Stop Jupiter

I understand that the New Horizons craft used gravity assist from Jupiter to increase its speed on the way to Pluto. I also understand that by doing this, Jupiter slowed down very slightly. How many flyby runs would it take to stop Jupiter completely?

—Dillon

More than we can afford.

Spacecraft sometimes perform close flybys of heavy, fast-moving planets, which can let them gain speed without using fuel.[1]It may sound strange that you could gain speed by flying toward a planet and then away from it, since intuitively it seems like any speed you gain from flying toward it, you should lose flying away. But it's not really about gravity at all; gravity assists could work just as well with ropes or springs, if you could make them big enough. When you you fly toward a planet, swing around it, and fly back in the direction you came, it's as if you "bounced off" the planet. If the planet is moving, this bounce can give you an extra kick—like a tennis ball thrown at the windshield of a passing truck. You can check out What If #38 for details—or, at least, a drawing of the tennis ball thing. Due to conservation of momentum, the maneuver also slows the planet down very slightly, but no one really worries about that.

Planets don't slow down much during a flyby because they're so much heavier than spacecraft. When New Horizons flew by Jupiter, it gained about 4,000 m/s of velocity, while Jupiter lost about 10^-21 m/s.[2]The geometry is a little complicated, since they were changing both speed and direction. If you want to learn more, look for a copy of this paper; it's a great tutorial.

10^-21 meters per second may not sound like much, but it very slightly changed Jupiter's orbit, shortening its year and bringing it slightly closer to the Sun. Thanks to that flyby, by the time the Sun goes supernova, Jupiter's calendar will be several dozen nanoseconds out of sync from where it would be otherwise!

"Several dozen nanoseconds out of sync" isn't really satisfying, so we'll definitely need more than one flyby. How many can we pull off?

The New Horizons mission cost the US government about \$700,000,000 over the full planned lifetime of the mission from 2001 to 2016. Over that same period, the government spent about \$47,879,840,000,000 on other things. If we cut all the spending on those other things[3]It's probably nothing important. and funneled it all into New Horizons probes, we could have launched 68,000 identical New Horizons probes.

This would create some problems. For one, New Horizons carries a chunk of plutonium for power. This chunk—about 10 kg of it—was made from uranium in a reactor. To make enough plutonium for 68,000 New Horizons would require a substantial chunk of the world's uranium reserves.

But it gets worse.[4]It always seems to, with plutonium. When NASA launches a spacecraft carrying plutonium, they estimate the odds of a launch accident which would release radioactive material into the atmosphere. Usually, these odds are around 1 in 300. With 68,000 launches, then, we can expect a little over 200 nuclear accidents, which probably isn't good.

But it would all be worth it if we could slow down Jupiter! Sadly, 68,000 New Horizons probes aren't nearly enough. We'd still only rob Jupiter of a tiny fraction of its speed. Over the lifetime of the Solar System, the error in Jupiter's calendar would only add up to 2 milliseconds.

If we made the spacecraft cheaper, we could send more of them, but sooner or later we'd start running out of materials. We'd definitely run out of fuel for all these rocket launches, but let's assume we've built some kind of space elevator to make launches cheap. We'd run out of uranium (to make the plutonium) pretty quickly, but we could replace the uranium with a chunk of lead—after all, this spacecraft doesn't really need to work.

Eventually, though, we'd start running out of lead, too. If we replaced the lead with something else—say, rocks, or old garbage—we'd run out of that, too. At some point, in our desperate attempts to reduce Jupiter's forward speed, we'd be reduced to stuffing handfuls of rocks and dirt into a burlap sack with a NASA logo on the side.

Then, believe it or not, we would run out of rocks.

The Earth's crust only has so much stuff[5]This is the technical term. in it. Even if we peeled up the upper few dozen kilometers of crust and flung it at Jupiter—and for the record, I do not recommend we do this—it would trim less than a single mile per hour off Jupiter's speed.

Really, it makes sense that this plan doesn't work. Earth weighs a lot less than Jupiter,[6]Earth weighs almost exactly pi milliJupiters. so even if we throw the entire Earth at Jupiter, it would still only reduce Jupiter's speed by a fraction of a percent—on the order of a few dozen miles per hour. The situation is similar to the one in the tennis ball analogy from earlier: If you want to stop a truck with tennis balls, the tennis balls need more momentum than the truck, which means they need to be extremely heavy, fast, or both.

And at the core, that's the problem with this idea. Gravity assists are just like throwing a tennis ball at a speeding truck, and to stop a truck ...

... you need an awfully big tennis ball.

The best thing about cold weather? It’s the best excuse to make a big pot of soup or stew! This recipe is an Italian take on our standby cabbage soup. More a stew than a soup, it uses Savoy cabbage (you could also use Napa cabbage), which is milder than regular cabbage, Italian sausage, white beans, fresh parsley, and Parmesan cheese.

Continue reading "Italian Sausage and Cabbage Stew" »

In honor of the 162nd (or 154th!) anniversary of McSorley's... members of its militia were present to perform a musket salute... just as soon as everyone figured how to pay for parking...



Photos by EVG Musket and Powder Horn correspondent Derek Berg

The Rainbow Bagel phenomenon is swirling out of control. From ESPN's Super Bowl coverage to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the semi-sweet and multi-colored bagels have been showing up damn near everywhere—and its creators are scrambling to keep up with demand. [ more › ]

Two men were injured during violent muggings in Manhattan yesterday afternoon. The first happened outside a Soho clothing store, while the second was on an Upper West Side street. [ more › ]

Jack Gilbert

Biography
More poems by this author

This pet Mediterranean house gecko (Hemidactylus turcicus) that lives with Your Shot members Dariusz Kucharski and Kornelia Kucharska is a well-fed critter. Here, it pokes its head out from behind leaves in a colorful terrarium as its Warsaw-based owners drop live crickets into the enclosure.

This photo was submitted to Your Shot, our storytelling community where members can take part in photo assignments, get expert feedback, be published, and more. Join now >>

“Simplified City Map,” a cartoon by John Atkinson. [via]

A white tern flits through regenerating native forest on Cousine, a private island off the coast of Praslin and one of Seychelles’ ecological restoration successes. A luxury resort helps pay for the island’s conservation projects.

See more pictures from the March 2016 feature story "In the Seychelles, Taking Aim at Nature's Bullies."

As of

Maybe! Stay tuned...

 

 

Kanye West has been tweeting up a storm lately— about everything from his new album, to Wiz Khalifa, to the price of textbooks. One of Yeezy’s more surprising tweets was about how he is $53 million dollars in debt, which spawned…

The post Pizza Hut Trolls Kanye and Offers Him a Job After His Debt Rant appeared first on First We Feast.

Adele’s performance last night was undoubtedly moving, but far from perfect. Thanks to a mishap regarding the placement of her microphone, Adele sounded less like the singing powerhouse we know and love, and more like a nervous student at a talent…

The post Adele Treats Herself to In-N-Out After Grammy Performance Mishap appeared first on First We Feast.

In case you missed this news from yesterday… Summer Streets start next Saturday, as the headline implied…

Here's the official Summer Streets About:

Summer Streets is an annual celebration of New York City’s most valuable public space—our streets. On three consecutive Saturdays in August, nearly seven miles of NYC's streets are opened for people to play, run, walk and bike. Summer Streets provides space for healthy recreation and encourages New Yorkers to use more sustainable forms of transportation. In 2014, more than 300,000 people took advantage of the open streets.

Summer Streets is modeled on other events from around the world including Ciclovía in Bogotá, Colombia and the Paris Plage in France and has since inspired other such events around the world such as CicloRecreo Via and London’s Regent Street Summer Streets.

Held between 7:00 am to 1:00 pm, Summer Streets extends from the Brooklyn Bridge to Central Park, along Park Avenue and connecting streets, with easy access from all points in New York City, allowing participants to plan a trip as long or short as they wish. All activities at Summer Streets are free of charge, and designed for people of all ages and ability levels to share the streets respectfully.

For us here in Midtown South, the car-free, Street-Festival-Free zone includes Lafayette, Astor Place and Fourth Avenue…



And the pièce de résistance this year? A giant water slide in Foley Square via Slide the City…


[Random Slide the City photo via Slide the City]

Please note that you have to wait 30 minutes after eating before sliding.

ithelpstodream:

In Nepal they have a festival that honours dogs and thanks them for being our loyal furry friends.

The birth of Venus, Sandro Botticelli

The link is to a zoomable version on The Google Art Project; the original is in the Uffizi Gallery; there is a very hi-resolution downloadable file on Wikimedia Commons (Note that the full-resolution file on Wikimedia Commons is one of the largest I’ve seen on the web, over 200MB, and may choke your browser. You may want to download the file from the link rather than viewing it in a browser window.)

When I had the pleasure of visiting the city of Florence on a trip to Italy a few years ago, there were two paintings at the top of my “must see” list. Both were in the Uffiz Gallery — arguably the finest collection of Italian art anywhere — both were in the same room, and both were by the same artist, Renaissance master Sandro Bottecelli.

One was La Primavera, which I have written about previously, the other was The birth of Venus.

Like Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, The birth of Venus is such a cultural icon — so famous and familiar and set in our mental map of the world — that it’s difficult to see it as a painting.

The name was assigned after the fact by artist/historian Giorgio Vasari, and the painting might more properly be called “The arrival of Venus”, as it depicts the Roman goddess of love and beauty (and mother to Cupid) arriving at the shore, propelled by the breath of Zephyrus, the West Wind, and his companion Chloris, a nymph (minor deity). Waiting to cloak her in floral raiment is one of the Horae, or goddesses of seasons and nature. This one may be Flora, Goddess of Spring, and the subject of La Primavera, but all interpretation here is speculative.

This painting and La Primavera are often thought of as companion pieces. They have many similarities — both were likely commissioned by the Medici, both are of mythological subjects, laced with symbolism and meaning, and both are strikingly large and totally captivating when you stand in front of them.

The feeling and approach of The birth of Venus is quite different from La Primavera, which predates it by three or four years.

The dark, mysterious woods and more naturalistic figures of the latter are replaced by figures set in a soft, ethereal light, cast across the flat, calligraphically indicated surface of the sea.

The birth of Venus is roughly 6×9 feet (173×279 cm); and as much as I also was impressed with La Primavera (not to mention the other Botticelli works in the gallery, the rest of the museum’s astonishing collection), I found The birth of Venus entrancing as few paintings I’ve ever seen.

To someone familiar with the humanistic naturalism of the later Renaissance and subsequent centuries of painting, the painting is both wrong and completely right. The lovingly rendered figures are so stylized as to be anatomically impossible; allegory and iconography have swept away realism, and we are transported to the realm of the fantastic.

The beauty of Chloris and Venus is idealized, portrayed as otherworldly perfection. The face of the Hora, however — shown in striking profile — is another kind of perfection, having to my eye the hallmarks of a carefully studied portrait of a real individual.

It has been suggested that this figure (or even that of Venus) could be a likeness of Simonetta Vespucci, a Florentine noblewoman renowned for her beauty, and supposedly the subject of unrequited love on the part of Botticelli. There is little to substantiate this, but it makes for interesting speculation.

In the very high resolution images on Wikimedia Commons and the Google Art project, you can see the sensitive drawing-like characteristics of Botticelli’s painstaking application of egg tempera, particularly evident in the hands and the (sometimes oddly shaped) feet. What isn’t discernible in photographs, even those as high in resolution as this, is the captivating translucency and delicate textural qualities of the painted surface.

The birth of Venus was a landmark work, even in its own time. It was one of the first large scale works painted in Florence, and one of the earliest painted on canvas rather than wood panel. The painting deserves its reputation for beauty, and has earned its place in popular culture.

Port Authority Bus Terminal, a place with magnificent public bathrooms and a thriving criminal economy, is set to get a $7 to $10 billion facelift that will theoretically make it less terrible. And because everything is more fun when it's a contest, the Port Authority's opening up design submissions to international architects, with plans to choose the winner by September and complete construction in a little over a decade. At press time, the fate of the terminal's Auntie Anne's outpost remains unclear. [ more › ]

Hello dreamboat.

My current favorite thing, right here. It’s right up there! I want to faceplant into that bowl and resurface in four months when it’s sunny and hot outside. And preferably, I’ll be swimsuit ready.

This recipe is doing double duty today.

First, Valentine’s Day! This is the simplest and lightest meal that you can make for your loved one. Or WITH your loved one, if the idea doesn’t make you roll your eyes ten thousand times in the kitchen. (not I… not I.)

Second, when Lent rolls around I tend to share a few of the seafood recipes we are loving, mostly salmon. Even though there are quite a few tilapia recipes on my site, we haven’t eaten tilapia in probably over a year – but use those recipes I have for some other flakier, white fish. I was almost ready to share a new salmon recipe this week then I’m like NO. No no no no no no.

Get out of the box! I have a million salmon recipes here. We eat it often, but I wanted to share something else that we’ve been loving and eating at home. And it’s different. And shockingly, EASY!

Because you don’t have to cook it.

Okay, don’t freak out.

Funny story. The first time I ate actual sashimi was with Eddie. I don’t know if it was one of our first dates or in this limbo period where we were just talking but not necessarily dating – since a majority of this readership consists of millennials, tell me something. When you met your significant other for the first time, did you do one of the text-all-day things? When Eddie and I first exchanged numbers, we texted nonstop for days. In fact, for a few of those days I was on the west coast and three hours behind him – and I still remember texting him at 1AM pacific standard time, so 4AM eastern standard time. These days I can barely get him to stay awake until 10PM to watch a movie with me, whomp whomp.

Anyhoo – we did that texting thing a bunch before actually dating. I know, I said it was a millennial thing.

So on one of our real first dates, we ate sushi! I had eaten rolls before, but I don’t think I’d had pieces of raw fish, straight up, until that moment.

(I realize that there has never been a time when “funny story” is just a figure of speech as much as RIGHT NOW.)

And then.

Something terrible happened.

Eddie got the flu. But he got the flu a day after we ate sushi. I know you know where this is going.

It wasn’t the sushi that did it, he was truly sick. But since then, the thought of anything sushi related turns his stomach. It’s the WORST. For me, of course. That’s what this is all about, right?

But I get it. Earlier this year, on the day that I made this recipe, I got mastitis. I’ve never been so sick in my life and while that pasta was incredibly delicious, I can’t even look at the photos.

Universe, why did it have to happen with sushi though?

Luckily (for me, again), a year or two ago we ordered seared ahi tuna while out and Eddie actually ate it and loved it. LOVED it! I think it was the whole “seared” thing that sold him.

So with the promise of rice and a few other ingredients (and let’s face it: tortilla chips), I convinced him to taste this delicious tuna and fall back in love. At least for the time being. And he did just that, so much so that we ate it again for the Super Bowl Sunday night. Lots of tortilla chips involved in that sitch.

Let’s talk bowls!

The base is rice – whatever rice you want. I made sticky rice from short grain white rice I found at a local Asian grocery store but it was a bit of a process. You can use whatever you have on hand and most importantly, whatever you love! Making the rice is probably the most time consuming part of this entire recipe.

You want lots of flavor for the tuna, and I wildly adore toasted sesame oil. Mix some delicious ingredients together and toss the tuna in the mess for tons of flavor. Add some thinly sliced scallions and sesame seeds and you’re good to go! If you want to skip the rice, you can scoop it all up with tortilla chips.

YES.

BRB, need a chip.

Totally optional but incredible: adding chopped avocado and pineapple. Add those right before serving or eating. I like to do cucumber half moons and some seaweed salad if I have it. The easiest thing for me is to buy a seaweed salad packet and follow the directions, which usually just include rehydrating the seaweed and tossing it with some things you have on hand like the toasted sesame oil, soy sauce and rice vinegar. SO GOOD.

If you’ve never had a poke bowl or get freaked out at the idea of preparing this yourself, seriously – go buy the tortilla chips. Or even better: make them yourself. And scoop up every last bit of love!

i love you THISMUCH.

Temperatures are mercifully rising today, with a disorienting high of 58 forecast for this afternoon, but there's still plenty of ice out there on the sidewalks and streets this morning. Yours truly almost biffed several times on the way to work, and I saw one woman go down hard on Broadway in Williamsburg. Be sure to allow extra travel time to fall and fracture a hip. [ more › ]

Grub Street reports that more than 55 restaurants, bars, and hybrid food spaces are scheduled to open at Newark Liberty International Airport’s Terminal C, including spots from 24 A-list chefs like Alain Ducasse, Dan Kluger (former chef at ABC Kitchen and…

The post A-List Chefs Will Open Restaurants in Newark Airport’s Terminal C appeared first on First We Feast.

Five people are facing criminal charges in connection to the massive explosion that rocked the East Village last spring, a blast that leveled three buildings, caused dozens of injuries, and killed two people. Speaking at a press conference Thursday morning, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance named general contractor Dilber Kukic, building owner Maria Hrynenko, her son and building facilities manager Michael Hrynenko, along with two plumbers, Athanasios Ionnidis and Andrew Trombettas, as directly responsible for the catastrophic blast. All five were taken into custody Thursday morning. [ more › ]

One of the biggest efforts the Federal Reserve has ever embarked on — a $1.6 trillion bond-buying program to stimulate the U.S. economy known as the third round of quantitative easing — is coming to an end next month. Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen will likely discuss it Wednesday, when she presents the Fed’s latest economic forecast. Economists will be discussing it for decades.

That’s because the program, dubbed QE3, was unprecedented. It wasn’t about spending money to get the U.S. out of a financial crisis or to prevent a double-dip recession. (Those were the goals of QE1 and QE2.) Rather, it was about spending money to give the weak economic recovery a boost.

The program, which began in September 2012, has had its advocates and its critics. Advocates say the Fed’s massive intervention in the bond market helped create jobs and was an important signal to American consumers and investors that the economic recovery, which began in 2009, would continue. Critics, however, say the costs of the program weren’t worth the benefits — that the Fed’s intervention exacerbated economic inequality and created new bubbles in stocks and bonds, while adding few jobs.

It’s too early to judge which side is right, but it’s still a useful exercise to review what has happened in the U.S. economy as the Fed has added $786 billion in Treasury bonds and $835 billion in mortgage-backed securities to its balance sheet.¹³

One of the chief goals of QE3 was to boost the labor market. Since the program’s launch, the unemployment rate has declined by 2 percentage points to 6.1 percent in August. If you include people who dropped out of the labor force because they were discouraged and people who are now working part time but would rather be working full time — a broader measure of unemployment called U-6 — then the unemployment rate has declined to 12.1 percent from 14.7 percent.

How does the Fed’s program of buying bonds boost jobs? The theory is that the Fed going out and buying a massive amount of long-term bonds drives down long-term interest rates. Lower interest rates encourage people to buy homes and cars and use their credit cards. They also compel companies to borrow more money, invest that money back into their businesses, and potentially hire more workers.

So what happened to interest rates over the course of QE3?

Interest rates since September 2012 have gone up. The 10-year Treasury rate has risen to about 2.5 percent from 1.7 percent, and the 30-year mortgage rate is up to 4.1 percent from 3.5 percent.

To some QE3 critics, this is evidence that the program has been a failure. Its supporters, however, say that higher interest rates often come with an improving economy.

QE3 may have also affected other rates. In 2012, consumers borrowed money from banks, mostly to buy cars, at an average interest rate of 4.9 percent. That rate had dropped to 4.5 percent as of May of this year. The average credit card interest rate also fell slightly during the same time period — to 11.8 percent from 12.1 percent.

Businesses have also benefited from lower rates during QE3. Evidence of this can be seen in the “spread” between companies’ cost of borrowing and Treasury yields.

To advocates of the Fed’s program, lower interest rates and shrinking bond spreads are good news for the U.S. economy because they compel Americans to spend and invest. The program’s critics argue that these lower rates have encouraged investors to engage in speculative activity — whether in stock or bond markets — creating new “bubbles” that will come back to haunt the economy.

So did the lower interest rates compel Americans to spend and invest? It appears so. During the QE3 era, home sales, though volatile, have increased and automobile sales have soared. And the S&P 500 is up 38 percent since September 2012, above the long-run average.

Amidst all this spending, how have household earnings fared? The latest Survey of Consumer Finances showed that the typical household’s income fell by 5 percent (after adjusting for inflation) from 2010 to 2013 — which covers all of QE2 and the bulk of QE3.

And economic inequality rose. Because the rich tend to hold a greater percentage of their assets in stocks, and stock prices rose, 2013 saw a widening disparity in wealth.

Critics of QE3 have also worried about inflation. With the Fed effectively printing money to buy $1.6 trillion in bonds, and all this money sloshing around, the prices of all sorts of goods and services could increase, and nullify whatever stimulative effect the program was supposed to have. However, inflation rates have barely budged and remain below the Fed’s 2 percent target, and inflation expectations are stable. This “inflation hysteria” has not materialized, QE3 supporters say; not yet, say the critics.

Up until now, much of the academic research examining the impact of the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing programs have focused on the second round, QE2.¹⁴ Because QE3 has been ongoing, and the Fed never specified how much in bonds it would purchase at the outset, researchers haven’t been able to pin down exactly the quantity of the easing, so to speak.

Few economists doubt the economy is on better footing today than two years ago. But the debate over whether QE3 should get some of the credit for this improvement — or blame for festering problems that could plague us later — will undoubtedly continue to rage on.

Life right now is boxes. Cardboard boxes upon cardboard boxes, and tons of filler paper. My new job had me professionally moved, which (I've never done before and) involved three guys showing up at my front door one day, basically packing my entire life into who knows how many cardboard boxes and driving off with it in their truck. Then, the next day, they delivered and piled the boxes up to the ceiling, and here I am, nearly a week later, still opening boxes and attempting to figure out why DVDs and brown sugar ended up in the same box, and where in the heck is my salt?

In the midst of excavating myself out of seemingly endless Everests of cardboard and paper, there was a ring of my doorbell at 9am on Sunday morning.... which totally caught me by surprise, since I ... sort of don't really know anyone here yet? I open the door in my crappy these-are-the-clothes-I've-managed-to-unpack-and-I-also-haven't-brushed-my-hair-for-two-days-because-one-doesn't-have-to-look-good-for-cardboard-boxes state, and there I find a old lady with a fantastic blue and yellow caftan flowing in the breeze looking at me.

"I'm your neighbor! The previous tenants wrote to me to tell me I was getting a new neighbor. --So, here.", and she holds up at me the most gigantic bag of plump, overly juicy, bright neon green and dark, dark bluish-purple figs that I've ever seen.

It turns out that my new neighbor is this fascinating woman who not only has friends with over-flowing fig fruit trees, but also used to be a gourmet cook in SF who has cooked with the likes of James Beard before. Like, whaaaaa? Cooked with James Beard?! She then proceeds to walk into my house and look at my piano, and then she turns to my vibraphone--which everyone always annoying and very mistakingly calls a "xylophone"--and comments, "Oh! A vibraphone!" Then, she goes on to talk about her love of Chinese antiques and cookware and how she used to have a 300-strong cookbook collection....  You guuuyyys, I can't believe this is my new neighbor. She had me at figs.


Of course, the natural reaction when presented with an enormous bag of plump, nearly-overripe figs is to bake with them.... amiright? At that point, I had managed to unearth a few tart pans and my food processor, and some nuts and flour, and one of my pepper grinders, so a fig pistachio tart with a black pepper crust, it was! The insides of the figs were so beautifully ripe that they sort of made the tart taste as though it was laced with caramel. The pistachio lends the tart a savory tinge, as does the spicy kick of cracked black pepper in the crust. For a glaze, I used some ginger jam I had in the fridge, which helped to brighten up the whole affair--the more traditional, apricot jam would work as well. If desired, serve with a heaping scoop of whipped cream.


A few hours after my neighbor's first visit, I did what good neighbors are supposed to do. I returned a few figs to her--in tart form, of course.



Read on for recipe....


Fig Pistachio Frangipane Tart
makes two 6-inch round tarts, or one 9-inch round tart

for pistachio fragipane:
3/4 cup toasted and unsalted pistachios
2 tspn all-purpose flour
1 tspn cornstarch
2/3 cup sugar
6 Tbspn butter, at room temperature
1 tspn vanilla extract
1 tspn orange flower water
1 tspn almond extract
1 large egg + 1 large egg white

1. In a food processor, combine the pistachios, flour, and cornstarch. Grind finely.
2. Add the sugar, butter, vanilla, orange flower water, and almond extract to the ground pistachios. Pulse to blend.
3. Blend the egg and egg white into the pistachio paste just until the mixture is smooth.
4. Transfer the paste to a bowl, cover, and refrigerate for two to three hours.

for black pepper pastry crust:
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/8 - 1/4 tspn fresh ground black pepper (add 1/8 tspn for just a hint, 1/4 tspn for a stronger taste of pepper)
1/4 cup sugar
7 Tbspn ice cold butter, cut in pieces
1 egg yolk
1/2 Tbspn almond extract
4-7 tspn water

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.
2. Combine the flour, pepper, sugar, and butter in a food processor. Process just until the butter is the size of small peas.
3. Add the egg yolk and almond extract. Pulse to combine.
4. Slowly add the water one teaspoon at a time, pulsing in between, just until a dough starts to come together. The dough is ready when it holds together when you press it between two fingers. Do not overmix.
5. Remove the pastry dough from the food processor bowl. Form a disc, wrap with parchment paper or plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes, until cold.
6. Roll out the pastry to 1/8-inch thickness, and transfer to the tart pans. Trim off and discard the excess dough.
7. Chill the dough in the tart pans in the freezer for about 20 - 30 minutes, until cold.
8. Using a fork, prick the bottoms of the pastries several times. Top with a layer of parchment paper and fill with pie weights (e.g., dried beans or uncooked rice).
9. Bake in the oven for about 15 minutes until the dough begins to turn golden. Remove and let cool.

for assembly and final baking:
about 16 - 20 fresh figs, cut in half from top to bottom
jam, either ginger or apricot

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Spoon the fragipane into the baked tart shells utnil about 3/4 full and smooth with the back of a spoon.
3. Arrange the cut fig halves on top of the frangipane filling. The filling will puff up during baking, so a denser arrangement is better, and there's no need to press the figs down into the filling.
4. Bake for 40 - 50 minutes, until the frangipane is puffed and firm to the touch and the edges are golden brown.
5. Remove the tarts from the oven and let cool on a wire rack.
6. Heat a tablespoon or two of the jam until liquid. Using a pastry brush, brush a thin layer of the jam glaze onto the cooled tarts, particularly on the exposed frangipane portions.




Enjoy!

This past August, Mayor de Blasio announced the creation of NYC Safe, a $22 million initiative that promised an “unprecedented partnership between law enforcement and health care agencies” to help New Yorkers suffering from mental illness. [ more › ]

California artist Ken Auster started his artistic career with poster and t-shirt graphics in the milieu of 1960s surfing culture. He went on from there to plain air painting, and established his signature subject choices of streetcars, contemporary surfing scenes, California landscapes and restaurant interiors.

All were approached with bold brush work, vibrant color and strongly geometric compositions. I particularly love his interior scenes of the St Regis Bar in NY that incorporate the famous restaurant murals of Maxfield Parrish (above, bottom two).

Auster died on January 29 a the age of 66.

For more, see my previous posts on Ken Auster, and his book, Ken Auster: Intellect and Passion.

Across the globe, snow blankets the landscape, giving photographers a new perspective on their surroundings. -- By Leanne Burden Seidel

A pedestrian crosses a road in Boston amid light traffic during a storm. (Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff)

A teenage girl had the absolute worst bus experience last month. [ more › ]

If, over the past weekend, you found yourself ruminating on the mysteries of life as you strolled down Bedford Avenue, your existential contemplation may have been interrupted by a massive horde of crazed zombies bagel-loving tourists. Lines outside of The Bagel Store's Southside Williamsburg outpost stretched almost halfway down South Fourth Street toward Driggs Avenue, with nearly 100 souls clamoring for a nibble at any given time. [ more › ]