Here: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/25/books/review/25leonard.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=james%20agee%20john%20leonard&st=cse
Articles on a deadly pilgrimage to observe a Lingam in which hundreds died, on Hurricane Katrina and theodicies:
"But between medieval Europe and contemporary America something profound changed in the way natural disasters are interpreted and the kinds of theodicies they inspire. And one of the turning points, as many scholars have argued, was the 1755 earthquake in Lisbon. It destroyed perhaps a third of the city's population, with deaths in the tens of thousands. It overturned the confidence of European royalty and seemed to drive a wedge between the earthly and divine realms.
For the growing forces of the Enlightenment, it also seemed to overturn the very idea that a theodicy could account for the disaster. Voltaire, who had once seen nature as benevolent, was whipped into a rationalist fury by the experience. Leibniz, he believed, had been refuted by nature. Voltaire wrote a "Poem on the Disaster of Lisbon" in which the quake's victims are called "Tormented atoms on a heap of muck/ That death devours and that fate trips up." His character Candide watches the earthquake from a distance, seeing it as morally blind, killing the good and preserving the wicked.
In a sense, the earthquake actually ended up strengthening the hand of the Enlightenment, as if a replacement theodicy had fallen into place. Kant wrote about the quake. Scientific investigation took place. The response of Portugal's prime minister to the disaster was practical, not religious. "We will bury the dead," he said, "and take care of the living."
Recently, the philosopher Susan Neiman argued in "Evil in Modern Thought" that the Lisbon earthquake also destroyed an ancient idea that nature could itself be evil. After Lisbon, she argued, moral evil was distinguished from natural disaster. Earthquakes and floods could no longer be fitted into traditional religious theodicies."
The rest here: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/08/books/08dest.html?pagewanted=1&sq=seeking%20justice%20rothstein&st=cse&scp=1
on the perfect french fry:
'He uses Idaho potatoes, which the cooks peel, soak in refrigerated water for eight hours, cut into long thin sticks and soak for eight hours more before frying. The soaking, Mr. Nasr said, is the secret to the crisp texture of the fries. It draws out the starch, making them more rigid and less likely to stick together. The cooks fry them twice, first blanching them until slightly limp in peanut oil heated to 325 degrees, and again in 375-degree oil to crisp and brown them.
I addressed the ingredients, first and foremost the potatoes. I had always considered the Idaho potato -- its proper name is Russet Burbank -- plebeian, something that large growers pushed on the American public because it was cheap to grow and high in yield. Baked, it has about as much appeal as ground-up chalk.
But almost every chef I spoke with used it. And I discovered myself that it does have a greater purpose when fried in oil. Its interior expands like a souffle and turns creamy, and its exterior becomes crispy before absorbing too much oil. And coloring the outside, which means caramelizing the potato's sugars, gives it just the right bitterness. French fries need a touch of bitterness and loamy flavor, smoothed out with fat.
When a potato is deep-fried, its water content is replaced by the fat; you want a potato that has more solids than liquids, so it absorbs less oil.
The rest here:
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/05/dining/deep-secrets-making-perfect-fry-potato-moment-often-soggy-disappointment-time.html?scp=1&sq=its%20proper%20name%20is%20russet%20burbank&st=cse
