More NNNNNNs
More Ns on the march to ten.
4. Nougat - What is this tasty concoction? It appears in multiple candy bars, and is often touted as a key ingredient, ranking right up there with peanuts and chocolate. But I have yet to find someone who can honestly tell me what nougat is (aside from 'scrumptious'). This is one of the modern marvels of the culinary world, as far as I'm concerned. Mayonnaise is another incredible invention, although I'm told that it has some sort of egg product in it, which means it is still a mystery to me, but a mystery with one known ingredient. I'm going to go ahead and throw Salisbury Steak into this grouping, too, because although it is called a steak and has its own name like porterhouse and t-bone, there is something eerie about the lack of bone or tissue structure in the Salisbury Steak. It is delicous, oh yes, but where does it come from? If it's ground up and re-formed, does that not constitute a burger? What's wrong with the Salisbury Burger? We don't need alliteration for the sake of alliteration, especially if it comes down to accuracy in foods. Lastly, I love Softbatch cookies and their delicious chewiness, and I have absolutely no desire to find out how they make it so chewy, and why there are those Matrix scars on their undersides, like they were plugged into a machine as they baked.
5. November - A good solid month of the year. Out here, November is just a cooler summer month. I wore shorts and a t-shirt out in town today and was on the verge powering up my car's AC. The nights are cool and the sun goes down really early because of Daylight Savings, speaking of which is another way in which the farmers of this country have the rest of us by the short and curlies. Daylight Savings is totally useless for 97% of the population - only 3% of Americans are involved in farm work of any kind. The rumor I've heard is that DS came about because farmers must milk their cows twice a day, and that these milkings must occur as close to 12 hours apart as possible. Most farmers, in order to keep in some sort of rhythm with society, milk around 4 or 5, both a.m. and p.m. DS was designed to give them the most sunlight possible when they were working. Of course we now have electricity and only eight maids-a-milking, but the fact remains that we are robbed of an hour of circadian pleasantry at the end of our days.
Aside from the cultural and irritating issue of DS, farmers also have a pretty good chokehold on the openness of the American economy. Like I said, a very small percentage of Americans are farmers, yet the American government regularly gives out billions and billions of dollars to farmers in an effort to keep their farms up and running. These are not the small, family-owned farms, either, but the mega-farm equivalent of Wal-mart (soybeans: aisles 1 through 800,000). In the most recent round of international trade talks in Doha, Qatar, the U.S. was unwilling to reduce its farm subsidies, a key obstacle in the march towards global freedom of trade. This was not the only issue that has killed Doha, but it was certainly a major factor, and it has been killing American trade for years. The costs of having such enormous farm subsidies are gigantic, but they are spread out over all 300 million of us. The benefits, however, are very concentrated and crucial to the survival of a number of closely-related entities. As with tax reform, it is difficult (often impossible) to produce any workable solution when the losers are large in number and highly diffuse while the winners are small and very close-knit. Believe me, the federal government is not handing out large checks to the local organic farm that is setting up shop at your farmer's market. It is bound hoof and foot with a farmer's caucus that is one of the most unheralded and successful political organizations that this country has ever seen.
So, that's my take on November.
6. Nintendo - Inventor of perhaps the worst game paddle ever known to man. I don't know how that thing ever got produced, but my guess is the conversation went something like this:
Man 1: OK, we need to have a little device with buttons that people can hold in their hands to play our games.
Man 2: Hm, there are so many possible shapes. I wonder what I'd like if I were ever going to hold it in my own hands?
Man 1: That is a terrible question. Let's just make it a perfect geometric shape.
Man 2: AGREED.
End scene.
7. Nietzsche - An underrated philosopher. This guy was brilliant, but had all sorts of problems, including (I believe) a little bit of racism and bigotry that he just couldn't quite keep out of his writing. It makes reading his work fun because there are a bunch of passages that are just stupid and wrong. As Marge and Homer say - "Homer, it's always easy to criticize." "And fun, too!"
4. Nougat - What is this tasty concoction? It appears in multiple candy bars, and is often touted as a key ingredient, ranking right up there with peanuts and chocolate. But I have yet to find someone who can honestly tell me what nougat is (aside from 'scrumptious'). This is one of the modern marvels of the culinary world, as far as I'm concerned. Mayonnaise is another incredible invention, although I'm told that it has some sort of egg product in it, which means it is still a mystery to me, but a mystery with one known ingredient. I'm going to go ahead and throw Salisbury Steak into this grouping, too, because although it is called a steak and has its own name like porterhouse and t-bone, there is something eerie about the lack of bone or tissue structure in the Salisbury Steak. It is delicous, oh yes, but where does it come from? If it's ground up and re-formed, does that not constitute a burger? What's wrong with the Salisbury Burger? We don't need alliteration for the sake of alliteration, especially if it comes down to accuracy in foods. Lastly, I love Softbatch cookies and their delicious chewiness, and I have absolutely no desire to find out how they make it so chewy, and why there are those Matrix scars on their undersides, like they were plugged into a machine as they baked.
5. November - A good solid month of the year. Out here, November is just a cooler summer month. I wore shorts and a t-shirt out in town today and was on the verge powering up my car's AC. The nights are cool and the sun goes down really early because of Daylight Savings, speaking of which is another way in which the farmers of this country have the rest of us by the short and curlies. Daylight Savings is totally useless for 97% of the population - only 3% of Americans are involved in farm work of any kind. The rumor I've heard is that DS came about because farmers must milk their cows twice a day, and that these milkings must occur as close to 12 hours apart as possible. Most farmers, in order to keep in some sort of rhythm with society, milk around 4 or 5, both a.m. and p.m. DS was designed to give them the most sunlight possible when they were working. Of course we now have electricity and only eight maids-a-milking, but the fact remains that we are robbed of an hour of circadian pleasantry at the end of our days.
Aside from the cultural and irritating issue of DS, farmers also have a pretty good chokehold on the openness of the American economy. Like I said, a very small percentage of Americans are farmers, yet the American government regularly gives out billions and billions of dollars to farmers in an effort to keep their farms up and running. These are not the small, family-owned farms, either, but the mega-farm equivalent of Wal-mart (soybeans: aisles 1 through 800,000). In the most recent round of international trade talks in Doha, Qatar, the U.S. was unwilling to reduce its farm subsidies, a key obstacle in the march towards global freedom of trade. This was not the only issue that has killed Doha, but it was certainly a major factor, and it has been killing American trade for years. The costs of having such enormous farm subsidies are gigantic, but they are spread out over all 300 million of us. The benefits, however, are very concentrated and crucial to the survival of a number of closely-related entities. As with tax reform, it is difficult (often impossible) to produce any workable solution when the losers are large in number and highly diffuse while the winners are small and very close-knit. Believe me, the federal government is not handing out large checks to the local organic farm that is setting up shop at your farmer's market. It is bound hoof and foot with a farmer's caucus that is one of the most unheralded and successful political organizations that this country has ever seen.
So, that's my take on November.
6. Nintendo - Inventor of perhaps the worst game paddle ever known to man. I don't know how that thing ever got produced, but my guess is the conversation went something like this:
Man 1: OK, we need to have a little device with buttons that people can hold in their hands to play our games.
Man 2: Hm, there are so many possible shapes. I wonder what I'd like if I were ever going to hold it in my own hands?
Man 1: That is a terrible question. Let's just make it a perfect geometric shape.
Man 2: AGREED.
End scene.
7. Nietzsche - An underrated philosopher. This guy was brilliant, but had all sorts of problems, including (I believe) a little bit of racism and bigotry that he just couldn't quite keep out of his writing. It makes reading his work fun because there are a bunch of passages that are just stupid and wrong. As Marge and Homer say - "Homer, it's always easy to criticize." "And fun, too!"