Ryan Byrd’s Ramblings

Recently, at a birthday party, I was introduced to a girl named Miranda. She probably didn’t remark my keen interest in her namesake. “You have the right to remain silent”, I blurted,  nearly yelling.  She smiled awkwardly, glancing around nervously. “Have you heard about the story of ‘ol Ernesto Arturo Miranda”, I queried, oblivious of my recent social gaff.  She hadn’t, so I launched into a historical monologue (as her eyes glazed over.) “One thing you should know”, I told her, “is that Ernesto was a bad man. A very bad man.” But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Ernesto Miranda was an eighth grade drop out with an lengthy criminal history.  In March of  1963, he was arrested for the kidnap and rape of a mildly retarded 18-year-old woman at a bus stop.  He was taken to a police station where a witness identified him.

At the police station, Ernesto confessed without having been told of his constitutional right to remain silent, and his right to have an attorney present during questioning. He was subsequently found guilty by a jury based on this confession. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court where the court ruled (Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436) that Miranda did not understand his right not to incriminate himself or his right to counsel. On this basis, they overturned his conviction. Miranda was retried without his confession introduced as evidence and convicted of a lesser crime. He was sentenced to eleven years, but served only one-third of that time before being paroled in 1972.

After several other returns to prison on other charges, he was stabbed to death during a bar fight in 1976.   The suspect was arrested, but he chose to exercise his right to remain silent after being read his Miranda rights.  The suspect was released, and no one was ever charged with the murder. Ernesto was just 34.

And that, my friends, is karma. Can’t outrun it. Can’t hide from it.

CERN is pretty cool. When I was over in Switzerland in ’99 I took a tour. Besides being home to half of the world’s nuclear physicists and operator of giant particle colliders, CERN was also the birthplace of the World Wide Web, after Tim Berners-Lee created the first web server back in ’90 (you can see that old computer there, too). Did I leave the organized tour and sneak into off-limits research areas while at CERN? It’s hard to say…

Anyway, there’s this new CERN rap video going round the ‘net. Have you seen it yet?

Is this how Irish river dancers get their start?

People are always forwarding me lists of “funny pics” and well, occasionally, a few of them are funny. I’ve thrown some of the better ones into a gallery for you. Enjoy.

Loyal RBDN fans know about these funny billboards and pics too.

Go ahead, click the image. Then place your mouse cursor on the right hand side of the image on the new page.

The American Dream, for many, is to get fabulously wealthy (without working too hard for too long), and then to spend one’s days in a lazy life of luxury. So… how do you know when you’ve arrived? That is, what does it cost to live extremely well? Fortunately, our friends over at Forbes keep track of the cost of typical rich-people items, they’ve even named the index CLEWI (Cost of Living Extremely Well Index.) As you might imagine, it roughly follows the overall Consumer Price Index (CPI), in that when the CPI goes up, so does the CLEWI. As you can see in the chart, however, the CLEWI has been rising more quickly than the CPI in recent years. That’s bad news, really, because it means that you’re trying to hit a moving target. Oh well, let the rat race continue! Here are a list of items included on the CLEWI, their prices and the percent of recent change in those prices.

• Natural Russian sable coat (Maximilian at Bloomingdale’s), $225,000, 18% change from 2006
• Bill Blass Ltd. classic silk dress, $1,975, 5%
• Gucci Loafers, $445, 9%
• 1-year tuition at Harvard, room, board, insurance, $45,620, 5%
• Two tickets, eight performances Metropolitan Opera, Saturday night, parterre box, $5,760, 6%
• 1 kilo Imperial Special Reserve Persicus Caviar, $9,800, 0%
• Dom Perignon, case, $1,679, 8%
• Steinway & Sons concert grand Piano, Model D, ebonized, $107,100, 4%
• Face-lift from American Academy of Facial Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery, $17,000, 17%
• 1 oz. Joy Perfume, by Jean Patou, $400, 0%
• Thoroughbred Yearling, average price, Fasig-Tipton Saratoga summer sale, $289,310, -11%
• Learjet 40XR, standard equipment, certified, 7 passengers, $9,032,000, 3%
• Sikorsky S-76C++ Helicopter, VIP options, $11,775,000, 7%
• Rolls-Royce Phantom, $340,000, 2%
• Patek Philippe classic men’s Watch in gold (Calatrava), alligator strap, $19,200, 9%

UPDATE: it’s been five minutes and I’ve already been contacted three times by concerned parties about the nature of this blog post. No, I’m not an alcoholic. It’s my understanding that lighting the rum on fire in a boiling sauce is enough to cook out the alcohol.

A lot of you know that I’ve taken up cooking lately. Some day I’ll go to chef school. Until then, I’ll continue to dabble. I’ve had several requests for some of my favorite alcohol-flavored dishes. Here’s one that’s as fun to make as it is good to eat. Plus, you get to go to the State Liquor store, which is exciting if you’re a teetotaler like myself.

At the Liquor store, pick up a small bottle of Rum. It should cost less than 7 dollars. There are lots of types of Rum: Light, Dark and Flavored. For this dessert, you’ll need dark rum. Dark rum is honey colored. I prefer Bacardi Anejo, which is a bit more expensive than others, but provides a great taste. Any dark rum should do, however.

• Turn heat to medium on a large sauce pan
• Add 1/2 cup of brown sugar, a tablespoon or so of vanilla extract, and a 1/4 of a stick of butter
• Wait until the sugar and butter melt
• Add in a teaspoon or two of cinnamon, a pinch of nutmeg, and a pinch of salt
• Stir it all together
• Peel and cut in half bananas before slicing them down the middle
• Lay the banana slabs into the liquid, spooning the sauce over the bananas to coat them
• Cook for a few minutes, maybe 5 or so, until the bananas soften. The sauce will begin to boil
• Add 1/2 cup of dark Bacardi rum
• Use a match to light the rum on fire
• The rum will burn with a nice flame for 10-15 seconds (this is the cool part, maybe turn the lights down low)
• Spoon some more of the sauce over the bananas
• Prepare bowls of vanilla ice cream, and add the bananas with sauce (this is called “plating”, so be artistic!)

Enjoy!

(Banana Flambe is also sometimes called Banana Foster)

• American accent quiz
• Chocolate chip cookies cause bad decisions (“Female study participants in a room with a hidden chocolate-chip cookie scented candle were much more likely to make an unplanned purchase of a new sweater — even when told they were on a tight budget — than those randomly assigned to a room with a hidden unscented candle (67 percent vs. 17 percent).”)
• Wedding First Dance Video
• Getting out of Debt, SNL style
• Marrying for Money

My new friend Dawn just wrote in with this fantastic quiz. Go find out your nerdness level: