a whirlwind engagement

We're getting married today! 

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Spanische Windtorte

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When I was young, my mother had a nearly-complete set of the Time-Life Foods of the World cookbooks. Although the recipes in these were not, as a rule, very good, I was much taken with the photo on the cover of The Cooking of Vienna's Empire -- a Spanish Windtorte. I told my mother that I wanted one for my birthday cake. I had not grasped quite how difficult they were to build. I think we wound up with more of a Pavlova instead. The thing is, a Spanische Windtorte is almost exactly the same thing as a pavlova, only with a fancier-shaped meringue. So, when I set out to make one again yesterday, I used a combination of this Pavlova recipe and these Spanische Windtorte instructions . I increased the quantities in the pavlova recipe by about 1/3, and, in the final step, did not macerate the fruit but rather mixed it with sugar immediately before adding it to the whipped cream mixture... but I'm getting ahead of myself. Making the meringue was fairly straightforward, except that...
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Scene Checklist

Character-Conflict-Change Scene protagonist: Who is he/she? What does he/she want? How does he/she feel? What actions does he/she take to reach the goal? Scene antagonist: Who is he/she/it? What does he/she/it want? How does he/she/it feel? What actions does he/she/it take to reach goal? Other characters: Role in scene? Is each necessary? Distinct as an individual? Is the conflict strong and/or clear enough? What is the worst thing that could happen in this scene? Scene-Setting-Senses-Story What does the reader learn about the story’s world in this scene? Do they need to know that information at this point? Can any information be held off until later? Is any necessary information missing? Does the reader get a vivid, multi-sensory sense of the setting? Does the setting contribute to scene tension? Are the character’s senses and emotions engaged? Does the scene stop at a point with forward momentum? Do you want to turn the page to the next scene? If not, can you end the ...
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Life and Death since the Paleolithic: Part 2

Demands of different lifestyles and adjustment stages . This morning I found myself thinking about the future of our species, and of life on earth. It followed from what I was writing about yesterday, the way we used to be just one species among many others and have expanded to conquer vast territories beyond our original ecological niche. We’ve made big, disastrous changes to the planet, and we might not survive that long, certainly not in our current numbers, with our current way of life. We’re at a transition between stages of our progress, and it’s a crisis that could prove catastrophic. I was thinking, too, about how some countries and communities are worried about declining birth rates. I don’t think it’s a problem, not in terms of species survival. If only a tiny percentage of us continue to reproduce, we will still go on. Homo sapiens were almost wiped out more than once in ancient pre-history ( https://io9.gizmodo.com/close-calls-three-times-when-th...
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