March 31, 2006
Food Remixed
Robin says,
Both Snarkmasters are big fans of El Bulli, the Barcelona restaurant famous as a kind of food R&D lab. More background here. Will go one day.
But in the meantime, I like this: Jane Pinckard dubs El Bulli grub nerd food. In other words: Isn't it cool that El Bulli concerns itself so fully with experimentation and imagination instead of just, say, organic simplicity?
Jane writes:
Here in the Bay Area, we live under a tyranny of Alice Waters - a benevolent dictatorship, to be sure, full of good intentions, but her basic philosophy, which has since spread to all parts of the U.S., strictly stipulates that food is naturally good and ought not to be tampered with more than necessary. Good, high quality food can shine best with minimal handling. Her techniques evince a deep respect for the natural structures of meat, vegetables, pastas, spices, and so on. Her food is delicious, and her work with farmer's markets and school's eating programs are very deservedly much admired.
But surely there's got to be good, healthy food that looks forward, too. El Bulli shows the way.
March 30, 2006
Red Badge of Verbiage
Every subculture has its code-words and pass-phrases. One that I particularly revile is "blood and treasure," a favorite of warrior-politics neocons. It's handy, actually, because anytime anybody says something like "You cannot expect Americans to spend blood and treasure blah blah blah" with a straight face, you automatically know they are not credible.
I'm not even going to link to the place where I just saw it because it's so vile. Anybody know the etymology of the phrase, though? I just did some quick Googling but didn't find any leads.
Another angle: What are some other classic subcultural code-phrases?
"I'm familiar with the argument" is one I hear a lot in academic and quasi-academic circles, and always seems to be sending a meta-message. Any others spring to mind?
March 28, 2006
American Stakeholders
Three years ago, in a spectacular issue of The Atlantic Monthly ("The Real State of the Union," done in partnership with the New America Foundation), Ray Boshara wrote a fascinating proposal. What if we gave $6,000 to every American citizen at birth, and invested that money in a safe portfolio until the citizen grew old enough to use it?
Wealth inequality in the US, Boshara pointed out, is much greater even than income inequality:
By the close of the 1990s the United States had become more unequal than at any other time since the dawn of the New Deal