In culinary school, the chefs basically dismissed the garlic press as a useless tool, but I think it's gotten a bad rap. The garlic press is an easy time-saver in many culinary situations. The key is knowing when to use it and when not to use it. A few simple guidelines are all we need:

• DON'T press garlic directly into a hot saute pan. The smaller you chop garlic, the quicker it cooks. If you've ever minced some garlic and thrown it into a hot pan with some oil, and turned around to prepare the spinach (or whatever), only to find that when you turn back the garlic is crisp and crunchy already, you'll know what I mean. You can use a garlic press in this way, but change the order. Get the pan hot, add the oil, then throw in the spinach. After a second, press the garlic on top and mix. The spinach will start to give up its liquid and prevent the garlic from cooking too quickly.
• DO press the garlic directly into whatever you're working on – right into the pan or the bowl. When you press the garlic you get a lot of tasty juice. If you press onto your cutting board (for example), you lose that flavor.
• DO use a garlic press to make tasty salad dressing. Tamar's favorite quick vinaigrette is just salt, pepper, pressed garlic, olive oil, and vinegar. Add a bit of dijon for a little spice and a creamier texture (dijon is an emulsifier).
• DON'T think you can substitute a garlic press wherever the recipe calls for chopped garlic. The size of the garlic pieces isn't just about how quickly they cook, it's also about flavor and texture.
• DO press several cloves of garlic directly on top of steaks before they go on the grill. One of my favorite ways to prepare flank steak is to hit it with salt, pepper, olive oil, and pressed garlic about an hour before it goes on. Spread the garlic paste around so it makes a semi-even coat. When it hits the flame, the garlic caramelizes, and adds a wonderful richness and a bit of savory spice. Just don't add too much, or it'll burn and be pungent

I don't get it. More than a year ago Andrew Keen, author of the useless book Cult of the Amateur, came to the iSchool and got absolutely flattened in a debate with Paul Duguid. He couldn't articulate any meaningful points at all against a debater and an audience who are well versed in research and practice in online contexts. He made a fool of himself, and ended up saying, in almost as many words, that he's just doing all this for the money, and he doesn't really feel strongly about it all.

So I guess we know why Keen is still talking, but why is anyone still listening? Keen is on NPR's Science Friday show right now, repeating the same old alarmist crap, denouncing online anonymity, promoting legislation on internet speech, and generally suggesting we should make new media more like old media.

But maybe it's easy to answer the question of why we're still listening too. It's a pretty well established phenomenon in social psychology that people tend to accept evidence that supports things they already believe and reject even obvious evidence to the contrary. It's all about cognitive dissonance – once we've committed to a position we work to avoid conflict with that position. So, for years the media primed us to believe that the internet was making us all ignorant porn fiends, that it was isolating us, creating a haven for terrorists, and exposing our children to pedophiles. Then, along comes Keen at an opportune moment, in search of some easy money, and applying the same old argument to the user-generated content phenomena around Web 2.0. I guess that's why people are still listening.

Happy 2009! I have high hopes for great things this year.