January 14, 2013

Sotomayor, the college years.



One slide in a long, narrated slideshow at NPR.com. I picked that one out because it's so different from the others and from every other photo I've ever seen of Sotomayor. NPR did the article to go with Justice Sotomayor's new autobiography, "My Beloved World."

33 comments:

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Oh my god! She cooks!

I guess this is the proof that conservatives need that she's really a woman.

Michael K said...

She cooks ! How will she ever live that down ?

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

She won't have to, Michael Kk.

When she waves the frying pan around it's a shield against Republicans poking around to find out what's going on in her lady parts.

Irene said...

Chopsticks.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Chopsticks!? Who brought Sharon Angle into all this?

Shouting Thomas said...

Not a bad family album kind of thing.

Not so different from the way my Italian friends grew up in the Bronx in the 50s.

And, not done in Flash!

traditionalguy said...

Sonia is a very sensitive person. That she made it through college and then law school and onto Courts and finally the Supreme Court is a testimony to the strength of a person who had to overcome a handicap early in life.

And believe me, diabetes as a young woman is a terrible handicap to be overcome emotionally as much as physically. Marriage and child bearing become a serious worry to the teenage diabetic woman.

Her appointment may be the best thing that Obama has done...or maybe the only good thing.

And remember she is descended from brave and wise Catholic Spaniards that Admiral Columbus brought to the New World 120 years before a few hundred simple minded Englishmen landed at Jamestown and Cape Cod.

Chip S. said...

The stupid gringos at NPR writing the photo captions seem to think that "Abuelita" was her grandmother's actual name.

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

LOVE the picture of her mother and the hula hoop.

Darrell said...

Using an aluminum pan is unforgiveable.

Palladian said...

Using an aluminum pan is unforgiveable.

All professional cooks use aluminum pans. Aluminum and copper are the best heat conductors used in the construction of cooking pots.

Wince said...

"'My Beloved World', Chico... and Everything In It."

Dante said...

She looks like a nice person, like someone I might want to meet.

Not like "Wise Latina," which for some reason completely beyond me evokes the image of a small hut in Mexico, and an old woman looking over her glasses, and down her nose critically at her twenties something delinquent grandsons, who are on the brutal side. There is a small bathroom with brown rings in it, and that has a stench of urine.

Don't blame me for this odd image: it is unbidden and probably comes from Hollywood.

The girl in Ann's picture looks like a pleasant, young all American college girl, a bit on the introverted side, but ready to interface to a big world.

Laura said...
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Darrell said...

Aluminum stains with acids and look up the suspected links with Alzheimer's disease and dementia. Commercial stoves have the heat ouput that makes conduction one of the lesser considerations. Copper is great in cases requiring the chemical reaction needed to produce rapid stiff peaks with egg whites and whipping cream. Porfessional cooks use stainless with thick copper or aluminum sealed cores. Easy cleaning, great heat conduction.

Dante said...
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Darrell said...

To make it clear, I am not saying that the use of aluminum pans causes Alzheimer's disease and dementia. In the 1980s, it was noted that the brains of Alzheimer's patients showed higher levels of aluminum than the brains of those with no mention of Alzheimer's disease or dementia when a chemical assay was performed. Much higher. It was just a curiosity at that point and it still is. It may have something to do with this cause or it may just be an artifact coincidental to the process. Some biochemists have tried to speculate what the link could be, but as far as I saw, their work concerned all metals, not just aluminum. I would like to see research into properties unique to aluminum and body/brain chemistry before moving toward any conclusion. More has to be known about the entire Alzheimer's process and progression, as well.

Dante said...

Darrell:

My father has worked as a consultant to big pharma, and has consulted with the FDA for many years. I learned some basic chemistry, and found that an aluminum pot we had was undergoing some redux reaction, which meant the aluminum was entering the concoctions we were making for eating in college.

I asked him what he thought, since I wasn't cleaning it too much anymore (as in removing the oxidation), and he had a big pause, then he said "I'd clean it (bright) anyway)."

Of course, he doesn't think much of the EPA's second hand smoke ruling, nor the Global Warming hysteria, so perhaps he is on the wrong side of history.

Dante said...
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Dante said...

I doubt that picture Ann posted is the actual Sotomayor. Even the young pictures of her track to the older ones, and a self possession seems apparent even from the very early years.

It also seems like at some point she went down the road to thinking "Can I be beautiful?" But wisely gave up on that idea.

The girl spooning the food exudes grace, self introspection, and awareness of others thoughts. The very young one, and every other ones seems to be quite concerned about the outward appearance to the exclusion of any non-self centered thought process.

Hey, maybe she died her hair and faked it. But I can't see the grace in the real Sotomayor. I wish I could be convinced entirely that was Sotomayor, because then I would think differently about people, and they way I interpret them from their photos.

Palladian said...

Aluminum stains with acids and look up the suspected links with Alzheimer's disease and dementia.

There have been absolutely no studies (since this canard was touted by the popular press in the 1970s) that link everyday contact with aluminum goods and Alzheimer's disease.

Commercial stoves have the heat ouput that makes conduction one of the lesser considerations.

Nonsense. Conduction is critical when doing precise cooking, especially sautéing, egg cookery, etc. The issue is not with the quantity of heat conducted through the pan, but how controllable it is. A pan with good conduction (like copper and aluminum) is very easy to control because the pan has less "hot spots". Such pans are also very responsive to being moved onto, off of and around the heat source, giving the chef the ability to regulate and stop cooking very quickly.

Copper is great in cases requiring the chemical reaction needed to produce rapid stiff peaks with egg whites and whipping cream.

Copper is great in most cases. I have a batterie de cuisine that includes pans from the 18th to the 20th century, all of which (except for the egg white bowls, per your example, and the sugar pan) are copper with a wash of tin or other non-reactive metal to protect the food from contamination with copper acetates and other copper contaminants. I have a couple of newer French copper pans that have stainless steel linings instead of tin, but I don't like them as much because they're needlessly heavy, too expensive and not as responsive to heat variations as the tin-lined copper. The only advantage to using INOX instead of tin to coat copper pans is that it's more durable and can withstand higher direct heat, and there are few people who know how to re-tin copper anymore.

Porfessional cooks use stainless with thick copper or aluminum sealed cores. Easy cleaning, great heat conduction.

It depends on the pan. Go to any commercial kitchen and you will find a host of pans, from stock pots to sauce pans, that are 100% percent aluminum. The only time uncoated aluminum is not used is for acidic foods and for high-temperature cooking, in which case chefs often use plain steel pans, which conduct heat better than stainless, are lighter and, most importantly, cheaper than the INOX-clad pans you're describing.

edutcher said...

She's buffed up.

Palladian said...

Aluminum stains with acids and look up the suspected links with Alzheimer's disease and dementia.

There have been absolutely no studies (since this canard was touted by the popular press in the 1970s) that link everyday contact with aluminum goods and Alzheimer's disease.


The Blonde, whose medical knowledge might be better, demurs.

AllenS said...

Aluminum absolutely causes dementia. I know people who drink an enormous amount of beer out of aluminum cans, and they can't remember shit.

David said...

A giant sucking sound . . .

Darrell said...

Palladian--

I haven't been so convinced since the time that you told me that banana cream pies (and all cream pies) are baked by those in the know (those same "all professional chefs'). I had suggested that the crusts are baked and the rest of the pie was assembled (custard (pre-made in a pan), bananas, and whipped cream). You told me that only simpletons do it that way.

Being a super-taster, I have been able to discern a metallic taste in anything cooked in aluminum pots or pans since I was a kid. I won bets as an adult when someone doubted that statement. That alone makes me stay away from them and any place that uses them. Non-stick aluminum cookware is a different matter since the food doesn't actually come in contact with the raw aluminum surface. I suspect that a good professional chef would take the risk with paying customers when the advantages are non-existant. Perhaps you would like to tell name a specic dish that could NOT be prepared with any thing other than an aluminum pan. Can't? I thought not. Since taste is the most important result in cooking, why would anyone take a chance of spoiling that?

kcom said...

Can someone give me the NPR link to Clarence Thomas' slideshow when his autobiography came out in 2007? I'm havin trouble finding it.

P.S. It's not in the NPR articles where they call him an extremist, for instance.

Palladian said...

Darrel- link to where I said that about cream pies. I have no recollection of that discussion, and the way you describe it doesn't sound like a position I'd take.

Anyway, say what you will about aluminum pans- the majority of professional kitchens use then for almost everything.

tiger said...

Her self-description of being a
'wise Latina' *still* makes me want to retch.

ken in tx said...

An expensive stainless cook ware salesman told us that aluminum cookware caused dementia in 1973.
He had a suitcase full of cheap aluminum pots and pans which he dumped on the floor and said was the most expensive cookware in the world, because of the negative health effects.

CarolMR said...

When Justice Sotomayor was first nominated, there were many mentions of her Irish boyfriend and how their break-up hurt her. Now I see, via "60 Minutes" that they were actually married (now divorced). Why the secrecy (lies) about her marriage and divorce in the beginning?

Darrell said...

Look it up yourself, Palladian.
I'd forget it too, if I were you.
Try the search function, the same as you would have me do. I had told a story about the college kids that pied Ann Coulter and talked about writing the sheriff (the same clown involved in the Jared Loughner case), asking him to check for adulterants (like AIDS-tainted blood or caustic chemicals--used in European cases) before he brought misdemeanor charges. He wrote back saying the kids admitted to baking the pies themselves. I said that cream pies weren't baked and those two idiots didn't seem to be the type to actually make anything themselves. You quoted that last remark and said that real cream pies are always baked--or should be. Etc.

Palladian said...

Just as I suspected. I never had an exchange with you regarding pies. That was Pastafarian, you dunderhead.

Your memory is faulty, but don't blame it on Alzheimer's caused by aluminum pots.

Palladian said...

I use black steel pans when baking pie shells. Aluminum works well too.