Conventional wisdom and the Noise Machine
Say what you want about graying conservative icon/irritant/pundit Pat Buchanan — about his going overboard on the ills of immigration (both legal and illegal), his shameless recycling of a great many GOP talking points against Barack Hussein Obama, his hideous fashion sense (ever watch “Morning Joe”?) — but give him credit for being just about the only high-profile conservative, aside from Ron Paul, to discredit the “they hate us for our freedoms” rhetoric. Exhibit A is his latest syndicated column:
Who says I don’t keep my blog current?
Because here’s a new blog post. Ha!
(Seriously, at some point in the near future, I’m going to have something to say again. I think.)
Ready-made blog post
Haven’t had anything to say (or the time to say it) in awhile, but sometimes life just hands you a gift.
Today, I got a comment on a post from April 5, a post which contained only pictures of my neighbors’ house being torn apart by fire. The comment? Read on:
Hi there, I’ve just now found your site whilst I’m hunting on Google as I am seeking some info on electric cellos!. It’s an interesting website so I bookmarked you and I intend to come back another day to have a better browse when I’ll more free time.
— Roxie Fexler
Well of course! Why WOULDN’T you come to my website, and specifically a post about a burning building, to find more information on electric cellos?! But what’s weird is that Roxie seems to be an expert on electric cellos already, since when I clicked the link of her name, it took me here:
Finally, someone else says it…
It’s my favorite conservative, Daniel Larison, in this brief post on criticisms of President Obama not going to Germany for yet another photo op:
Republicans object to so many irrelevant things that Obama does and they treat absolutely everything as some supreme, unpardonable error that it is impossible to take any of their criticism seriously.
Read it twice. Then reflect on the past few months. Then read it again, and see if you don’t agree.
This is why I’m commenting so little on politics these days — vanity, vanity!
Quality-driven coffee
My friend Ben commented on my last post, wondering what difference it makes whether one is “grinding” their coffee with a “blade grinder” rather than an actual burr grinder.
Basically, the “blade grinder” is just a subversively named food processor; some blades whirl around and chop up the coffee beans, with no regard for the size of the pieces they’re producing. If you have used a food processor, you know how this works: One has to watch closely in an attempt to get the results “just right,” but even then some of the pieces are going to be larger than the others.
Well, a coffee ground’s thickness determines how much water (and how much time) is needed to produce an appropriate flavor from that ground; with an inconsistent grind, there is simply no way to get consistent results.
Better brews
While I’m waiting for the long-awaited unveiling of foodcoffeelife.com (not hyperlinked because there’s nothing there yet), I thought I’d share my thoughts on “quality-driven” coffee, and some options I hope to evangelize throughout southcentral Kentucky. Below, you’ll find brief explanations on why every home should have a French press and a burr grinder — and why you really should consider putting a vacpot on your Christmas list, despite the fact that you’ve never heard of it until now.
Health care, football and you
If homeowner’s insurance worked like American health insurance, it would not only pay for fires but also cover utility bills, replacing broken appliances, baseballs hit into the window and all the food, drink and paper towels that pass through the kitchen. Certainly, a company could offer an insurance product that covered absolutely every expense of living in a home. But such insurance would be phenomenally expensive and full of ultra-complex rules; the insurer would also acquire an incentive to dream up excuses to deny payment. Just like American health care insurance!
— Gregg Easterbrook, “Tuesday Morning Quarterback”
Politicians seem to live in a two-dimensional world (think C.S. Lewis’ “flatlanders”), while the rest of us are out here in 3D, pleading with them to see features they simply aren’t built to recognize. Put another way, our representatives present us with black and white on health care — Bad Option A, and (totally different but just as) Bad Option B. Thus you have the “public option,” and the “leave it alone” camps battling for supremacy.
(You haven’t heard Republicans saying, explicitly, “leave it alone.” They talk about “sensible reforms” that are supposed to come if the Dems scrap all their current plans and go back to the drawing board. This is kind of like me saying, “Sure, I’ll exercise more, just as soon as I start getting enough sleep the nights before.” In other words, it ain’t gonna happen.)
Leave it to a football column to provide a far better alternative. In his “Tuesday Morning Quarterback” article at ESPN.com, Gregg Easterbrook takes a break from dissecting plays and mocking the punt — no, he says, it is NOT that risky to try on fourth down — to present a quite cogent and perfectly simple argument: Insurers should face price-controls, and providers should have to offer non-insured individuals the same pricing they offer insurance companies. (More quotes after the jump.) Read the rest of this entry »
The endless search for quality
Me and my coffeehouse… it’s a love/hate relationship, for sure. It’s great on the rare occasion that Shelley and I get to go “sit a spell,” sans kids, and just soak it in. It’s great when someone who actually likes coffee — black coffee, and not primarily due to caffeine — comes in and starts up a conversation. It’s great on the days people are feeling generous, or romantic, or joyful generally. There are plenty of reasons to love it.
It’s not so great, however, when I look at how much time I’ve put into it, then consider how little (financially speaking) I have to show for it. It sucks when customer after customer comes in looking for “a regular cup of coffee,” interspersed with yuppies who want to order everything “grande” and “skinny.” And it really, really bothers me that most of my employees still don’t have a true appreciation of coffees — the differences in origins, roast profiles, brewing methods, etc.
That last one, of course, is my own fault. And it pisses me off.
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