"I shall achieve my objectives through the power... of Science!"

I'm not usually that excited about fanfic, but ukelele recently pointed me to a fabulous story: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. The title nicely summarizes the basic idea: what if Harry's childhood had been spent learning science and logical reasoning instead of being abused and locked in a cupboard? The early chapters are quite funny, as Harry asks a bunch of the questions that I would have asked in his place (and many that I wouldn't have, especially at age 11: there's a lot of me in this Harry, but he's probably smarter than I am). There are some funny personal interactions, too; a particularly good exchange shows up in Chapter 5.

But by the most recent installments, a real story has been taking shape (though the earlier chapters were thoroughly laying its groundwork). It's far from complete and it will probably wind up being at least a full novel's worth once it's finished, but I'm thoroughly enjoying it. Have a look!

Edit: Just to be clear, there's a lot of this Harry that's not me, too. : )

Yum

Risotto alla Milanese is absolutely delicious.

That is all.


(Ok, one question: Anyone out there know what "1/4 teaspoon" of saffron threads actually means? I generally measure a heaping 1/4 teaspoon of threads without compressing them at all and that works out fine, but I've always wondered what my recipes are actually trying to tell me. Surely there's a way to convert that to some rough number of threads?)