really wasn’t anything left between us; Facebook just became a tool that allowed us to hold on to the thought of connections we used to have but had since lost any resemblance of real friendship. That’s not to say that I don’t still cherish the times that we did have together back in the day, but for the most part those stories ceased development long ago. I discovered that I was spending too much time focused on the empty shells of relationships past, and as a result, was failing to develop the new, real relationships that should always continue to be a part of our dynamic, experiential journey through life.
Over the last few years I discovered that there are many scientists currently out there investigating our social, psychological, and perhaps physical relationships with our virtual identities and social networking websites, and I know now that I am not alone in experiencing a decline in my real world quality of life as a result of my virtual world participation. I know that the problem is not the medium, but rather something within me that I should be able to overcome and control. As someone who spent a good portion of their academic and professional life investigating the importance of direct experience and personal interaction I am saddened and disgusted to admit just how far away I have grown from the core values and principles that I used to base my identity and the meaning of life on. That is why I finally found the will to make some changes… and that is why I chose to leave Facebook.
All that being said, I in no way believe that the root of my problems lie within Facebook specifically, although I do believe that we need to remember that technology is an amoral actor and that we don’t need to accept all new capabilities simply because they are novel. The adoption of any tool or technology has an impact on society, and we have an obligation to ourselves and others to continuously investigate these impacts and make conscious decisions about what kind of impacts we are willing to accept as a result of our use of technology. Personally, I know that social network capabilities have contributed to the decline of my real world relationships, and I believe that my constant need to monitor Facebook has contributed to my current inability to focus on something for longer then a few minutes before being distracted by curiosity about what is happening in cyberspace. These impacts are not acceptable to me, and although I know that walking away from Facebook is only the first step, I’m determined to regain control of my relationships with others and my relationship with technology.
— John Stuart Mill
— E.J. McCann, 1999. Race, Protest and Public Space: Contextualizing Lefebvre in the U.S. City. Antipode, 31: 163-84
There is something quintessential about a ham and cheese sandwich. Although this sandwich has been a personal favorite of mine for years, I believe Anthony Bourdain said it best in the episode “Why the French Don’t Suck” when he ended the episode talking about the importance of slowing down and taking time to really appreciate the simple pleasures in life. For him, as well as I, the ham and cheese sandwich on French bread is one of these pleasures.
Today I wanted a ham and cheese sandwich, and if you are going to do something you should do it right. I needed French bread.
Now I suppose I could have just grabbed a fresh loaf from the grocery store bakery, but I’ve heard this is one of the simplest breads one can make so I decided it was time to add it to the repertoire. I found a simple recipe online so I decided to give it a shot. My version went as followed: 5 cups of unbleached, all purpose flour (the recipe called for 6 but there was no way I was getting in that last cup of flour without drying out the dough), 2 cups warm water, 1 packet of active yeast, 1.5 tsp of salt, a little bit of cornmeal, and an egg white. Mix together 2 cups of flour, the rest of the dry goods, and two cups of warm water. Once you have mixed these ingredients (it will be a very wet mixture) slowly work in the rest of the flour until you have a “smooth and elastic” dough. Place dough in a well oiled bowl and let rise until it doubles in size. Once it doubles, cut the dough in two, let rest 10 minutes, then roll each half into a large rectangle. Roll each rectangle of dough into a long loaf of bread and pinch the ends closed. Place rolled dough logs on an oiled pan sprinkled with cornmeal, and let sit until it doubles in size again. Once the dough has doubled, cut three diagonal slits in the top of each loaf (roughly 1/4in deep), coat with a mixture of 1 egg white and 1tsp of water, then bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes. Coat the loaves again with the egg white mixture and return to the oven for another 15-20 minutes. After that, let the loaves cool and enjoy!
Comments: Not sure why the original recipe called for 6 cups of flour because my loaves were dense enough with 5 cups. Also, the recipe called for all purpose flour but I thought it came out a little soft, so next time I’m going to try bread flour to see if that makes a difference. Also, I got a nice color on the loaves but the outside is not as crispy as I would like. I may try leaving it in for five minutes longer to see if that helps. Other than that I thought the flavor turned out well; a little bland but it’s a white sandwich bread and I didn’t want the bread to over power the sandwich, which it did not.
Once the bread cooled I cut off a portion, added some ham, a slice of cheese, and a pickle. That’s it! With a side of barbecue chips, it was the perfect meal and well worth the effort.
These are some photos I took at the Rally to Save the American Dream in Dupont Circle, Washington D.C. on Saturday 02/26/2011. I know they managed to get some good media coverage and it was nice to see the show of support. Hopefully efforts like this will lead to something productive…
I thought this was an interesting example of the power of Social Media Networking… and I think it’s a pretty cool statement that a soldier in Afghanistan took time to order a pizza for the protesters in Wisconsin.
— Walden, Henry David Thoreau
I kind of dropped the ball this weekend because I didn’t get the chance to try a new bread; rather, at the request of my beautiful wife, I made some more of the Oat, Honey, and Sunflower wheat bread. I did a little fine tunning though, so I thought I would share the changes.
1). Cut out a half cup of each type of flour (so 6 cups total rather than 7).
2). Increase the amount of honey to 1/2 cup.
3). Use a full packet of quick-rise yeast rather than a teaspoon of active yeast (this cut the rise time down considerably).
4). Mix all of the wet ingredients with the Wheat flour first. Once that creates a very sticky dough mix in the sunflower seeds next. Last, slowly mix in the bread flour until the dough reaches the right consistency (you should use most, if not all, of the 3 cups).
Other than that the rest of the recipe was pretty much the same. This version produced a much lighter, airy bread. I also decided to drizzle some honey on top of the two loaves to give it that little extra sweetness (while they were still hot, fresh out of the oven), which I personally think is a nice addition if you’re going to eat the bread plain or as toast.
Anyway, I just thought I would pass these changes along. I thought this was a much better version of the bread…
This weeks baking adventure was an oat, honey, and sunflower wheat bread. I modeled my recipe after one I found online, but made a few alterations to make it a little heavier, healthier, and to mix in the oats and sunflower seeds. 3.5 cups wheat flour, 3.5 cups bread flour, 1/3 cup applesauce (replacement for equal part oil in original recipe), 1/3 cup honey, 1 cup sunflower seeds, 1/2 cup quick cooking oats, 1 tsp salt, 1 packet active dry yeast, and roughly 3 cups of warm water (the original recipe called for 2 cups but I found this to be way too dry). First, mix the yeast and honey with 2 cups of the warm water and wait for it to begin to foam (5 minutes). While you are waiting for that, mix together the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl (I am fortunate enough to have a Kitchen-aid mixer so I use that with the bread hook to mix all of my bread doughs, but you can mix this by hand as well). Once you have the dry mix ready slowly work in the apple sauce (or oil), followed by the yeast/water mix and any additional water necessary to get it to dough consistency (I added about one more cup). Make sure you do this slowly and steadily so that it mixes evenly and you aren’t left with dry clumps in the dough. Once you have your dough ball put a towel over the bowl and let rise it in a dark, warm place until it doubles in size. The original recipe said this should take about 45 minutes to an hour, however mine took roughly 5 hours and even then it hadn’t quite doubled in size (my guess is that my yeast was a little old, but if you try this recipe let me know how long yours took). Once it has risen, punch down the dough and separate into two oiled (I use fat-free cooking spray) 9in by 5in bread pans. Let the dough rise again until it is 1 to 1 1/2 inches higher than the bread pan (I waited 2 more hours and called it good enough). Once the bread has risen (or you get tired and frustrated from waiting, like I did) bake the bread for 25-30 minutes at 375. Once it cools, you’re good to go.
Even though it took much longer than expected to rise, we thought the bread was pretty good. Next time I think I might add in a little more honey (you can taste it in this recipe, but barely), and possibly a little more apple sauce. You might consider drizzling some honey over the top of the bread as soon as it finishes baking to give the cruse a little extra sweetness as well. Our bread turned out a little dense and that may be because it didn’t quite rise as much as the recipe called for, but we tend to like our bread a little dense so we were happy with it. Although not as exotic as some of my other breads I’ve already used some of this to make hot and cold sandwiches, as well as toast, and all were delicious. This might actually become one of our everyday bread staples if I can figure out the rising issues, but even if I can’t make it rise faster I should be able to kick out a few loaves before dinner if I get the mix started first thing in the morning. Anyway, as always, if you try this recipe let me know how it turned out for you.
This is currently on instant Netflix, and if you have a little over an hour to kill and like light hearted documentaries you should check this out. It’s a documentary about parking lot attendants and the culture and philosophy that accompanies them. I thought it was a nice documentary and pretty entertaining to boot. Plus, it reminds me of the multiple summers I worked admissions at Buhr Pool (which, to date, was one of my favorite jobs I ever worked). Anyway, check it out.
