They shot my horse - Gourmet z"l

Well not really, but Conde Nast is taking Gourmet out back and putting a gun to its head. It might make financial sense, but I don't think I will ever feel the same sense of grandeur and delight reading Bon Appetite.

Gourmet Magazine, may your memory be a blessing z"l

More on the sad news over at the NYT.

The burger has its "bacon" treatment in the NYT

I think the real question you have to ask yourself after reading this article on burger construction is. "do I need a dedicated food processor for meat?"

The Perfect Burger and All Its Parts

A special nod to the mention of Gus' Pickles on the Lower East Side. For of those not familiar with it, go rent Crossing Delancey where it has a supporting role.

No rest for anyone, even when you are told to

There is a nice article in the NYT about how people are coping (or not) with work furloughs. For those of you not familiar with the idea, think of them as mini-layoffs. You get a couple of days of unpaid leave and hopefully the aggregate savings your employer enjoys allows them to keep you on the payroll. I have a friend who works for an agency that is contemplating this measure and I have met others whose companies have gone as far as shutting down for a month as a way of coping with a fall off in business.

The article was most interesting in examing the dynamic with public employess who have not been furloughed in the true sense of the word. Rather they have just had their pay cut. Why? Well it turns out that they have to schedule their furlough days (much like a vacation or personal day) and they are so busy and short staffed that they can't get approval to take the days off. Since the days aren't covered in the normal employment scenario there are no rules to govern their use or lack there of.

In the end it says more about our desire to work (and the role that plays in our self-worth and self-image) than anything else. We all aspire to a life of leisure, but most of us would have a hard time with it even if we could.

How smart is it to have a smart phone?

So I have a smart phone (for the curious it is an HTC S620 aka T-Mobile Dash). I have taken to using it as phone, calendar and most often as a web browser. I probably consume a good chunk of the NYT on that tiny 3 inch screen. Often sitting on BART I see fellow phone readers. They are reading e-mails. surfing the web or in the case of Iphone-ers playing games. There is a nice article in today's Times about our little "problem" and why its been a winner even is a recession.

Music to my ears

The NYT has an interesting rundown on some of the efforts to build car free communities. My brother lives in one of the new planned communities that were built in the last few years. While there is still plenty of room for cars (he has a garage) the community is planned with a central green corridor that leads to the shopping center. While it makes it easier to get to the store and there is rapid bus service to the airport, he still has to drive to work.

A club to love

This just in from the NYT, guys who take their burgers seriously. Seriously, if I had the time and the Plavix I would start up a SF chapter. Turkey Burgers Don’t Count

A wee bit of pragmatism?

Khaled Meshal has granted the NYT an interview. It is, apparently, the first time in a year that he has spoken to the American press. He used this opportunity to point out a few things. First, the Hamas would stop firing rockets at Israel. Second that Hamas would be happy to have a state in the '67 boundaries (meaning Egyptian Gaza and the Jordanian West Bank). Also Hamas would not recognize Israel, but would be open to a 10 year truce.

For an organization that has been hell bent on the destruction of Israel for the last 30 years, that comes as a refreshing bit of pragmatism. But why? Could it be that Hamas feels like it might get left out in the cold if Obama manages to court the Syrians? Or what happens if the Iranians decide to get friendly (or less hostile) with the new administration? Could Hamas, the least important of Iran's clients get kicked to the curb? If so, how could Hamas forestall such a development? By doing a little outreach on its own? Of course with the current downturn the economies of Iran and Syria might not have as much room for foreign largess as they used to when oil (I know Syria doesn't have any) was $147 a barrel.

Another possible explanation is that Hamas is shrewdly playing off the fact that the new Israeli government is shaping up to be even more rejectionist than Hamas. Is Meshal trying to demonstrate to Obama that Hamas is the more rational and reasonable party to the conflict? It seems a tall order from the people who perfected the art of suicide bombing. However, when you get placed in a line up with Avigdor "Yvette" Lieberman you might have a chance.

Most interesting to me was this line "After all, the firing is a method, not a goal." Methods and goals? Is the leader of Hamas reading management theory? Is Covey available in Arabic?

Everything old is new again

Actually that is a pretty obscure reference for this post. But it holds true for me. In 1995 I visited by my thesis adviser (the recently retired Bruce Fetter) and asked him for advice. I had recently completed a program in Israel (the late, lamented WUJS Post Graduate Institute) and was thinking about embarking on a PhD program in history (I was thinking about an investigation into the historiography of American Zionism- for the truly curious). What I was hoping to hear was some suggestions for professors and programs where I could pursue such work. What I got instead was a stern warning.

Bruce, who never held a punch, gave me a quick lesson in the realities of university economics. He pointed out that upon his retirement (still more the decade off) his corner office and tenured position would simply disappear and the university would likely hire a couple of lecturers to cover his courses on a part time basis. None of them would get health benefits, a pension or any of the other traditional perks of academic life. In short it was a warning, and one I took seriously.

More than a decade later I have pursued an alternate path in another branch of the educational world, with great satisfaction. All of this becomes relevant again with the much read op-ed in the NYT over the weekend End the University as We Know It. Another salient critique of the current situation in academia, which will only become worse in the next few years.

Time to hunker down?

A new study out reports that Americans are moving from home to home at a rate not seen in years. In fact the last time this few of us moved around this little it was 1962 and there were far fewer of us then.

It was only a few months ago that we were still treated to a nightly onslaught of programs on TLC about people moving into new houses with a celebratory display of ikea wares. But that was then, this is now. Now, there is no moving up. Now, we are hunkering down.

Of course hunkering down is both a symptom and a cause of greater economic stress. A symptom as people who are worried about their financial future (even if they have jobs) start to hedge their bets by staying put in homes that they might have deemed too small, or in neighborhoods felt to no longer be desirable. That of course is one more factor in the ongoing meltdown in the housing market. Add it to the constrained credit markets and you start to see why even with a growing stock of ever cheaper homes on the market there are fewer shoppers.

But this immobility is also a cause of further stress. As people hunker down, both by not moving or shopping for smaller goods and services, they depress multiple sectors of the economy. To lure shoppers in, merchants and professionals lower their prices. Buyers then start to sense a pattern of sinking prices and realize that by holding off on a purchase a bit longer they will have greater buying power and their money will be worth more. Welcome to the wide world of deflation.

Deflation is, oddly enough, a situation where money becomes worth more. Spain is now in the early stages of what might be a deflationary spiral as prices come down in an attempt to spur business. But with little disposable income, no one is buying. Merchants, suppliers, professionals and factories shed staff, fewer can buy anything at all.

Of course the upside to deflation is that for anyone who has cash in hand it will be a buyers paradise- so hang on to your piggy bank. The US is unlikely to face such a fate however since the Fed has also said that it will issue up to one trillion dollars of debt to cover losses in various financial firms and housing loans. That is in effect printing another trillion dollars, something that in normal times would trigger inflation- where money loses its purchase power. Will the Fed, and the Obama administration be able to hold this balancing act until the bottom strikes and we start to move back up? Time will tell, but there is always the memory of the stagflation 70's to keep us up at night.

Controlled implosion

In New Orleans when confronted by the fact that an entire district of the city had been washed away (and the rest soaked deep in water) the city punted by not re-zoning the land as non-residential. The reasons for this were mostly political, the reasons to do it have mostly to due with the city's inability to safeguard against a repeat of Katrina style flooding. So today, Brad Pitt and others are building houses in the Lower Ninth and hoping that they will be high enough to stay above the water line, but not so high as to become a sail in hurricane force winds.

Flint MI has different plans afoot to deal with its shrinking population and loss of infrastructure, controlled implosion of residential and commercial districts to use less land and preserve community. Of course another outcome of rejiggering the urban landscape is the creation of less transportation needy environments. How about a LEED certified city?

More cycling news upon us, we have been discovered!

Good news, cycling to work is officially a trend as deemed by no less than the New York Times (or "The Paper" to its friends). Now, as someone who never rode to work in a suit (or even a tie) I cannot vouch for how good an idea it is to risk your dry cleaning bill to the elements of the city streets. But it goes without saying that more exposure for non-oil burning alternatives in urban areas are good ones. My big gripe is the reporter's focus on Dutch bicycles (it was the style angle). For my money style points should also go to the old school Cannondale city bikes that were made with bent wood fenders in the 90's. Electra cycles has a much more Cali hipster vibe (not surfer, more punk writer) but are a homegrown phenomenon nonetheless. Also there should be a bit more attention paid to the emerging single-speed scene. Not the messenger fixee no brakes part of it. But the more refined offerings like Haro's Beasley which comes in a single speed and 1x9 configuration. And we would be seriously remiss if I did not mention the champion of retro design and the company that made upright riding hip, Rivendale.

Well then, perhaps we could get congress to recognize bicycle purchases as eligible for commuter Flex funds just like parking and transit passses. Call your representatives and demand action.

Free-Range Trichinosis?

Ok, everyone once in a while the NYT crosses the line with its op-ed lineup from interesting perspectives not often considered by regular readers, to the typewritten equivalent of the infomercial.

James McWilliams piece on the 9th was one such piece of rubbish. Without delving too deeply into the numerous bits of flotsam and jetsam that McWilliams places in our path (I am sorry he won't try wild boar) lets reduce his argument to its little tiny nub. As he puts it:

IS free-range pork better and safer to eat than conventional pork? Many consumers think so. The well-publicized horrors of intensive pig farming have fostered the widespread assumption that, as one purveyor of free-range meats put it, “the health benefits are indisputable.” However, as yet another reminder that culinary wisdom is never conventional, scientists have found that free-range pork can be more likely than caged pork to carry dangerous bacteria and parasites.

So here it is, the quality of life of pigs (and their flavor) is less important than eliminating a disease that is easily dealt with by cooking and engaging in safe food handling procedures. That's it. What is he defending? Industrial hog production. What does that give us? Well for starters, very unhealthy pigs. Now, I am not sure about McWilliams but as a child my parents kept a sow that we bred each year. Pigs (as opposed to wild boar) are a domesticated species. They seem to be at their happiest rooting, wallowing and being with other pigs. Pigs are perhaps the most intelligent of the barnyard animals (even exceeding horses- who I am told are roughly as smart as a 3 year old which explains many horse temper tantrums). Are they, and we, better off when instead of being free to do these things they are confined to small pens and subjected to so much stress that their systems are flooded with cortisol (to a point where some say that it affects the flavor of the meat). Also, what of the giant lagoons of pig shit that litter the Midwestern landscape? Perhaps those too are to be explained away by the bogyman of trichinosis.

The truth be told, it is long overdue that consumers take a good hard look at the meat (and everything else) in the supermarket and contemplate exactly how much fuel, toil and suffering is represented in a box of cheap bacon.

But let me be clear, this is not an argument for vegetarianism. I would only suggest that McWilliams and everyone else be willing to look that animal in the eye before you eat it. But the real hand tip about McWilliams' true agenda is revealed at the very end where we are promised that he is hard at work on a book about the terrible things that locovore movement will visit upon us.

The New York Times Discovers Neuro-Science

There is a convergence going on over at the NYT over the last few days. First, this interesting article on how researchers are unlocking the chemistry of memory, and have demonstrated how to disrupt that reaction in lab rats (i.e. induced amnesia) Fascanating, but for a longer view about the origins of the field (which is not as new as the NYT thinks), a good read is Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain--and How it Changed the World.

Of course for those of you of a more philosophical bent, please read David Brooks this weekend as he muses about the evolutionary roots of morality. Its actually an interesting question, I have often held that morality is simply a construct we use to identify the line where we cease to believe that the ends justifies the means.

Unfortunately for the absolutists out there, that line moves. It moves for each individual and every society. It changes for each action, big or small. Can I take this penny off the floor? Can I eat the last piece of bacon? Is it OK to plunder the pension fund of a small town in east Kansas? All of these questions require making a decision about ends and means. Draw that circle too tightly and you will cease to be effective in the world. Draw it too wide and you risk becoming a monster. According to the people Brooks is speaking with, those choices are influenced by two competing ideas. The idea of competition with other groups of people balanced against cooperation within our own group.

I believe that ultimately all human behavior can be reconciled in some way to an evolutionary imperative, our task at this stage of our history is to figure out what they are without resorting to the easy answers of theology or compulsion.

After all, the first step towards a cure is identifying the problem.