Posted by Melissa at 3:42 PM | Comments (2)

Hello from Hyphenland. We've been busy getting the new issue (#7) out to subscribers and stores around the country. Watch your mailboxes! And in case you haven't heard, we're throwing a party this Friday to celebrate the release of the Body Issue. You're invited!

Wish I could say more, but I'm pretty swamped and can't even get through all my emails. In the meantime, here's a couple things I've seen online the last couple days that I thought might interest you.

Posted by Melissa at 3:42 PM | Comments (2)

Hello from Hyphenland. We've been busy getting the new issue (#7) out to subscribers and stores around the country. Watch your mailboxes! And in case you haven't heard, we're throwing a party this Friday to celebrate the release of the Body Issue. You're invited!

Wish I could say more, but I'm pretty swamped and can't even get through all my emails. In the meantime, here's a couple things I've seen online the last couple days that I thought might interest you.

Posted by Melissa at 3:42 PM | Comments (2)

Just a little thought experiment for you blog commentators to sink your teeth into: Australia is currently beset by a controversy over white supremacist "science" (that again!)

A law perfesser, Andrew Fraser, who had been banned from teaching at one university for making racist remarks, wrote an article called "Rethinking the White Australia Policy," which was set to be published in an academic law journal. The White Australia Policy was a law or series of laws akin to the US's Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which excluded all Chinese from entering the US and was eventually expanded to include immigrants from any country in Asia. The Exclusion Act was repealed in 1943 and immigration quotas restricting Asian immigration effectively removed in the US in 1965. The White Australia Policy began similarly in the 1800's with the exclusion of Chinese laborers and was expanded to include "Asiatics" or "coloureds". The Policy was dismantled between 1949 and 1973.

"Rethinking the White Australia Policy" supported white supremacist ideas and policies and claimed that blacks were dumber (yawn, again) and Asians were gonna take over (something about "--peril", was it?) The University defended the publication by reminding folks that the journal is an academic one, and all articles are "peer reviewed", i.e. vetted by reputable academics in the same field, the idea being that any article that isn't up to academic standards will be kept from publication.

Here is the article himself, if ya wanna read it. So There. It's actually quite readable, kinda like the less syphilitic passages of Mein Kampf.

Ennyhoo,a Sudanese Australian group threatened to sue the Deakin University (where the journal is published) if they went ahead with publication. After some back-and-forthing and a lot of editorials, the University caved to pressure and ordered the journal not to publish the bad, bad article. Fraser accused the University and everyone else of censorship.

Additional background information: Australia, and certain states within the country in particular, have recently proposed laws permitting draconian measures against Muslims suspected of terrorism. This is accompanied by some incidents of racist speech from certain politicians and a revival of ideas about bringing back racial restrictions to immigration among right wing politicians. Fraser seems to be the ever-necessary academic wing of a white supremacist movement that appears to be stronger in Australia than the one/s we have in the US. Critics have also challenged Australian ivory tower self-criticism, claiming that students may be expelled for calling an academic "racist" or a "bigot". In addition, in his article Fraser calls upon some suspect racial "science" that he doesn't discuss at all or cite adequately, and that isn't his field anyway: he's a law professor writing for a law journal (and reviewed by fellow law professors), not a biologist or anthropologist.

So, given all that, here's my question: Where do we draw the line between social pressure and censorship?

It's hard to imagine something like this happening in the United States -- not because we don't have our kooks, quacks and klansmen, but because American Universities have set up their barricades of social pressure so effectively, that it would be difficult for one o' dem to get the stupid paper anywhere near an academic journal. But let's suppose for a moment that it did happen, that some white supremacist got past a dissertation committee, the tenure process, the peer review, and was about to publish an article so unrepentantly, openly racist. Imagine this is happening in America right now, especially given what was revealed about race by the Katrina disaster. How much would you want to silence this guy? Would you want to argue him down or just shut him up? How much and what kind of social pressure is acceptable at this point? When does ethical social pressure fall off into censorship?

Let me remind you guys, the Sudanese Australian group hadn't threatened the University with boycott, a student/teacher strike, picketing, letters to the editor and the administration, various protests and public humiliation and all other ethically unquestionable methods of social pressure ... no they had threatened the University with legal action, i.e. using the mechanism of the state to force the journal to silence this professor. Personally, I've always drawn the line of "censorship" between actions of social pressure and actions of state enforcement. When the state steps in to silence someone by law -- that's censorship, plain and simple. And when someone threatens to use the mechanism of the state to enforce silence, well, that's censorship, too. Anything short of that, that's still legal and ethical, is fair game to me.

This man's ideas are stupid and repugnant, and they should be repugnant to anyone who wishes to participate in the multicultural reality that is the US, or the one that is Australia. I understand that the political landscape in Australia is highly volatile right now (this is not to say that ours isn't.) However, how strong is a consensus on that multicultural reality that can't stand to be questioned? Fraser clearly intended to create controversy and discussion. But will that discussion result in a reinstitution of the White Australia Policy? Hardly. Will that discussion weaken public consensus on immigration policy? Maybe. Will that discussion align the public behind racist "anti-terrorist" legislation? Quite possibly. But if there is a groundswell of support for ideas like Fraser's, isn't it better to have them discussed and repudiated publicly, rather than supressed and allowed to fester and grow? Doesn't censorship tacitly support the ideas it attempts to suppress?

Is legal action against what is essentially free expression censorship? Should repugnant ideas expressed in a volatile atmosphere be censored?

And one more thing: if Fraser's article had simply been published in its obscure little academic journal without all the fanfare and lawsuits and been quietly, academically put down, do you suppose it would get even one hit on google news instead of 39?

Posted by claire at 3:39 PM | Comments (3)

Just a little thought experiment for you blog commentators to sink your teeth into: Australia is currently beset by a controversy over white supremacist "science" (that again!)

A law perfesser, Andrew Fraser, who had been banned from teaching at one university for making racist remarks, wrote an article called "Rethinking the White Australia Policy," which was set to be published in an academic law journal. The White Australia Policy was a law or series of laws akin to the US's Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which excluded all Chinese from entering the US and was eventually expanded to include immigrants from any country in Asia. The Exclusion Act was repealed in 1943 and immigration quotas restricting Asian immigration effectively removed in the US in 1965. The White Australia Policy began similarly in the 1800's with the exclusion of Chinese laborers and was expanded to include "Asiatics" or "coloureds". The Policy was dismantled between 1949 and 1973.

"Rethinking the White Australia Policy" supported white supremacist ideas and policies and claimed that blacks were dumber (yawn, again) and Asians were gonna take over (something about "--peril", was it?) The University defended the publication by reminding folks that the journal is an academic one, and all articles are "peer reviewed", i.e. vetted by reputable academics in the same field, the idea being that any article that isn't up to academic standards will be kept from publication.

Here is the article himself, if ya wanna read it. So There. It's actually quite readable, kinda like the less syphilitic passages of Mein Kampf.

Ennyhoo,a Sudanese Australian group threatened to sue the Deakin University (where the journal is published) if they went ahead with publication. After some back-and-forthing and a lot of editorials, the University caved to pressure and ordered the journal not to publish the bad, bad article. Fraser accused the University and everyone else of censorship.

Additional background information: Australia, and certain states within the country in particular, have recently proposed laws permitting draconian measures against Muslims suspected of terrorism. This is accompanied by some incidents of racist speech from certain politicians and a revival of ideas about bringing back racial restrictions to immigration among right wing politicians. Fraser seems to be the ever-necessary academic wing of a white supremacist movement that appears to be stronger in Australia than the one/s we have in the US. Critics have also challenged Australian ivory tower self-criticism, claiming that students may be expelled for calling an academic "racist" or a "bigot". In addition, in his article Fraser calls upon some suspect racial "science" that he doesn't discuss at all or cite adequately, and that isn't his field anyway: he's a law professor writing for a law journal (and reviewed by fellow law professors), not a biologist or anthropologist.

So, given all that, here's my question: Where do we draw the line between social pressure and censorship?

It's hard to imagine something like this happening in the United States -- not because we don't have our kooks, quacks and klansmen, but because American Universities have set up their barricades of social pressure so effectively, that it would be difficult for one o' dem to get the stupid paper anywhere near an academic journal. But let's suppose for a moment that it did happen, that some white supremacist got past a dissertation committee, the tenure process, the peer review, and was about to publish an article so unrepentantly, openly racist. Imagine this is happening in America right now, especially given what was revealed about race by the Katrina disaster. How much would you want to silence this guy? Would you want to argue him down or just shut him up? How much and what kind of social pressure is acceptable at this point? When does ethical social pressure fall off into censorship?

Let me remind you guys, the Sudanese Australian group hadn't threatened the University with boycott, a student/teacher strike, picketing, letters to the editor and the administration, various protests and public humiliation and all other ethically unquestionable methods of social pressure ... no they had threatened the University with legal action, i.e. using the mechanism of the state to force the journal to silence this professor. Personally, I've always drawn the line of "censorship" between actions of social pressure and actions of state enforcement. When the state steps in to silence someone by law -- that's censorship, plain and simple. And when someone threatens to use the mechanism of the state to enforce silence, well, that's censorship, too. Anything short of that, that's still legal and ethical, is fair game to me.

This man's ideas are stupid and repugnant, and they should be repugnant to anyone who wishes to participate in the multicultural reality that is the US, or the one that is Australia. I understand that the political landscape in Australia is highly volatile right now (this is not to say that ours isn't.) However, how strong is a consensus on that multicultural reality that can't stand to be questioned? Fraser clearly intended to create controversy and discussion. But will that discussion result in a reinstitution of the White Australia Policy? Hardly. Will that discussion weaken public consensus on immigration policy? Maybe. Will that discussion align the public behind racist "anti-terrorist" legislation? Quite possibly. But if there is a groundswell of support for ideas like Fraser's, isn't it better to have them discussed and repudiated publicly, rather than supressed and allowed to fester and grow? Doesn't censorship tacitly support the ideas it attempts to suppress?

Is legal action against what is essentially free expression censorship? Should repugnant ideas expressed in a volatile atmosphere be censored?

And one more thing: if Fraser's article had simply been published in its obscure little academic journal without all the fanfare and lawsuits and been quietly, academically put down, do you suppose it would get even one hit on google news instead of 39?

Posted by claire at 3:39 PM | Comments (3)

Just a little thought experiment for you blog commentators to sink your teeth into: Australia is currently beset by a controversy over white supremacist "science" (that again!)

A law perfesser, Andrew Fraser, who had been banned from teaching at one university for making racist remarks, wrote an article called "Rethinking the White Australia Policy," which was set to be published in an academic law journal. The White Australia Policy was a law or series of laws akin to the US's Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which excluded all Chinese from entering the US and was eventually expanded to include immigrants from any country in Asia. The Exclusion Act was repealed in 1943 and immigration quotas restricting Asian immigration effectively removed in the US in 1965. The White Australia Policy began similarly in the 1800's with the exclusion of Chinese laborers and was expanded to include "Asiatics" or "coloureds". The Policy was dismantled between 1949 and 1973.

"Rethinking the White Australia Policy" supported white supremacist ideas and policies and claimed that blacks were dumber (yawn, again) and Asians were gonna take over (something about "--peril", was it?) The University defended the publication by reminding folks that the journal is an academic one, and all articles are "peer reviewed", i.e. vetted by reputable academics in the same field, the idea being that any article that isn't up to academic standards will be kept from publication.

Here is the article himself, if ya wanna read it. So There. It's actually quite readable, kinda like the less syphilitic passages of Mein Kampf.

Ennyhoo,a Sudanese Australian group threatened to sue the Deakin University (where the journal is published) if they went ahead with publication. After some back-and-forthing and a lot of editorials, the University caved to pressure and ordered the journal not to publish the bad, bad article. Fraser accused the University and everyone else of censorship.

Additional background information: Australia, and certain states within the country in particular, have recently proposed laws permitting draconian measures against Muslims suspected of terrorism. This is accompanied by some incidents of racist speech from certain politicians and a revival of ideas about bringing back racial restrictions to immigration among right wing politicians. Fraser seems to be the ever-necessary academic wing of a white supremacist movement that appears to be stronger in Australia than the one/s we have in the US. Critics have also challenged Australian ivory tower self-criticism, claiming that students may be expelled for calling an academic "racist" or a "bigot". In addition, in his article Fraser calls upon some suspect racial "science" that he doesn't discuss at all or cite adequately, and that isn't his field anyway: he's a law professor writing for a law journal (and reviewed by fellow law professors), not a biologist or anthropologist.

So, given all that, here's my question: Where do we draw the line between social pressure and censorship?

It's hard to imagine something like this happening in the United States -- not because we don't have our kooks, quacks and klansmen, but because American Universities have set up their barricades of social pressure so effectively, that it would be difficult for one o' dem to get the stupid paper anywhere near an academic journal. But let's suppose for a moment that it did happen, that some white supremacist got past a dissertation committee, the tenure process, the peer review, and was about to publish an article so unrepentantly, openly racist. Imagine this is happening in America right now, especially given what was revealed about race by the Katrina disaster. How much would you want to silence this guy? Would you want to argue him down or just shut him up? How much and what kind of social pressure is acceptable at this point? When does ethical social pressure fall off into censorship?

Let me remind you guys, the Sudanese Australian group hadn't threatened the University with boycott, a student/teacher strike, picketing, letters to the editor and the administration, various protests and public humiliation and all other ethically unquestionable methods of social pressure ... no they had threatened the University with legal action, i.e. using the mechanism of the state to force the journal to silence this professor. Personally, I've always drawn the line of "censorship" between actions of social pressure and actions of state enforcement. When the state steps in to silence someone by law -- that's censorship, plain and simple. And when someone threatens to use the mechanism of the state to enforce silence, well, that's censorship, too. Anything short of that, that's still legal and ethical, is fair game to me.

This man's ideas are stupid and repugnant, and they should be repugnant to anyone who wishes to participate in the multicultural reality that is the US, or the one that is Australia. I understand that the political landscape in Australia is highly volatile right now (this is not to say that ours isn't.) However, how strong is a consensus on that multicultural reality that can't stand to be questioned? Fraser clearly intended to create controversy and discussion. But will that discussion result in a reinstitution of the White Australia Policy? Hardly. Will that discussion weaken public consensus on immigration policy? Maybe. Will that discussion align the public behind racist "anti-terrorist" legislation? Quite possibly. But if there is a groundswell of support for ideas like Fraser's, isn't it better to have them discussed and repudiated publicly, rather than supressed and allowed to fester and grow? Doesn't censorship tacitly support the ideas it attempts to suppress?

Is legal action against what is essentially free expression censorship? Should repugnant ideas expressed in a volatile atmosphere be censored?

And one more thing: if Fraser's article had simply been published in its obscure little academic journal without all the fanfare and lawsuits and been quietly, academically put down, do you suppose it would get even one hit on google news instead of 39?

Posted by claire at 3:39 PM | Comments (3)

New Jersey ex-professor Jonathan Nyce was sentenced to eight years in prison yesterday for murdering his wife Michelle, a Filipina mail-order bride, and staging a fake car crash to make it look like an accident. He's eligible for parole in five. The jury convicted Nyce for a "crime of passion" since his wife was having an affair with the gardener. Sorry, but the much-abused term of "passion" is no excuse for beating your spouse to death, and eight years is a joke when you can get 25-years-to-life for minor drug posession.

Here's the article:

September 23, 2005
Ex-Pharmaceutical Executive Sentenced to 8 Years in the Beating Death of His Wife
By JONATHAN MILLER

A former professor and pharmaceutical executive who was found guilty of beating his wife to death and then staging a car accident to cover it up was sentenced on Thursday to eight years in prison.

Prosecutors had argued that the former executive, Jonathan W. Nyce, 55, who founded and headed his own company, should get the maximum, 11½ years, for killing his wife, Michelle Nyce, 34, when he slammed her face into the floor of their garage in Hopewell Township nearly two years ago. On the night of her death, Mrs. Nyce had just returned from having a tryst with her landscaper in a motel.

In July, a jury here in State Superior Court of Mercer County found Mr. Nyce guilty of passion/ provocation manslaughter, a lesser crime than murder, the original charge.

"We're very, very displeased with the sentence," said Doris Galuchie, an assistant prosecutor, in an interview after the hearing. "We think it's far too lenient. He never ever accepted a shred of responsibility for his actions."

The day was fraught with drama, tears and accusations. Prosecutors said that Mr. Nyce had been dishonest from the beginning of the case, and they insisted that he should be punished for it. Michelle Nyce's family lamented their loss. The judge attested to what he saw as Mr. Nyce's otherwise good character but said he was troubled by the defendant's "dissembling."

As for Mr. Nyce, he made his first extended public comments since his wife was found in the middle of a creek behind the wheel of her S.U.V., her head bloodied and split, in central New Jersey on a snowy morning in January 2004.

"I love Michelle with all my heart," he said as he stood in an orange inmate jumpsuit, chains dangling from his shackled wrists and ankles. "I still love her." He paused and sobbed. "I loved her with everything I could. I supported her in any way I could."

Mr. Nyce said he cashed in half his pension and took a second job so he could buy property and build new homes for his wife's family in the Philippines. He said he sent food and developed a playground there.

The Nyces were the parents of three young children, two boys and a girl, who are now living with Mr. Nyce's brother in Pennsylvania. Mr. Nyce had started and had run EpiGenesis Pharmaceuticals, but his hopes for a revolutionary asthma drug were dashed and he was forced out of the company.

Prosecutors argued that Mr. Nyce might not have been the doting father he had portrayed himself to be.

"He wasn't saving lives," Ms. Galuchie said. "He was an unemployed father who was, quite frankly, taking an interest in his children for the first time."

Mr. Nyce erupted. "That's too much!" he shouted. He glared at Ms. Galuchie and moved forward in his seat. His lawyer, Robin K. Lord, clasped his shoulder. "That's too much, your honor," he repeated.

A few moments later Ms. Galuchie said, "This man didn't even pay for his own wife's funeral."

Mr. Nyce again shouted from the defense table: "I was in jail! Jesus!"

Larissa Soos, a friend of Michelle Nyce, said that she "had to do everything herself and was lonesome at times." Ms. Soos added, "She died so young and so tragic, and she never had a chance to say good-bye."

Judge Wilbur H. Mathesius said he had taken Mr. Nyce's character and history into account in his sentencing. "Much of what Jonathan Nyce did in his life was good," he said.

But he took issue with the way Mr. Nyce and his lawyer described the events that led to Mrs. Nyce's death. "The term 'accident' in no sense sums up what was eventuated," he said. Mr. Nyce will most likely be eligible for parole in about five and a half years.

Posted by Lisa at 9:10 AM | Comments (17)

New Jersey ex-professor Jonathan Nyce was sentenced to eight years in prison yesterday for murdering his wife Michelle, a Filipina mail-order bride, and staging a fake car crash to make it look like an accident. He's eligible for parole in five. The jury convicted Nyce for a "crime of passion" since his wife was having an affair with the gardener. Sorry, but the much-abused term of "passion" is no excuse for beating your spouse to death, and eight years is a joke when you can get 25-years-to-life for minor drug posession.

Here's the article:

September 23, 2005
Ex-Pharmaceutical Executive Sentenced to 8 Years in the Beating Death of His Wife
By JONATHAN MILLER

A former professor and pharmaceutical executive who was found guilty of beating his wife to death and then staging a car accident to cover it up was sentenced on Thursday to eight years in prison.

Prosecutors had argued that the former executive, Jonathan W. Nyce, 55, who founded and headed his own company, should get the maximum, 11½ years, for killing his wife, Michelle Nyce, 34, when he slammed her face into the floor of their garage in Hopewell Township nearly two years ago. On the night of her death, Mrs. Nyce had just returned from having a tryst with her landscaper in a motel.

In July, a jury here in State Superior Court of Mercer County found Mr. Nyce guilty of passion/ provocation manslaughter, a lesser crime than murder, the original charge.

"We're very, very displeased with the sentence," said Doris Galuchie, an assistant prosecutor, in an interview after the hearing. "We think it's far too lenient. He never ever accepted a shred of responsibility for his actions."

The day was fraught with drama, tears and accusations. Prosecutors said that Mr. Nyce had been dishonest from the beginning of the case, and they insisted that he should be punished for it. Michelle Nyce's family lamented their loss. The judge attested to what he saw as Mr. Nyce's otherwise good character but said he was troubled by the defendant's "dissembling."

As for Mr. Nyce, he made his first extended public comments since his wife was found in the middle of a creek behind the wheel of her S.U.V., her head bloodied and split, in central New Jersey on a snowy morning in January 2004.

"I love Michelle with all my heart," he said as he stood in an orange inmate jumpsuit, chains dangling from his shackled wrists and ankles. "I still love her." He paused and sobbed. "I loved her with everything I could. I supported her in any way I could."

Mr. Nyce said he cashed in half his pension and took a second job so he could buy property and build new homes for his wife's family in the Philippines. He said he sent food and developed a playground there.

The Nyces were the parents of three young children, two boys and a girl, who are now living with Mr. Nyce's brother in Pennsylvania. Mr. Nyce had started and had run EpiGenesis Pharmaceuticals, but his hopes for a revolutionary asthma drug were dashed and he was forced out of the company.

Prosecutors argued that Mr. Nyce might not have been the doting father he had portrayed himself to be.

"He wasn't saving lives," Ms. Galuchie said. "He was an unemployed father who was, quite frankly, taking an interest in his children for the first time."

Mr. Nyce erupted. "That's too much!" he shouted. He glared at Ms. Galuchie and moved forward in his seat. His lawyer, Robin K. Lord, clasped his shoulder. "That's too much, your honor," he repeated.

A few moments later Ms. Galuchie said, "This man didn't even pay for his own wife's funeral."

Mr. Nyce again shouted from the defense table: "I was in jail! Jesus!"

Larissa Soos, a friend of Michelle Nyce, said that she "had to do everything herself and was lonesome at times." Ms. Soos added, "She died so young and so tragic, and she never had a chance to say good-bye."

Judge Wilbur H. Mathesius said he had taken Mr. Nyce's character and history into account in his sentencing. "Much of what Jonathan Nyce did in his life was good," he said.

But he took issue with the way Mr. Nyce and his lawyer described the events that led to Mrs. Nyce's death. "The term 'accident' in no sense sums up what was eventuated," he said. Mr. Nyce will most likely be eligible for parole in about five and a half years.

Posted by Lisa at 9:10 AM | Comments (17)

New Jersey ex-professor Jonathan Nyce was sentenced to eight years in prison yesterday for murdering his wife Michelle, a Filipina mail-order bride, and staging a fake car crash to make it look like an accident. He's eligible for parole in five. The jury convicted Nyce for a "crime of passion" since his wife was having an affair with the gardener. Sorry, but the much-abused term of "passion" is no excuse for beating your spouse to death, and eight years is a joke when you can get 25-years-to-life for minor drug posession.

Here's the article:

September 23, 2005
Ex-Pharmaceutical Executive Sentenced to 8 Years in the Beating Death of His Wife
By JONATHAN MILLER

A former professor and pharmaceutical executive who was found guilty of beating his wife to death and then staging a car accident to cover it up was sentenced on Thursday to eight years in prison.

Prosecutors had argued that the former executive, Jonathan W. Nyce, 55, who founded and headed his own company, should get the maximum, 11½ years, for killing his wife, Michelle Nyce, 34, when he slammed her face into the floor of their garage in Hopewell Township nearly two years ago. On the night of her death, Mrs. Nyce had just returned from having a tryst with her landscaper in a motel.

In July, a jury here in State Superior Court of Mercer County found Mr. Nyce guilty of passion/ provocation manslaughter, a lesser crime than murder, the original charge.

"We're very, very displeased with the sentence," said Doris Galuchie, an assistant prosecutor, in an interview after the hearing. "We think it's far too lenient. He never ever accepted a shred of responsibility for his actions."

The day was fraught with drama, tears and accusations. Prosecutors said that Mr. Nyce had been dishonest from the beginning of the case, and they insisted that he should be punished for it. Michelle Nyce's family lamented their loss. The judge attested to what he saw as Mr. Nyce's otherwise good character but said he was troubled by the defendant's "dissembling."

As for Mr. Nyce, he made his first extended public comments since his wife was found in the middle of a creek behind the wheel of her S.U.V., her head bloodied and split, in central New Jersey on a snowy morning in January 2004.

"I love Michelle with all my heart," he said as he stood in an orange inmate jumpsuit, chains dangling from his shackled wrists and ankles. "I still love her." He paused and sobbed. "I loved her with everything I could. I supported her in any way I could."

Mr. Nyce said he cashed in half his pension and took a second job so he could buy property and build new homes for his wife's family in the Philippines. He said he sent food and developed a playground there.

The Nyces were the parents of three young children, two boys and a girl, who are now living with Mr. Nyce's brother in Pennsylvania. Mr. Nyce had started and had run EpiGenesis Pharmaceuticals, but his hopes for a revolutionary asthma drug were dashed and he was forced out of the company.

Prosecutors argued that Mr. Nyce might not have been the doting father he had portrayed himself to be.

"He wasn't saving lives," Ms. Galuchie said. "He was an unemployed father who was, quite frankly, taking an interest in his children for the first time."

Mr. Nyce erupted. "That's too much!" he shouted. He glared at Ms. Galuchie and moved forward in his seat. His lawyer, Robin K. Lord, clasped his shoulder. "That's too much, your honor," he repeated.

A few moments later Ms. Galuchie said, "This man didn't even pay for his own wife's funeral."

Mr. Nyce again shouted from the defense table: "I was in jail! Jesus!"

Larissa Soos, a friend of Michelle Nyce, said that she "had to do everything herself and was lonesome at times." Ms. Soos added, "She died so young and so tragic, and she never had a chance to say good-bye."

Judge Wilbur H. Mathesius said he had taken Mr. Nyce's character and history into account in his sentencing. "Much of what Jonathan Nyce did in his life was good," he said.

But he took issue with the way Mr. Nyce and his lawyer described the events that led to Mrs. Nyce's death. "The term 'accident' in no sense sums up what was eventuated," he said. Mr. Nyce will most likely be eligible for parole in about five and a half years.

Posted by Lisa at 9:10 AM | Comments (15)

I'm going to have to go to Madagascar now, to try Chinese Malagasy food.

NYTimes ran this fascinating article yesterday on "hyphenated Chinese food." Interesting that the anthro expert insist that Chinese food be some formula of soy sauce, garlic, ginger and green onions. That feels like someone insisting that I have black hair, be docile and give good massages. I can think offhand of about a thousand Chinese dishes that don't require those ingredients, but hey, i didn't write the book or anything.

Since their site requires registration i'm posting the whole hugemongo thing here --be warned, it makes you hungry.

Craving Hyphenated Chinese
By JULIA MOSKIN
Published: September 21, 2005

NEW YORKERS always think they know the real thing when it comes to Chinese food. Forty years ago it was egg rolls, chop suey and drinks with paper umbrellas. Then it was General Tso's chicken and sesame noodles.

But over the past decade, as large communities of people from India, Peru, Korea, Trinidad and Guyana have formed here, New York has had to expand its ideas about what Chinese food can be.

"I call them second-generation Chinese restaurants," said Cheuk Kwan, who has directed a documentary film about the spread of Chinese restaurants around the world. "These restaurants always have a hyphen: Chinese-Venezuelan, Chinese-Norwegian, Chinese-Mexican.
"Chinese-Malagasy," he said, on the island of Madagascar, "was the best food, with lots of coconut milk and spices."

Dishes like chili-spiked, deep-fried chicken lollipops, which are a Chinese-Indian specialty, and lo mein topped with chunks of peppery jerk chicken, served at De Bamboo Express, a Chinese-West Indian restaurant in Brooklyn, are what Chinese food is now to thousands of New Yorkers.

The city's first hyphenated version of the cuisine - after Chinese-American, of course - was Chinese-Cuban, which arrived in the 1960's, when thousands of Cubans of Chinese descent came to New York after Fidel Castro's rise to power.

"My grandfather was born in Zhanjiang, but his whole life was in Havana," said Manny Liao, a musician who lives in Washington Heights. "He always ate Chinese food, but he cooked Cuban."
Seafood soups, fried rice with pork, scallions and tiny shrimp, and chicharrones de pollo -chicken cut into small pieces and deep-fried in the Cantonese style - were and are standbys in restaurants like Caridad la Original on the Upper West Side and La Chinita Linda in Chelsea.

Over the years, as more Americans have visited China and more Chinese have imigrated to the United States, more authentic versions of Chinese food have come to town on a gust of hot chilies, Sichuan peppercorns and bean paste. Keeping up with the openings of restaurants serving the cuisines of Taiwan, Shanghai and Fujian in the city's burgeoning Chinatowns - Flushing in Queens and Sunset Park and Homecrest in Brooklyn - has practically become a second job for many New Yorkers.

But for others it does not matter how real the food tastes, so long as it tastes like home.
When New York's young Korean-Americans go out for Chinese food, they often eat ja jiang mien, boiled noodles in a rich meat sauce, mixed with Korean brown bean paste and studded with Chinese fermented black beans. "Kids grow up on Chinese noodles in Korea," said Jinny Song, a customer at Hyo Dong Gak in Midtown.

In Elmhurst, La Union, a Peruvian chifa (slang for Chinese restaurant), serves platters of chancho, a Hispanic rendering of char siu, Chinese for roast pork.

The roots of these hybrid Chinese cuisines around the world are the same as those of Chinese food in America. Millions of Chinese men, most of them from the province Guangdong (formerly known in English as Canton), left China in the late 19th and early 20th century. Only men were allowed to leave the country, often by becoming indentured workers to companies in need of cheap labor in the Caribbean, Southeast Asia and South America.

Professional cooks were usually not among the emigrants, so the earliest Chinese restaurants outside China were started by men with little knowledge of cooking and a desperate need to improvise with local ingredients. The dishes they came up with, like chop suey, have long since been dismissed as "not Chinese" by scholars of the culture.

But Chinese food has never been quite what outsiders think it is.

"The term Chinese food represents an area four times larger than Western Europe and the eating habits of more than a billion people," Mr. Kwan said. "You could say that there is really no such thing as Chinese food."

Eugene Anderson, a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Riverside, and author of "The Food of China," disagrees. "Chinese food is defined by a flavor principle of soy sauce, ginger, garlic and green onions" and methods including stir-frying and steaming, he said.

"Once you get too far away from those rules, it is no longer Chinese."

Whatever and wherever it is, it is in flux, said Eric Kwan, a New York native and chef and owner of Hip Hop Chow, a new East Village restaurant serving a hybrid of Southern American and southern Chinese cooking.

"Chinese food in China didn't change much in 2,000 years, but now it's changing," he said. "And Chinese food in America is something totally different."

At De Bamboo Express in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn, Chinese cooks toss rice and vegetables in huge woks, then top that with peppery jerk chicken wings and handfuls of raw cabbage, which steams gently in the rice and adds a crispness to the plate. "Chinese food and Jamaican food are tight-tight," said Monica Lambert, a customer who was eating the dish. "This food is both. You know, like Naomi Campbell," she said, referring to the supermodel whose father is Chinese-Jamaican.

Questions of ethnicity, some of them awkward and others simply mysterious, inevitably come up when tracking the cuisine of the Chinese diaspora. The passionate relationship between American Jews and Chinese restaurants, for example, is well documented.

"These people love Chinese food," said Dov Kemper, a customer at Eden Wok, a strictly kosher Chinese restaurant in Midtown, gesturing at his fellow Orthodox Jews eating barbecued (veal) spare ribs and (mock) shrimp fried rice. The wontons in the chicken soup - "just like kreplach," Mr. Kemper said - are stuffed with ground beef, scallions and ginger.

Kevin Cohnen, the owner, claims to have invented the Chinese hot dog, a kosher beef frank encased in an eggroll wrapper and deep-fried. The result is crusty, incredibly juicy and excellent with hot mustard, either New York deli or Chinese style.

"Chinese food in India is very, very popular and always includes the same dishes: chili chicken, chicken lollipops and gobi Manchurian," said Vik Lulla, an owner of Chinese Mirch in Midtown, whose family owns two Chinese restaurants in Bangalore.

For chicken lollipops, cooks use a Chinese method to push the meat of the wing to one end of the bone, then coat these "drumettes" in a cornstarch batter, spiked with cayenne, that is traditionally used to fry vegetable pakoras. The dish is popular in India, Mr. Lulla's wife, Sienam, said, "first because, of course, fried chicken is delicious, and also because you remove the skin, which Indians never eat."

Manchurian is synonymous with Chinese food in India. It refers to a sauce made by simmering garlic, ginger, sugar, soy and cayenne or red chili paste. It is a spicy cousin of the sticky sweet and sour sauces that used to coat a lot of Chinese-American food. (It also resembles ketchup, which many culinary historians believe is descended from the intense Chinese sauce ke-tsiap.)

That sticky red sauce is still served as a dipping sauce for crisp fried wontons at the chifa La Union. (According to Professor Anderson, the word chifa most likely comes from the Mandarin chi fan, meaning eat rice.)

"My family has had a Chinese restaurant in Barranco for 75 years, and these are the same recipes we use there," La Union's owner, Antonio Mazarina Tong, said. The wonton soup at La Union is filled with noodles, chunks of taro and potato and leaves of bok choy, making it a filling lunch.
Lomo saltado, which many Peruvians consider a national dish, is a savory stir-fry of beef, onions and tomatoes, seasoned with soy sauce. It is sometimes served over French fries, but at La Union already fried potatoes are tossed in with the other ingredients; the result is rich, savory and, as a bonus, an excellent example of grass-roots fusion. A wok full of beef and French fries is not the kind of thing the upscale chefs who dabble in Asian fusion usually come up with.

Peruvian dishes that bear the description saltado are usually of Chinese origin: in Peru saltar means "to sauté" or "to jump," a good description of what food does as it is stir-fried in a wok. Tallarines saltados - tallarines, like tagliarini, are long, thin, flat noodles - are easily identifiable as lo mein.

"I didn't even know it was Chinese food," said Delia Ocaña, who was having a plateful for lunch at Rinconcito Peruano, a Peruvian restaurant in Midtown. Ms. Ocaña was raised in Cuzco. "In Peru now, it is hard to tell which restaurants are Chinese, which dishes, which people. It is all Peru."

Mr. Tong's most popular dish at La Union is chi gau kay, also a version of Cantonese fried chicken, dipped in a batter thickened with chuño, starch from potatoes freeze-dried using a method first developed 4,000 years ago by Andean farmers. Chinese cooks use rice starch or corn starch.

"Peruvians like this kind of Chinese food," Mr. Tong said. "The Chinese restaurants here aren't the same," he added, gesturing out the door to the rest of Elmhurst, a thriving Queens neighborhood with some of the most authentic Chinese restaurants in the city.

"There are only a few things that are always the same in Chinese food," said Guillermo Hung, a photographer who was reared in Caracas and lives in New Jersey. "I was born in a Chinese restaurant, and I end up cooking Chinese style no matter where I am or what the ingredients are. There is always stir-frying. And the most important thing is the rice. For true Chinese food, everything else is a side dish."

Posted by jennifer at 3:47 PM | Comments (2)

I'm going to have to go to Madagascar now, to try Chinese Malagasy food.

NYTimes ran this fascinating article yesterday on "hyphenated Chinese food." Interesting that the anthro expert insist that Chinese food be some formula of soy sauce, garlic, ginger and green onions. That feels like someone insisting that I have black hair, be docile and give good massages. I can think offhand of about a thousand Chinese dishes that don't require those ingredients, but hey, i didn't write the book or anything.

Since their site requires registration i'm posting the whole hugemongo thing here --be warned, it makes you hungry.

Craving Hyphenated Chinese
By JULIA MOSKIN
Published: September 21, 2005

NEW YORKERS always think they know the real thing when it comes to Chinese food. Forty years ago it was egg rolls, chop suey and drinks with paper umbrellas. Then it was General Tso's chicken and sesame noodles.

But over the past decade, as large communities of people from India, Peru, Korea, Trinidad and Guyana have formed here, New York has had to expand its ideas about what Chinese food can be.

"I call them second-generation Chinese restaurants," said Cheuk Kwan, who has directed a documentary film about the spread of Chinese restaurants around the world. "These restaurants always have a hyphen: Chinese-Venezuelan, Chinese-Norwegian, Chinese-Mexican.
"Chinese-Malagasy," he said, on the island of Madagascar, "was the best food, with lots of coconut milk and spices."

Dishes like chili-spiked, deep-fried chicken lollipops, which are a Chinese-Indian specialty, and lo mein topped with chunks of peppery jerk chicken, served at De Bamboo Express, a Chinese-West Indian restaurant in Brooklyn, are what Chinese food is now to thousands of New Yorkers.

The city's first hyphenated version of the cuisine - after Chinese-American, of course - was Chinese-Cuban, which arrived in the 1960's, when thousands of Cubans of Chinese descent came to New York after Fidel Castro's rise to power.

"My grandfather was born in Zhanjiang, but his whole life was in Havana," said Manny Liao, a musician who lives in Washington Heights. "He always ate Chinese food, but he cooked Cuban."
Seafood soups, fried rice with pork, scallions and tiny shrimp, and chicharrones de pollo -chicken cut into small pieces and deep-fried in the Cantonese style - were and are standbys in restaurants like Caridad la Original on the Upper West Side and La Chinita Linda in Chelsea.

Over the years, as more Americans have visited China and more Chinese have imigrated to the United States, more authentic versions of Chinese food have come to town on a gust of hot chilies, Sichuan peppercorns and bean paste. Keeping up with the openings of restaurants serving the cuisines of Taiwan, Shanghai and Fujian in the city's burgeoning Chinatowns - Flushing in Queens and Sunset Park and Homecrest in Brooklyn - has practically become a second job for many New Yorkers.

But for others it does not matter how real the food tastes, so long as it tastes like home.
When New York's young Korean-Americans go out for Chinese food, they often eat ja jiang mien, boiled noodles in a rich meat sauce, mixed with Korean brown bean paste and studded with Chinese fermented black beans. "Kids grow up on Chinese noodles in Korea," said Jinny Song, a customer at Hyo Dong Gak in Midtown.

In Elmhurst, La Union, a Peruvian chifa (slang for Chinese restaurant), serves platters of chancho, a Hispanic rendering of char siu, Chinese for roast pork.

The roots of these hybrid Chinese cuisines around the world are the same as those of Chinese food in America. Millions of Chinese men, most of them from the province Guangdong (formerly known in English as Canton), left China in the late 19th and early 20th century. Only men were allowed to leave the country, often by becoming indentured workers to companies in need of cheap labor in the Caribbean, Southeast Asia and South America.

Professional cooks were usually not among the emigrants, so the earliest Chinese restaurants outside China were started by men with little knowledge of cooking and a desperate need to improvise with local ingredients. The dishes they came up with, like chop suey, have long since been dismissed as "not Chinese" by scholars of the culture.

But Chinese food has never been quite what outsiders think it is.

"The term Chinese food represents an area four times larger than Western Europe and the eating habits of more than a billion people," Mr. Kwan said. "You could say that there is really no such thing as Chinese food."

Eugene Anderson, a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Riverside, and author of "The Food of China," disagrees. "Chinese food is defined by a flavor principle of soy sauce, ginger, garlic and green onions" and methods including stir-frying and steaming, he said.

"Once you get too far away from those rules, it is no longer Chinese."

Whatever and wherever it is, it is in flux, said Eric Kwan, a New York native and chef and owner of Hip Hop Chow, a new East Village restaurant serving a hybrid of Southern American and southern Chinese cooking.

"Chinese food in China didn't change much in 2,000 years, but now it's changing," he said. "And Chinese food in America is something totally different."

At De Bamboo Express in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn, Chinese cooks toss rice and vegetables in huge woks, then top that with peppery jerk chicken wings and handfuls of raw cabbage, which steams gently in the rice and adds a crispness to the plate. "Chinese food and Jamaican food are tight-tight," said Monica Lambert, a customer who was eating the dish. "This food is both. You know, like Naomi Campbell," she said, referring to the supermodel whose father is Chinese-Jamaican.

Questions of ethnicity, some of them awkward and others simply mysterious, inevitably come up when tracking the cuisine of the Chinese diaspora. The passionate relationship between American Jews and Chinese restaurants, for example, is well documented.

"These people love Chinese food," said Dov Kemper, a customer at Eden Wok, a strictly kosher Chinese restaurant in Midtown, gesturing at his fellow Orthodox Jews eating barbecued (veal) spare ribs and (mock) shrimp fried rice. The wontons in the chicken soup - "just like kreplach," Mr. Kemper said - are stuffed with ground beef, scallions and ginger.

Kevin Cohnen, the owner, claims to have invented the Chinese hot dog, a kosher beef frank encased in an eggroll wrapper and deep-fried. The result is crusty, incredibly juicy and excellent with hot mustard, either New York deli or Chinese style.

"Chinese food in India is very, very popular and always includes the same dishes: chili chicken, chicken lollipops and gobi Manchurian," said Vik Lulla, an owner of Chinese Mirch in Midtown, whose family owns two Chinese restaurants in Bangalore.

For chicken lollipops, cooks use a Chinese method to push the meat of the wing to one end of the bone, then coat these "drumettes" in a cornstarch batter, spiked with cayenne, that is traditionally used to fry vegetable pakoras. The dish is popular in India, Mr. Lulla's wife, Sienam, said, "first because, of course, fried chicken is delicious, and also because you remove the skin, which Indians never eat."

Manchurian is synonymous with Chinese food in India. It refers to a sauce made by simmering garlic, ginger, sugar, soy and cayenne or red chili paste. It is a spicy cousin of the sticky sweet and sour sauces that used to coat a lot of Chinese-American food. (It also resembles ketchup, which many culinary historians believe is descended from the intense Chinese sauce ke-tsiap.)

That sticky red sauce is still served as a dipping sauce for crisp fried wontons at the chifa La Union. (According to Professor Anderson, the word chifa most likely comes from the Mandarin chi fan, meaning eat rice.)

"My family has had a Chinese restaurant in Barranco for 75 years, and these are the same recipes we use there," La Union's owner, Antonio Mazarina Tong, said. The wonton soup at La Union is filled with noodles, chunks of taro and potato and leaves of bok choy, making it a filling lunch.
Lomo saltado, which many Peruvians consider a national dish, is a savory stir-fry of beef, onions and tomatoes, seasoned with soy sauce. It is sometimes served over French fries, but at La Union already fried potatoes are tossed in with the other ingredients; the result is rich, savory and, as a bonus, an excellent example of grass-roots fusion. A wok full of beef and French fries is not the kind of thing the upscale chefs who dabble in Asian fusion usually come up with.

Peruvian dishes that bear the description saltado are usually of Chinese origin: in Peru saltar means "to sauté" or "to jump," a good description of what food does as it is stir-fried in a wok. Tallarines saltados - tallarines, like tagliarini, are long, thin, flat noodles - are easily identifiable as lo mein.

"I didn't even know it was Chinese food," said Delia Ocaña, who was having a plateful for lunch at Rinconcito Peruano, a Peruvian restaurant in Midtown. Ms. Ocaña was raised in Cuzco. "In Peru now, it is hard to tell which restaurants are Chinese, which dishes, which people. It is all Peru."

Mr. Tong's most popular dish at La Union is chi gau kay, also a version of Cantonese fried chicken, dipped in a batter thickened with chuño, starch from potatoes freeze-dried using a method first developed 4,000 years ago by Andean farmers. Chinese cooks use rice starch or corn starch.

"Peruvians like this kind of Chinese food," Mr. Tong said. "The Chinese restaurants here aren't the same," he added, gesturing out the door to the rest of Elmhurst, a thriving Queens neighborhood with some of the most authentic Chinese restaurants in the city.

"There are only a few things that are always the same in Chinese food," said Guillermo Hung, a photographer who was reared in Caracas and lives in New Jersey. "I was born in a Chinese restaurant, and I end up cooking Chinese style no matter where I am or what the ingredients are. There is always stir-frying. And the most important thing is the rice. For true Chinese food, everything else is a side dish."

Posted by jennifer at 3:47 PM | Comments (2)

I'm going to have to go to Madagascar now, to try Chinese Malagasy food.

NYTimes ran this fascinating article yesterday on "hyphenated Chinese food." Interesting that the anthro expert insist that Chinese food be some formula of soy sauce, garlic, ginger and green onions. That feels like someone insisting that I have black hair, be docile and give good massages. I can think offhand of about a thousand Chinese dishes that don't require those ingredients, but hey, i didn't write the book or anything.

Since their site requires registration i'm posting the whole hugemongo thing here --be warned, it makes you hungry.

Craving Hyphenated Chinese
By JULIA MOSKIN
Published: September 21, 2005

NEW YORKERS always think they know the real thing when it comes to Chinese food. Forty years ago it was egg rolls, chop suey and drinks with paper umbrellas. Then it was General Tso's chicken and sesame noodles.

But over the past decade, as large communities of people from India, Peru, Korea, Trinidad and Guyana have formed here, New York has had to expand its ideas about what Chinese food can be.

"I call them second-generation Chinese restaurants," said Cheuk Kwan, who has directed a documentary film about the spread of Chinese restaurants around the world. "These restaurants always have a hyphen: Chinese-Venezuelan, Chinese-Norwegian, Chinese-Mexican.
"Chinese-Malagasy," he said, on the island of Madagascar, "was the best food, with lots of coconut milk and spices."

Dishes like chili-spiked, deep-fried chicken lollipops, which are a Chinese-Indian specialty, and lo mein topped with chunks of peppery jerk chicken, served at De Bamboo Express, a Chinese-West Indian restaurant in Brooklyn, are what Chinese food is now to thousands of New Yorkers.

The city's first hyphenated version of the cuisine - after Chinese-American, of course - was Chinese-Cuban, which arrived in the 1960's, when thousands of Cubans of Chinese descent came to New York after Fidel Castro's rise to power.

"My grandfather was born in Zhanjiang, but his whole life was in Havana," said Manny Liao, a musician who lives in Washington Heights. "He always ate Chinese food, but he cooked Cuban."
Seafood soups, fried rice with pork, scallions and tiny shrimp, and chicharrones de pollo -chicken cut into small pieces and deep-fried in the Cantonese style - were and are standbys in restaurants like Caridad la Original on the Upper West Side and La Chinita Linda in Chelsea.

Over the years, as more Americans have visited China and more Chinese have imigrated to the United States, more authentic versions of Chinese food have come to town on a gust of hot chilies, Sichuan peppercorns and bean paste. Keeping up with the openings of restaurants serving the cuisines of Taiwan, Shanghai and Fujian in the city's burgeoning Chinatowns - Flushing in Queens and Sunset Park and Homecrest in Brooklyn - has practically become a second job for many New Yorkers.

But for others it does not matter how real the food tastes, so long as it tastes like home.
When New York's young Korean-Americans go out for Chinese food, they often eat ja jiang mien, boiled noodles in a rich meat sauce, mixed with Korean brown bean paste and studded with Chinese fermented black beans. "Kids grow up on Chinese noodles in Korea," said Jinny Song, a customer at Hyo Dong Gak in Midtown.

In Elmhurst, La Union, a Peruvian chifa (slang for Chinese restaurant), serves platters of chancho, a Hispanic rendering of char siu, Chinese for roast pork.

The roots of these hybrid Chinese cuisines around the world are the same as those of Chinese food in America. Millions of Chinese men, most of them from the province Guangdong (formerly known in English as Canton), left China in the late 19th and early 20th century. Only men were allowed to leave the country, often by becoming indentured workers to companies in need of cheap labor in the Caribbean, Southeast Asia and South America.

Professional cooks were usually not among the emigrants, so the earliest Chinese restaurants outside China were started by men with little knowledge of cooking and a desperate need to improvise with local ingredients. The dishes they came up with, like chop suey, have long since been dismissed as "not Chinese" by scholars of the culture.

But Chinese food has never been quite what outsiders think it is.

"The term Chinese food represents an area four times larger than Western Europe and the eating habits of more than a billion people," Mr. Kwan said. "You could say that there is really no such thing as Chinese food."

Eugene Anderson, a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Riverside, and author of "The Food of China," disagrees. "Chinese food is defined by a flavor principle of soy sauce, ginger, garlic and green onions" and methods including stir-frying and steaming, he said.

"Once you get too far away from those rules, it is no longer Chinese."

Whatever and wherever it is, it is in flux, said Eric Kwan, a New York native and chef and owner of Hip Hop Chow, a new East Village restaurant serving a hybrid of Southern American and southern Chinese cooking.

"Chinese food in China didn't change much in 2,000 years, but now it's changing," he said. "And Chinese food in America is something totally different."

At De Bamboo Express in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn, Chinese cooks toss rice and vegetables in huge woks, then top that with peppery jerk chicken wings and handfuls of raw cabbage, which steams gently in the rice and adds a crispness to the plate. "Chinese food and Jamaican food are tight-tight," said Monica Lambert, a customer who was eating the dish. "This food is both. You know, like Naomi Campbell," she said, referring to the supermodel whose father is Chinese-Jamaican.

Questions of ethnicity, some of them awkward and others simply mysterious, inevitably come up when tracking the cuisine of the Chinese diaspora. The passionate relationship between American Jews and Chinese restaurants, for example, is well documented.

"These people love Chinese food," said Dov Kemper, a customer at Eden Wok, a strictly kosher Chinese restaurant in Midtown, gesturing at his fellow Orthodox Jews eating barbecued (veal) spare ribs and (mock) shrimp fried rice. The wontons in the chicken soup - "just like kreplach," Mr. Kemper said - are stuffed with ground beef, scallions and ginger.

Kevin Cohnen, the owner, claims to have invented the Chinese hot dog, a kosher beef frank encased in an eggroll wrapper and deep-fried. The result is crusty, incredibly juicy and excellent with hot mustard, either New York deli or Chinese style.

"Chinese food in India is very, very popular and always includes the same dishes: chili chicken, chicken lollipops and gobi Manchurian," said Vik Lulla, an owner of Chinese Mirch in Midtown, whose family owns two Chinese restaurants in Bangalore.

For chicken lollipops, cooks use a Chinese method to push the meat of the wing to one end of the bone, then coat these "drumettes" in a cornstarch batter, spiked with cayenne, that is traditionally used to fry vegetable pakoras. The dish is popular in India, Mr. Lulla's wife, Sienam, said, "first because, of course, fried chicken is delicious, and also because you remove the skin, which Indians never eat."

Manchurian is synonymous with Chinese food in India. It refers to a sauce made by simmering garlic, ginger, sugar, soy and cayenne or red chili paste. It is a spicy cousin of the sticky sweet and sour sauces that used to coat a lot of Chinese-American food. (It also resembles ketchup, which many culinary historians believe is descended from the intense Chinese sauce ke-tsiap.)

That sticky red sauce is still served as a dipping sauce for crisp fried wontons at the chifa La Union. (According to Professor Anderson, the word chifa most likely comes from the Mandarin chi fan, meaning eat rice.)

"My family has had a Chinese restaurant in Barranco for 75 years, and these are the same recipes we use there," La Union's owner, Antonio Mazarina Tong, said. The wonton soup at La Union is filled with noodles, chunks of taro and potato and leaves of bok choy, making it a filling lunch.
Lomo saltado, which many Peruvians consider a national dish, is a savory stir-fry of beef, onions and tomatoes, seasoned with soy sauce. It is sometimes served over French fries, but at La Union already fried potatoes are tossed in with the other ingredients; the result is rich, savory and, as a bonus, an excellent example of grass-roots fusion. A wok full of beef and French fries is not the kind of thing the upscale chefs who dabble in Asian fusion usually come up with.

Peruvian dishes that bear the description saltado are usually of Chinese origin: in Peru saltar means "to sauté" or "to jump," a good description of what food does as it is stir-fried in a wok. Tallarines saltados - tallarines, like tagliarini, are long, thin, flat noodles - are easily identifiable as lo mein.

"I didn't even know it was Chinese food," said Delia Ocaña, who was having a plateful for lunch at Rinconcito Peruano, a Peruvian restaurant in Midtown. Ms. Ocaña was raised in Cuzco. "In Peru now, it is hard to tell which restaurants are Chinese, which dishes, which people. It is all Peru."

Mr. Tong's most popular dish at La Union is chi gau kay, also a version of Cantonese fried chicken, dipped in a batter thickened with chuño, starch from potatoes freeze-dried using a method first developed 4,000 years ago by Andean farmers. Chinese cooks use rice starch or corn starch.

"Peruvians like this kind of Chinese food," Mr. Tong said. "The Chinese restaurants here aren't the same," he added, gesturing out the door to the rest of Elmhurst, a thriving Queens neighborhood with some of the most authentic Chinese restaurants in the city.

"There are only a few things that are always the same in Chinese food," said Guillermo Hung, a photographer who was reared in Caracas and lives in New Jersey. "I was born in a Chinese restaurant, and I end up cooking Chinese style no matter where I am or what the ingredients are. There is always stir-frying. And the most important thing is the rice. For true Chinese food, everything else is a side dish."

Posted by jennifer at 3:47 PM | Comments (2)

My mother calls me the other day and says, "There's been something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about." Uh-oh. I brace myself, "OK, what is it?"

"Don't be mad," she prefaces. Double uh-oh. Then she asks, you remember So-and-So's Mom, right? (Note: I've never met So-and-So or his mom. So-and-So’s Mom is friends with my mom. Why she doesn't just refer to her by name instead of referring to her son is beyond me.) Well, it turns out So-and-So's Mom has a friend. And that friend has two sons. They are both doctors. One is 30 and married. The other is 33 and unmarried. I can see where this is going.

"Please don't set me up."

"It can't hurt. You never know!"

When I ask for more details (you know, what he likes to do, what his politics are), she has no information. All she knows is that he is a doctor and he works out a lot.

"Sounds pretty boring to me," I say.

"Boring is OK," she insists.

"I'd rather be alone than bored to death."

"Well, you never know. Now, can I give him your email?"

Sometimes the best way to deal with a parent is to take the path of least resistance. After triple checking the spelling of my email address, she adds "If you talk to him, don't be weird."

"So, you're telling me to not be myself."

"Oh, and he lives in Sacramento."

Sacramento? When there's an available Chinese American doctor, it doesn't matter if he lives hours away, or what his politics (if any) may be, or whether he has the personality of a box of rocks. These things are overlooked with one magic word. Apparently being a doctor is all one has to accomplish in life. Mothers everywhere will throw their single children at doctors.

When I shared this story with friends, some had similar stories to tell. One friend, after being pestered for months by her mother, was subjected to dull emails (and terribly unflattering photos) from a doctor who could not carry on a conversation. Another had to fend off efforts by her mother to set her up with guys who lived on the other side of the country.

Many of these friends are Asian American. Now, I doubt we are the only people beset upon by desperate mothers who are having old maid panic attacks on our behalf. This happens in any small community. Matchmaking is a time-honored tradition. Still, it seems like a very second generation immigrant experience to have your parents go through their small networks to find their children dates, sometimes over our objections.

Personally, I could not imagine my parents choosing someone who is right for me. But others are pretty comfortable with it. So here's a question for you: Would you be OK with your parents playing matchmaker? And does this happen to men too? It still seems less accepted in our society for women to remain single.

Oh, and the doctor in Sacramento? He emailed me two days later and turned out to be just as uninteresting as I had feared.

Posted by Melissa at 9:52 PM | Comments (16) | TrackBack

My mother calls me the other day and says, "There's been something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about." Uh-oh. I brace myself, "OK, what is it?"

"Don't be mad," she prefaces. Double uh-oh. Then she asks, you remember So-and-So's Mom, right? (Note: I've never met So-and-So or his mom. So-and-So’s Mom is friends with my mom. Why she doesn't just refer to her by name instead of referring to her son is beyond me.) Well, it turns out So-and-So's Mom has a friend. And that friend has two sons. They are both doctors. One is 30 and married. The other is 33 and unmarried. I can see where this is going.

"Please don't set me up."

"It can't hurt. You never know!"

When I ask for more details (you know, what he likes to do, what his politics are), she has no information. All she knows is that he is a doctor and he works out a lot.

"Sounds pretty boring to me," I say.

"Boring is OK," she insists.

"I'd rather be alone than bored to death."

"Well, you never know. Now, can I give him your email?"

Sometimes the best way to deal with a parent is to take the path of least resistance. After triple checking the spelling of my email address, she adds "If you talk to him, don't be weird."

"So, you're telling me to not be myself."

"Oh, and he lives in Sacramento."

Sacramento? When there's an available Chinese American doctor, it doesn't matter if he lives hours away, or what his politics (if any) may be, or whether he has the personality of a box of rocks. These things are overlooked with one magic word. Apparently being a doctor is all one has to accomplish in life. Mothers everywhere will throw their single children at doctors.

When I shared this story with friends, some had similar stories to tell. One friend, after being pestered for months by her mother, was subjected to dull emails (and terribly unflattering photos) from a doctor who could not carry on a conversation. Another had to fend off efforts by her mother to set her up with guys who lived on the other side of the country.

Many of these friends are Asian American. Now, I doubt we are the only people beset upon by desperate mothers who are having old maid panic attacks on our behalf. This happens in any small community. Matchmaking is a time-honored tradition. Still, it seems like a very second generation immigrant experience to have your parents go through their small networks to find their children dates, sometimes over our objections.

Personally, I could not imagine my parents choosing someone who is right for me. But others are pretty comfortable with it. So here's a question for you: Would you be OK with your parents playing matchmaker? And does this happen to men too? It still seems less accepted in our society for women to remain single.

Oh, and the doctor in Sacramento? He emailed me two days later and turned out to be just as uninteresting as I had feared.

Posted by Melissa at 9:52 PM | Comments (16) | TrackBack

My mother calls me the other day and says, "There's been something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about." Uh-oh. I brace myself, "OK, what is it?"

"Don't be mad," she prefaces. Double uh-oh. Then she asks, you remember So-and-So's Mom, right? (Note: I've never met So-and-So or his mom. So-and-So’s Mom is friends with my mom. Why she doesn't just refer to her by name instead of referring to her son is beyond me.) Well, it turns out So-and-So's Mom has a friend. And that friend has two sons. They are both doctors. One is 30 and married. The other is 33 and unmarried. I can see where this is going.

"Please don't set me up."

"It can't hurt. You never know!"

When I ask for more details (you know, what he likes to do, what his politics are), she has no information. All she knows is that he is a doctor and he works out a lot.

"Sounds pretty boring to me," I say.

"Boring is OK," she insists.

"I'd rather be alone than bored to death."

"Well, you never know. Now, can I give him your email?"

Sometimes the best way to deal with a parent is to take the path of least resistance. After triple checking the spelling of my email address, she adds "If you talk to him, don't be weird."

"So, you're telling me to not be myself."

"Oh, and he lives in Sacramento."

Sacramento? When there's an available Chinese American doctor, it doesn't matter if he lives hours away, or what his politics (if any) may be, or whether he has the personality of a box of rocks. These things are overlooked with one magic word. Apparently being a doctor is all one has to accomplish in life. Mothers everywhere will throw their single children at doctors.

When I shared this story with friends, some had similar stories to tell. One friend, after being pestered for months by her mother, was subjected to dull emails (and terribly unflattering photos) from a doctor who could not carry on a conversation. Another had to fend off efforts by her mother to set her up with guys who lived on the other side of the country.

Many of these friends are Asian American. Now, I doubt we are the only people beset upon by desperate mothers who are having old maid panic attacks on our behalf. This happens in any small community. Matchmaking is a time-honored tradition. Still, it seems like a very second generation immigrant experience to have your parents go through their small networks to find their children dates, sometimes over our objections.

Personally, I could not imagine my parents choosing someone who is right for me. But others are pretty comfortable with it. So here's a question for you: Would you be OK with your parents playing matchmaker? And does this happen to men too? It still seems less accepted in our society for women to remain single.

Oh, and the doctor in Sacramento? He emailed me two days later and turned out to be just as uninteresting as I had feared.

Posted by Melissa at 9:52 PM | Comments (16) | TrackBack

It's true, ladies and germs, our very own, brand spankin' new literary editor, Barbara Jane Pulmano Reyes has just been honored by the Academy of American Poets with a James Laughlin Award for a second book! Congrats, Barb! You better ride this mileage 'til the car breaks down. You know Hyphen will.

Posted by claire at 10:46 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

It's true, ladies and germs, our very own, brand spankin' new literary editor, Barbara Jane Pulmano Reyes has just been honored by the Academy of American Poets with a James Laughlin Award for a second book! Congrats, Barb