Posts by BenWilson
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Oriental seems to be a word that is bucking the trend of word inflation, and becoming more and more specific. In things written in the early 20th Century it seems to pretty much mean "from the continent of Asia", even so far as Asia Minor, ie the Middle East.
Occidental is another dying word, "European" getting more traction. I think this is happening because Eastern and Western are concepts that are getting very dated, betraying a eurocentricity that makes little sense in a spherical world with massive intermingling of populations.
I'm not much of a fan of being called European, though. "White" is closer to what people usually actually mean. Pakeha will do in NZ. Skippy, in Australia. Anglo, maybe, except that I'm ethnically Irish on the whole, so actually Celtic.
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Hard News: Where are the foreigners?!, in reply to Simon Grigg,
And both restaurants seem to understand the meaning of heat in food, and the way to apply it, which I miss most elsewhere.
It's easily misunderstood, because there are no convenient measurement systems. There are metrics for it, the Scoville scale for chili. But high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) isn't easily done in a kitchen. It would be handy if various ingredients had this scale per gram on their packaging, then reasonably accurate measures could be made.
The most obvious solution, something that many smaller shops around Auckland are doing on an increasing basis, is supplying the table with a selection of seasonings. Pepper, salt, sugar, chili oil and powder. And the mystery sauce, whose contents can only be divined by being able to read Chinese, or Korean, or whatever kind of restaurant you are in, or just hardening up and tasting it.
Then you serve the food slightly on the bland side, for the convenience of those who prefer it that way, and yet those who prefer heat can simply add it.
It makes so much sense that it's advisable for people cooking at home too. Some people just don't like salt, for instance, and it's easy to add after the fact, but impossible to take away.
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Hard News: About Occupy Wall Street, in reply to Russell Brown,
And capitalism really did pretty well in the 20th Century. This Australian Treasury paper on poverty and inequality in that century is worth reading. On life expectancy:
Whether that's due to capitalism or simply the advances of technology is not so clear. But it's true that wealth in an absolute sense has risen the entire world over. What's changing is that relative wealth is redistributing. Hence my comment that it's not entirely clear if it's a good or bad thing from a global perspective. Much depends on what the militarily powerful western world does about it. What worries me about this time is the resemblance to the 20s and 30s, and what that led to. However, war is a different beast now, so there is some hope that it won't go like that again.
Rising internal inequity is the same. In one sense, everyone in NZ is wealthier than they were 30 years ago. Many of the things we have were only dreams then, like mobile phones and the internet. But in other senses, some basic things are way more expensive than they were. Food, and housing, as two things that no one can reasonably do without, are much larger proportions of the average wage than they were. In my parents time, they went to see movies every single week with such pocket money as they had. Now, to go to the movies is a ridiculous luxury that I reserved only for very special occasions, even when I was in the top 5% of income earners (earlier this year).
Despite all of the advances of 65 years since the war ended, people who work still have to work the same, or more hours. People who can't find work, or aren't even looking, are increasing in number, and have to really struggle to find enough money to pay for food and rent. These are failures of capitalism, plain and simple. If we really are many times wealthier than the 1940s, why on earth do we still spend our days grinding for the man, or begging for money?
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Hard News: About Occupy Wall Street, in reply to Stephen Judd,
(Maybe I misunderstood who Ben meant by "they").
Oh, crap. You did, but it was my fault. I meant Social Credit, for some reason, I got my wires completely crossed there, about who John Birch was. Silly me, apologies. I've got no time at all for John Birch.
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Hard News: About Occupy Wall Street, in reply to Bart Janssen,
I don't think we should scrap capitalism
I'm undecided on that in the long term, but for now, definitely not. It should be reformed piece by piece. But this reform could be very rapid, at least it could be in this country.
One thing that I think that anti-banking sentiment fails to capture at the moment is that the problem is way bigger than just bad banking. A systematic decline in the value of Western economies through the outsourcing of everything that could possibly be outsourced is not just the fault of bankers, it's the entire globalization mentality, for which the blame is considerably more diffuse. In fact, from an outside perspective, it's not even necessarily that bad for the world. Did we actually deserve to be so rich for so long? I don't think so. But what we also don't deserve is to become more inequitable just because we are (by processes that seem inevitable to me) less rich. For that, the banking sector has a lot to answer.
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Hard News: About Occupy Wall Street, in reply to Russell Brown,
Alan Grayson does an wonderful job of putting PJ O'Rourke in his place on the Bill maher show:
Nice. O'Rourke was funny in the 80s. But bongo drums? That joke isn't a Twinkie - when you open the packaging now it's actually fossilized.
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Hard News: Where are the foreigners?!, in reply to izogi,
The foil's folded in but it slides out very easily.
Why does it need to be folded in at all? You should be able to just unwind the kebab, nibbling your way down, without every circuit involving the need to stick your fingers into the kebab to dig the foil out, which has often been double folded, so tearing it creates a rupture the entire length of the kebab, the sauces then leaking out of the bottom. I can't think of any rationale, other than something about the process of making it that makes it more convenient for the chef that way - they seem to use the foil to roll the kebab. But the places that don't do this seem to have no troubles at all, rolling the kebab up first, and then rolling the foil around the outside afterward. The foil doesn't even get sauce on it at all, so the discarded pieces can be crushed into a little ball as you go, if you're a tidy kiwi.
ETA: It smacks of a product that is never consumed by its own creators, the problem is so obvious. Or perhaps, as you say, I've got different eating habits and don't really relish licking sauce off my hands and forearms constantly.
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Hard News: About Occupy Wall Street, in reply to Russell Brown,
I just get twitchy about things that look even a little like John Birch-style banking conspiracies.
Yes, I was reading up on their policies and thinking it sounded quite reasonable, until it hit the whole antisemitic part.
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Hard News: About Occupy Wall Street, in reply to James Butler,
Yep, but hating on Saruman and Wormtongue is pretty unsatisfying when you know the big kids are sticking it to Sauron.
Well, until you get back to the Shire and find it covered in sticky oil.
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Hard News: About Occupy Wall Street, in reply to Dylan Horrocks,
I feel more compelled right now to dive into the chaos and engage than I have in years. It's a moment of openness and potential and possibility - in stark contrast to the rigid hopelessness of the last 20-30 years. And that's exciting and fills me with hope - for all the confusion and fear it also provokes.
Totally, utterly. It seems to me like the world has hit a teachable moment.
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