In 1972 I was in the south of France. I had eaten some bad fish and was in consequence rather ill. As I lay in bed I had a strange recurring vision, there, before me, was a concrete building like a hotel or council block. I could see into the rooms, each of which was continually scanned by an electronic eye. In the rooms were people, everyone of them preoccupied. In one room a person was looking into a mirror and in another a couple were making love but lovelessly, in a third a composer was listening to music through earphones. Around him there were banks of electronic equipment. But all was silence. Like everyone in his place he had been neutralized, made gray and anonymous. The scene was for me one of ordered desolation. It was as if I were looking into a place which had no heart. Next day when I felt better, I went to the beach. As I sat there a poem came to me. It began ‘I am the proprietor of the Penguin Cafe. I will tell you things at random.’
Category Archives: Food
Does your company actually need a security department?
Gunnar Peterson prompted us yesterday in Dark Reading with this provocative question:
Does your company actually need a security department? If you are doing CYA instead of CIA, the answer is probably no
It’s easy to agree with Gunnar when you read his analysis. He offers a false dichotomy fallacy.
Standing up a choice between only awful pointless policy wonks in management and brilliant diamonds found in engineering, it’s easy to make the choice he wants you to make. Choose diamonds, duh.
However, he does not explain why we should see security management as any more of a bureaucratic roadblock than any/all management, including the CEO. Review has value. Strategy has value. Sometimes.
The issue he really raises is one of business management. Reviewers have to listen to staff and work together with builders to make themselves (and therefore overall product/output) valuable. This is not a simple, let alone binary decision, and Gunnar doesn’t explain how to get the best of both worlds.
A similar line of thinking can be found by looking across all lines of management. I found recent discussion of the JAL recovery for example, addressing such issues, very insightful.
Note the title of the BBC article “Beer with boss Kazuo Inamori helps Japan Airlines revival”
My simple philosophy is to make all the staff happy….not to make shareholders happy
Imagine grabbing a six-pack of beer, sitting down with engineering and talking about security strategy, performing a review together to make engineers happy. That probably would solve Gunnar’s concerns, right? Mix diamonds with beer and imagine the possbilities…
Inamori had interesting things to say about management’s hand in the financial crisis and risk failures in 2009, before he started the turnaround of JAL
Top executives should manage their companies by earning reasonable profits through modesty, not arrogance, and taking care of employees, customers, business partners and all other stakeholders with a caring heart. I think it’s time for corporate CEOs of the capitalist society to be seriously questioned on whether they have these necessary qualities of leadership.
Gunnar says hold infosec managers accountable. Inamori says hold all managers accountable.
Only a few years later JAL under the lead of Inamori surged ahead in profit and is now close to leading the airline industry. What did Inamori build? He reviewed, nay audited, everything in order to help others build a better company.
An interesting tangent to this issue is a shift in IT management practices precipitated by cloud. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) options will force some to question whether they really need administrators within their IT department. Software as a Service (SaaS) may make some ask the same of developers. Once administrators and developers are gone, where is security?
Those who choose a public cloud model, and transition away from in-house resources, now also face a question of whether they should pursue a similar option for their security department. Technical staff often wear multiple hats but that option diminishes as cloud grows in influence.
In fact, once admin and dev technical staff are augmented or supplanted by cloud, the need for a security department to manage trust may be more necessary than ever. This is how the discrete need for a security department could in fact increase where none was perceived before — security as a service is becoming an interesting new development in cloud.
Bottom line: if you care about trust, whether you use shared staff or dedicated services, dedicated staff or shared services, you most likely need security. At the same time I agree with Gunnar that bad management is bad, so perhaps a simple solution is to build the budget to allow for a “beer” method of good security management.
I recommend an Audit Ale
This style had all but disappeared by the 1970s, but originated in the 1400s to be consumed when grades were handed out at Oxford and Cambridge universities…. At 8 percent ABV, it has helped celebrate many a good “audit” or soften the blow of a bad one.
This Day in History: 1900 Carrie Nation Vandalizes Wichita Saloon
Carrie Nation was married to an alcoholic and faced economic hardship. These apparently were a primary cause of her desperate attempts to ban alcohol in Kansas, although she claimed a religious pretense.
PBS provides this quote about Nation, said to be her self-description
…a bulldog running along at the feet of Jesus, barking at what he doesn’t like…
Her crusade, although based on her own struggles, also resonated with others who believed widespread use of alcohol during the Civil War (to boost morale, deaden pain or fight disease) was to blame for the “problem” of alcohol after conflict ended.
Reflecting upon those seeking temperance, and noting their arguments, [Confederate physician William Henry Taylor] wrote, “These may be formidable objections to the use of alcohol, but the military surgeon of my day would have thought that they were offset by the fact, demonstrated by innumerable instances, that it promptly rallies the deep sunk spirits of the wounded soldier, and snatches him from the jaws of imminent death.”
In reality, while General/President Grant was well-known for being the most heralded officer and leader in America and not afraid to take a drink, veterans were not necessarily more likely to drink and there were several economic and cultural factors that were behind the rise of alcohol consumption.
Heavy taxation ended after the war, which made alcohol more affordable. A huge boom of immigrants from Ireland and Germany brought a strong drinking culture with them in the mid-1800s. These two elements combined were a significant influence on the direction of American social customs by 1900. A large consumer base emerged and saloons opened and inexpensive beer was brewed to support them.
In this context Nation soon became famous for violent outbursts and her irreverence for damaging property. Few men dared challenge her strong-arm antics, which eventually helped ignite the prohibition movement.
The following newspaper clipping, found in the Kansas State Historical Society in Topeka, KS shows the headline “Carrie Nation Wages War”; from The Wichita Daily Eagle (1890-1906), December 28, 1900, Page 6, Image 6
Mrs. Carrie Nation of Medicine Lodge walked into the Carey annex and commenced the demolishing of the fixtures in that place. She was armed with two short pieces of iron. She also had some rocks.
In short, prohibition was an attempt by social conservatives to block changes in American culture, despite obvious underlying economic and cultural foundations. Today it is easy to see why prohibitionists not only failed to stop the trend towards consumption but actually refined American ingenuity to circumvent regulations.
National Eggnog Day
December 24 is a celebration in America of copying a recipe from Britain, making an inexpensive version of it, then proclaiming it as our own.
As with most things considered distinctly American, eggnog is a tweaked and tinkered version of an import. The story, as I heard it many years ago, is that a fashionable drink that grew during the Tudor dynasty (1485-1603) called syllabub was imported and renamed in America, as it died off in England.
The drink started with the fact that only the well-to-do of England before the 1700s could own cows and afford to drink milk fresh hot from the source let alone laced with exotic spices and expensive alcohol.
THE principal sale of milk from the cow is in St. James’s Park. The once fashionable drink known as syllabubs — the milk being drawn warm from the cow’s udder, upon a portion of wine, sugar, spice, — is now unknown.
The once fashionable celebratory drink is now unknown, says this person in 18th Century London. It was relegated to the recipe books such as the 1786 “Complete English Cook“, buried among the many other options.
What about Posset?
Some have written that Posset, not Syllabub, is the correct lineage for today’s celebratory drink. I find this to be a leap, given that London cookbooks of 1762 categorized Posset in this context:
I. Of Soups, Broths and Gravy.
II. Of Pancakes, Fritters, Possets, Tanseys
Pancakes, Fritters and Tanseys all are fried, which leaves Possets to be cooked into a curdled cream or even a custard.
Some have pointed to an even starker context: Shakespeare’s Macbeth reference to the posset as a healthy nightcap, a drink conveniently easy to poison before bed.
The doors are open, and the surfeited grooms
Do mock their charge with snores. I have drugg’d their possets
That death and nature do contend about them,
Whether they live or die.
The poison context seems a bit off. Spiced anything is easy to poison. Anyway the greater context is the “health” aspects of a posset, which were rooted in medieval times. Eating a cooked (sanitized) protein and alcohol slurry may have given the appearance of curing the sick because better than not eating at all. (From Eearly English Book Online “Food and Physick”, for which 18th Connect gives a sneak preview)
Another special Preservative: Take an Egge, make a hole in the top of it, take out the white, and the yolk, and fill the shell only with Saffron; roast the shell and Saffron together, in Embers of Charcole, untill the shell wax yellow; then beat shell and all together in a Morter, with half a spoonful of Mustard-Seed: Now so soon as any suspition is had of Infection, dissolve the weight of a French Crown, in ten spoonfulls of Posset-Ale, drink it luke-warm, and sweat upon it in your naked Bed
Enjoy your medicine. Yuck. In other words, the medicinal muck of a posset served in a person’s darkest hour, as they lay waiting for death, is unlikely to be a direct root for today’s party serving eggnog. There is a transition/fork at the very least from posset to syllabub, or perhaps a disconnect, when milk with spice and booze became fashionable for partying. A modern descendant of posset is more likely to be kumyss.
I mean syllabub, hot milk pulled from the udder and mixed with flavorings, is typically for celebration not solitary nightcaps or plagued deathbeds. Thus syllabub makes far more sense when you think about what you’re doing with eggnog today.
The demise and intellectual property transfer of syllabub
Serving syllabub at parties lost favor in England around the time its colony (e.g. America) was importing anything it could for celebratory significance. Dairy economics of the colonies were a key factor in transfer of high-brow beverage to common table. Privileged recipes of status in England easily were transformed into replicas with new resource abundances (also found with Cheddar cheese).
There was a small catch to the American colony use of syllabub. Import costs for fine wines and liquors forced change in the ingredients. Alcohol found easily on ships sailing in America — rum of the Caribbean — was an obvious substitute to start with. A more likely substitution later was based on variations of whiskey such as the corn-based bourbon (rum trade and imports were scuttled during the Revolution).
Americans became so accustomed to the English idea of a milk and spiced alcohol drink for celebrations, despite the decline in England, that an attempt at the US Army academy to regulate consumption in 1826 led to dangerous riots.
A few of the cadets took Thayer’s regulations [of eggnog] as a challenge and intended to outsmart the superintendent and his staff by having the best holiday celebration West Point had seen. The term “celebration” may not apply in this case, but the incident of the “Eggnog Riot” was something West Point had never experienced. At least seventy cadets took part in the shenanigans, resulting in assaults on two officers and destruction of North Barracks, as some of the students, in their inebriated state, had smashed several windows.
This level of anti-authority violence might need perspective. Consider how in the 1800s Americans carried forward another aristocratic tradition from England. The British Kingdom passed its Slavery Abolition Act in 1833. It took another 30 years and a bloody protracted Civil War started by the Southern states before America could abolish slavery. In 1913 a book called “Dishes and Beverages of The Old South” even recommended making syllabub as an “Old South” tradition for special occasions!
Harking back to the supper table – syllabub, as nearly as I recall, was made of thick cream lightly reinforced with stiffly beaten white of egg – one egg-white to each pint – sweetened, well flavored with sherry or Madeira wine, then whipped very stiff, and piled in a big bowl, also in goblets to set about the bowl…
Thus, today in America what we really celebrate is the commodity effect, aristocratic-like access made inexpensive, to fresh milk and alcohol. Eggnog is not the only product like this, borrowed and interpreted from the wealthy abroad without attribution. There are many others such as cheddar cheese mentioned above (officially only from the caves of Cheddar and at some point declared by a King the finest cheese in England).
Here’s a fun chart of eggnog showing up in menus over time in America, from the New York Public Library, where you can see price:
Isn’t big data amazing?
A new recipe
Given this history, here’s my simple recipe to celebrate America’s National Eggnog Day:
- Six Tbsp of Grassmilk
- Six grass-fed eggs
- Six cups of Wild Turkey 101 Rye
- 1 tsp fresh grated nutmeg
- 1 tsp black pepper
- 1Tbsp Grass-fed butter (Note: Irish butter is often cited as grass-fed. It really is only about 300 days a year of grass feed. German butter can be grass fed year round. An excellent alternative butter is from Yak)
Mix the milk, eggs and spices. Heat a saucepan with the butter. Pour the whiskey and hand remaining five cups to your guests. Take a sip of the whiskey. Pour the dairy mixture into the pan and wait until it’s cooked. Take another sip of the whiskey. Scramble the mixture in the pan, adding other ingredients as desired. Sip the whiskey. Serve scrambled eggs to your guests as you all enjoy your unspoilt American whiskey.
Now that’s American.
An old recipe
On the other hand, if you still think you want to drink the stuff of origin ala the Tudors (or at least the Victorian version of it, before it disappeared), the BBC offers this recipe from Mrs. Beeton’s 1861 “Book of Household Management”
- 570ml/1 pint sherry or white wine
- 1/2 grated nutmeg
- sugar to taste
- 900ml/1 1/2 pt milk
- Put the wine into a bowl, with the grated nutmeg and plenty of pounded sugar, and add it to the milk.
- Clouted cream may be held on the top, with pounded cinnamon or nutmeg and sugar; and a little brandy may be added to the wine before the milk is put in.
- In some countries, cider is substituted for the wine: when this is used, brandy must always be added. Warm milk may be poured on from a spouted jug or teapot; but it must be held very high.
…and just remember when she says jug or teapot that’s a reference to an aristocrat’s cow udder tended by his milk girl.
Don’t get me started on the security issues in trusting an aristocrat’s milk girl. Seriously, auditing milk girls for fraud was important business in old England. Milk often was diluted with water, for example, if the customer wasn’t watching carefully.
Instead of that hassle, just head out to a local dairy in America and ask if they will let you pull an udder for hot milk into a large bowl to celebrate Eggnog Day.
Bring this recipe and show it to the dairy:
Updated to add: Compare and contrast the original Syllabub with President Eisenhower’s Whitehouse cook book, which you can find in his archive today. Here’s a recipe for eggnog that prefers bourbon, “coffee cream” and doesn’t even mention spice until a garnish at the end.
