I like pepita hummus but I've never seen Sabra make it.
I too find Sabra kind of gross. I puked it all over the balcony of a rental condo in Florida once. But I found it kind of gross even before that.
For reasons totally unrelated to the meal provided, I puke lamb over Easter. Now I don't really want to eat lamb.
That's funny. My fellow prefers Sabra hummus to mine because he likes it smoover and he likes the stuff in it.
Cooks Illustrated just had a bit on hummus, finding that warm garbanzos grind up smoother than cool garbanzos. If you have a preference along those lines, you could experiment with garbanzo temperature at the time of blending.
I've had bad luck making hummus -- at the best, not quite as good as store bought, and often really not as good. And when it turns out badly, I'm not sure what I did wrong.
Back when we had a baby to feed, we would feed him ground garbanzos but without the other stuff that makes it hummus.
On the other hand, homemade falafel is awesome, and much easier than I would have thought. Everyone should be making homemade falafel. If the garbanzos aren't quite cooked when you mash them, it gets crispier.
Maybe because it wasn't homemade, but I've really never enjoyed falafel. It's kind of like a hush puppy that took a few classes and tried to improve itself but still isn't going to get promoted from back-up side dish.
The creamy hummus is more Israeli stylee -- even without the stuff in the middle. TJ's sells both creamy and regular. My tastes in chickpea consumption are very catholic.
Lots of time, people are using old/rancid tahini. If the flavor is off, I'd question the tahini first.
If the flavor is off, I'd question the tahini first.
Seedist.
10 is right. Tahini needs to be kept in the fridge if it is going to hang out for any length of time. Unfortunately, it is also a pain in the ass to deal with when cold. (Yes, I am extremely lazy about dealing with globby cold tahini, even though I will happily de-skin chickpeas for extra creaminess.)
I especially dislike the Sabra brand that has olive oil in the middle. Have you tried Blue Moose hummus? They carry it in Whole Foods, at least the one in SLC (it's a Colorado Brand so maybe it's too local). It's a little gritty and has no stuff in the middle. But because it's in that natural no preservative style, it spoils within a week.
Even I am bored, prospectively, when thinking about my comments on this thread, so I will spare you. To be honest, though, even before my current insanity I have always disliked hummus, tahini, and tabouleh. When did these things invade and take over everything? I blame either the Arabs or the Israelis.
It's a bean, not a grain. Or is that worse?
I do enjoy the "rotating wheel of meat" school of cuisine, just to guard myself against accusations of being anti-Israeli or anti-Arabic.
The OP gets it exactly right. I am not familiar with this Sabra, but I've had reason to sample Tribe-brand hummus a fair amount in the past year or so, and yeah, it's increasingly smoove/creamy.
I use canned chickpeas when making homemade, chiefly because chickpeas take a hella long time to cook from scratch, but also because they seem to cut down on grittiness. Add dribbles of room-temperature water to reduce any undesired grittiness. For flavor adjustments, I confess I sometimes add finely chopped raw red onion. Also fresh parsley if I have it. I probably tend to under-lemonize.
Homemade hummus is *so* much cheaper than store-bought, and you can make a ton of it. I've never tried freezing any of it; I don't see why not, in theory, but the tahini might do funny things after a freeze and thaw.
A Lebanese friend says it's absolutely crucial to mix the lemon juice with the tahini before combining it with the garbanzo beans. CRUCIAL. He tried to demonstrate for us exactly what the effect is, but I wasn't paying much attention.
I feel like hummus is very easy to make. My evidence is that I have made acceptable hummus many times and I am not particularly good at making non-dessert things-to-eat.
But Sabra also has plain non-bullshit-having varieties. I know what you mean about the smoovity, though I like it fine really.
Adding lemon juice to tahini does odd things to the texture if you're just thinning it out as salad dressing -- it sort of seizes up until you add a bunch more water or juice. Maybe that thickened texture is desirable for the hummus for some reason?
21: Yes, that's the thing it's supposed to do.
Hummus freezes quite well, so you can make enormous batches at once. Everyone should just skip the tahini and double-down on garlic and olive oil.
Sabra, without any stuff in the middle, is the preferred brand in our house. At least until I get around to making my own, and in all probability, after that as well. It's firmly on the "make" side in "Make the bread, buy the butter", which I recently read and enjoyed.
Personally, I like to use it in sandwiches where mayo would normally go, and for that a creamier version is preferred.
Sabra is actually probably my favorite brand of hummus, and I like the stuff in the middle.
Years ago in DC I brought homemade hummus to a party and people were amazed that it was possible to make such a thing. These people had apparently never used either a food processor or an immersion blender.
25: I really like the pine nuts in the middle.
Some of us have used immersion blenders on our index fingers.
A while back, I remember seeing an Adbuster-style modified Sabra ad outside the Market St. Safeway in SF that included a bunch of stuff about how it was made with Palestinian suffering in addition to tasty chickpeas and tahini. Supposedly their factory is on questionably-legal kibbutz land in the West Bank or something (similar to SodaStream, as I learned via Unfogged). That gave me pause, but I mostly don't buy Sabra because I don't like it much and hummus is so easy to make.
The couple times I've made hummus at home it has sucked. Either gluey or gritty, and the taste is never quite right.
26.2 I personally believe that mandolines and dull parmesan graters are the best way of making absolutely sure your food won't be vegetarian
27: Pretty sure they're a US company -- although "sabra" is a colloquialism for "native Israeli."
Most of their stuff that I checked seems to be made in the U.S.
28.2 is correct. My busting out the microplane is a guarantee that there will be a little bit of oudemia in whatever I'm making. (Not even counting the surgery-requiring immersion blender mishaps.)
This thread is convincing me to try making my own houmus again. Which is, perhaps, slightly ill advised since the one time I tried before it didn't come out all that well, and because we're still a ways away from garlic being in season.
My mom made great houmus (and great baba ganoush but I'm not going to try to replicate that), so I could ask her for advice.
This real Arab likes Sabra the best, even though it was probably wrenched from the blood of Palestinians or whatever.
Baba ghanoush is super easy! Way easier than hummus. Just roast the fuck out of some eggplants and add tahini and lemon (mix them together first). Then whatever spices you want. I like salt, pepper, cumin, and a bit of cayenne. Onion powder is nice too.
(Not even counting the surgery-requiring immersion blender mishaps.)
There's probably a listing of those in "Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report."
Aha. It's all made here, and the company is based here, but one of the stakeholders (and there are others, like Pepsi) is a company that has given money to the Israeli military.
Too bad eggplant isn't edibile, because that looks easy.
Huh. I likewise find hummus easy to make, and I'm a pretty lousy cook.
That said, I'm too lazy nowadays to make it, and Sabra suits me just fine. And the stuff in the middle is tasty!
Yeah, babaganoush is really easy.
I was intrigued by this in Slate awhile back, but I haven't tried any of the suggestions, in part because of laziness and in part because, you know, Slate.
That recipe doesn't have enough garlic. Not even close to enough garlic.
it's absolutely crucial to mix the lemon juice with the tahini before combining it with the garbanzo beans
I do that for salad dressings, but it never occurred to me for hummus. Will try -- thanks.
The only thing is, I totally make up the proportions I'm adding as I'm going along with the food processing, so I guess I'd have to actually measure things.
Do people put olive oil in their hummus?
Hand stretching is the key there.
No, that's for the bread to serve with it.
it's absolutely crucial
Hmm - I can see how this might have been crucial in the days when you made the stuff with a pestle and mortar or a hand mouli, to make sure the lemon juice didn't ooze out. But in the time of the food processor? Not convinced.
Also, 41 gets it exactly right. And using pimenton is guilding the lily.
They toil not, nor do they spin.
47: Come on, Blume. Remember Sunday school: " . . . and neither do they sow."
One unsanctioned by the corporatist system, hence the guilding and gilding
48 is also responsive to the question: "What kind of exercise class do lilies attend?"
40: I tried that method, and learned a valuable lesson:
Do not put nut butter in the hummus. It will taste like nut butter, not like hummus.
Use Tahini.
I like Sabra hummus, but I'm always annoyed when I have to decide which kind of crap I'm going to have in the middle. None of the craps are very good and some of them are awful.
The kind with extra big garlic in the middle is good. I don't recall if that was Sabra or not.
56: Yeah, that's the Sabra I like. Going out to get some right now.
56: Yeah, that's the Sabra I like. Going out to get some right now.
I used to make pretty good hummus, but I haven't made it in a long time, partly because it's a lot easier to get good store-bought hummus now than it used to be, at least in the places I've lived. I agree with Stanley on Sabra. Costco stocks a pretty decent off-brand (not actually store-brand, I don't think, but not one of the big ones) that is not overly smoove or anything, and that's what I buy these days.
Food in Britain:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4276998/Throat-cut-man-saved-by-doner-ke-bandage.html
I've contemplated getting an immersion blender before. I'm also throwing a gigantic party the end of May, and want to make many delicious dips. I do not have a food processor and am not intending to buy one in the near future (though I could certainly borrow one).
Immersion blender question: Do they work really well for doing things like making dips? Seems like it would be easier than than putting things in a non-immersion blender (which is the thing I usually use), particularly in cleaning up, if you can just mix ingredients directly in a bowl.
Immersion blenders are great for that sort of thing (Also great for blended soups, so you're not pouring hot liquid all over the place). They do spray a bit, so mixing things up in small, low bowls tends to be messy.
63: Thanks. I think I will get one and try it out for the party planning.
Maybe someday I will upgrade to the food processor, but I'm not sure I cook enough to justify it.
Probably not publishable results but worth a few seconds on local TV if there hasn't been a nasty murder or car chase recently:
Today's tests reveal Athenos hummus is not as smooth as Sabra hummus. The Sabra is ground to the point of no discernible granularity. Sabra garlic hummus has more garlic taste than Athenos hummus. The Higgs boson did not show up.
Paula Wolfert recommends 2 key things in making huumus - making a paste of salt and garlic in the mortar and pestle first, and then mixing that, the lemon juice, and tahini in the food processor a good long time, until it whitens. I find that it really makes a difference.
(In other nnews, we've had no internet for a week. My phone is so not effective for doing anything!)
I like the smoove hummus, but the only acceptable thing in the middle is garlic. Or maybe I'm forgetting another variety that's okay. But most of the stuff in the middle is not helping.
Christ, I thought hypertension was too common to be considered a preexisting condition by insurance companies (should I lose employer coverage), but I guess I was fooling myself. New GAO report:
Hypertension was the most commonly reported medical condition among adults that could result in a health insurer denying coverage, requiring higher-than-average premiums, or restricting coverage. GAO's analysis found that about 33.2 million adults age 19-64 years old, or about 18 percent, reported hypertension in 2009.
(Though farther into the report, they clarify that it could also just lead to higher premiums or an exclusionary rider.)
Depending on the list of conditions used to define pre-existing conditions in each of the five estimates, GAO found that between 36 million and 122 million adults reported medical conditions that could result in a health insurer restricting coverage. This represents between 20 and 66 percent of the adult population...
76: Hypertension got much more common not very long ago:
http://www.health.harvard.edu/fhg/updates/update0803a.shtml
I've seen both the old chart and the new one on store machines in the last week.
I've decided recently that the secret of superior babaganoush is hand chopping the roasted eggplant, rather than food processorizing it.
I really need to get this wrongthreaditis treated. But isn't your link about some new-born rough beast hight prehypertension?
79: Yup. The docs, pushed by their risk factor analyses and the pharm companies, keep moving the normal goal posts.
Risk factor analysis is good work if you can get it.
I don't know why anyone would eat any other kind of hummus when they could get Holy Land Garlicky Homos. (Although I do object to the newer, fancier packaging.)
||
Grave of the Fireflies
From Wiki:
However, director Isao Takahata repeatedly denied that the film was an anti-war anime. In his own words, "[The film] is not at all an anti-war anime and contains absolutely no such message." Instead, Takahata had intended to convey an image of the brother and sister living a failed life due to isolation from society and invoke sympathy particularly in people in their teens and twenties.
Dennis Fukushima had it right, especially since the original source novelist made it explicit. It's a "Double Suicide" movie.
|>
I was very relieved to see Biohazard write "smooth". I'd assumed Stanley's use of "smoove" was one of his affectations, possibly what young people are saying nowadays, but then everyone else used it too. Most worrying.
I like Sabra - yum to pinenuts - but I'm not sure I've ever had a hummus I didn't like, from any point along the spectrum.
||
Huh, so Chrome is apparently terrible at rendering Unicode. Oh well.
|>
I assumed it was a reference to Smoove B.
I always buy Trader Joe's hummus. They sell non-smooth and smooth. A while ago they got rid of the Traditional non-smooth one which had tahini in it. You can get tahini in the smooth one. I don't like the smooth stuff and am sad that I can't get the style I like with tahini.
If it doesn't have tahini in it, is it hummus within the meaning of the act?
The key to making great tahini is to utter the magic words: "Open, sesame!"
88: Just lemon juice and some olive oil. I agree that it's deeply wrong. The creamy stuff has a bunch of extra ingredients, so I'm not sure that it's real even with the tahini.
Just roast the fuck out of some eggplants
My recipe says to "bake eggplants until they have completely surrendered and given up--about an hour, or until they're very soft, mushy, and collapsed-looking."
Holy Land Garlicky Homos
I think I was the only person in my grad department who didn't swear by Holy Land.
34, 91: Remember to poke a few holes in them first.
85: a funny thing about regret is that it's always better to regret something you have eaten then something you haven't eaten.
I fail to see how 93 is a response to 85.
Inspired by this thread I made Hummus tonight and it turned out great! Thanks unfogged.
It's been a while since my previous, failed attempt, and I suspect my problem was that I didn't use enough Olive Oil. I've become much smarter about the flavor and role of fats in cooking.
In fact part of what made me think that hummus would be a good idea is that I happened to have a bottle of very nice Olive Oil and that was a good use of it, you could clearly taste it as the flavor that underlay everything else.
combine the recent ATM thread, the cooties thread, and the OP of this one....and octameter, you say?
D'oh, wrong thread. Nonetheless...
So Mrs. Clinton wants to bid farewell to (oral) intercourse
And, pace comment four eight four she's beating (off to) a dead horse
By which I mean, if kissing's out, the marriage must be on the ropes
And since (it's clear that Arianna Huffington does not read Snopes)
The new Egyptian parliament has authorized for six hours more
The fucking of its corpse until Colombia sends Bill a whore,
That leaves us time to ponder other valid etiology
And whether we, the mineshaft, owe the Clintons an apology.
Let's take as given that his oral hygeine is fastidious
She doesn't seem to think he has infections like Chlamydia, s-
o I suggest her issue is (and here I'm backed by Kobe, yeah)
Not Clintonesque at all but rather philematophobia.
Smearcase, I would doff my hat if I had one. I'm even tempted to buy one for just that purpose. Wow.
Is it too soon to go off-topic?
OT: This New Yorker piece on something called Klout is astonishing to me.
The newest social media tool to grapple with this is Klout, a service for measuring your influence on all of these social networks. The company was launched two and a half years ago, and it has recently passed several important milestones. Wired just published a long feature on it; yesterday it released an iPhone app; and recently, for the first time, I read a letter from a job candidate that mentioned his Klout score. [emphasis added]
Klout grades users on a scale of one to a hundred based on some proprietary algorithm that counts how often your comments are retweeted, liked, or shared. If you want your score to go up, tweet more and get influential people to retweet you. Don't ever go on vacation.
The numbers are also obviously important to employers, marketers, and socialites. Seth Stevenson, the author of the Wired piece, reported that the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas has surreptitiously upgraded the rooms of people with high Klout scores, presumably in the hopes of tweets about their happiness. A company called Wahooly gives people with Klout scores equity positions in startups in return for attention. Klout scores will no doubt appear in many future job applications.
If you read the whole thing (which is not much longer than what I've lengthily quoted), the writer expresses his dismay, rightfully so.
I'm appalled.
Also, excellent poetic work, Smearcase!
(h/t Balloon Juice)
I mean, my first reaction, before second and third reactions flood in, was: that is in such poor taste.
This doesn't count toward a Klout score.
Smearcase misspelled hygiene. One point off. (Hey! I would be way cool if Klout subtracted points for spelling errors. Not that I'm thinking of anything.)
100 is awesome. But you knew that.
109: Jesus I'm beginning to think the Unabomber had a point Christ.
The Unabomber wore a hoodie, so he was clearly evil.
100: Great!
109: It's the next iteration of the "influencer" or "early adopter" notion in advertising. Yes, barf-inducing, but not all that different from the counts of cites to measure how important a given scientific paper is.
I'm not sure I ever read the entirety of the Unabomber's manifesto, actually.
120: The entirety is entirely too much.
I know the feeling. I've never read Infinite Jest past the first chaper.
123: oddly enough, the unabomber's entire manifesto appears in Infinite Jest, just in a different order.
I thought maybe they were roughly the same length, but apparently the manifesto was only 35,000 words.
It's been a long time since I read it, but I recall it being mostly right, if maybe a little simplistic, in its description of problems. His solutions left a little to be desired, but it wasn't the product of a disordered mind.
His solutions left a little to be desired, but it wasn't the product of a disordered mind.
Oh, Eliot House, so much to answer for.
Well, he was pretty clearly suffering from severe depression at some later point.
Does Flip have Tourette's or something?
119.2: I think I've heard that 'opinion makers' or 'influencers' are a done, or known, thing in medical circles. That is, pharmaceutical companies make use of doctors or researchers whom they fluff with the compliment that they are considered opinion makers (congratulations!) -- there's a permutation of the 'influencer' term that's used, I seem to think -- and these doctors are invited to give talks on the benefits of this or that new drug because they are such known opinion makers. Which, half the time, is poppycock.
I'm just blown away that people are still so juvenile that they're still seeking this kind of puffery and self-aggrandizement.
130: The Unabomber was placed in Eliot House as a math prodigy of 16, presumably to be one of John Finley's collection of trophy students. It can't have been at all easy.
I'm pretty sure the doctors want grant money, not compliments.
131: I did not know that. 130.1 was actually to 118 and 121 (the "Racist!" remarks). But never mind now, it's not important.
133: Just my default response after years of reading the Internet through guilty liberal eyes.
132: Both. They don't care who delivers the money, the compliments are generally best delivered by good-looking women.
a permutation of the 'influencer' term
"Good evening, and congratulations my fellow influencers."
130: It's not a totally insane concept. The kids ape celebrities all the time, and even some people buying watches starting at $3K and going up to infinity pay attention to "influencers".
http://www.omegawatches.com/ambassadors
132: I'm pretty sure this is a real thing, Moby. There were a couple of NPR pieces on it in the past year or so, and I think I've read something on it as well.
Doctors are identified (targeted) within a given locale or medical community -- maybe those who tend to attend conferences in a specific area of specialization -- and they're approached by pharmaceutical reps who tell them they've been identified as opinion makers. They're invited to give a talk on the virtues of drug XYZ, as featured speaker or some such.
Later when these doctors are questioned as to whether they believe they prescribe drug XYZ far more frequently than they did prior, they often declare that they do not. But records show that they do.
Anyway, pharmaceutical reps have gone on record stating that they do indeed do exactly this: dub some doctors opinion makers, tell them so, and invite them to give talks promoting the drug in question. This is one fundamental part of their job. Most of the pharma reps who say these things have quit, due to conscience.
due to conscience
The one side effect they never saw coming
140: The actual influential doctors want actual money.
Apparently we're talking past each other, Moby. I'm talking about physicians who prescribe medications for this and that, on a day to day basis. Perhaps I should not have mentioned researchers upthread.
109: That sounds like it would be a lot more successful than my Klute app, which assigns points to prostitutes based on how often they aid police investigations.
143: Probably are talking past each other as I'm still thinking of influential by citation counts as Biohazard mentioned.
h-index is a really interesting metric in the sciences. I'm not sure it's that much more informative than anything else (I mean, I'm fairly sure it's not; presumably it correlates most strongly with age and size-of-lab, and it doesn't work for between-subfield comparisons) but the way it's constructed is kind of elegant.
The journals themselves now have a quantified "impact factor" pretty much says where you should try for. I think that formal scores for that are recent-ish, but it may just be because nobody told me when I was young.
I kind of think h-index would work better if it were something like "the large number h such that the author has at least h papers cited 5h times," or something with some other multiplier besides 1.
I am not really interested in counting how influential people are!
148: there has to be some kind of search algorithm you could do to find the right multiplier, right? Regress on a bunch of measures of success using historical-ish data to find that parameter.
Also presumably that parameter would vary by field. So you would have two field-dependent parameters (citation-weighting coefficient and some kind of normalization for mean level of collaboration).
The degree to which journal impact factor continues to drive my field is sort of painful and pathetic; compared to that h-index is a vast improvement.
Regress on a bunch of measures of success using historical-ish data to find that parameter.
Sounds like a lot of work. Do you think it would be cited enough to be worthwhile?
Do you think it would be cited enough to be worthwhile?
As far as I can tell I'm well on my way to proving myself completely terrible at answering that sort of question.
I am not really interested in counting how influential people are!
But then how will you know whom to care about, or interact with?
I am loving the direction this threadjack has taken. Would-be thread-jackers take note: you can't control where these things go.
... laydeez. And Apo, I guess. Warning: NSFW.
Apo's link in 137 is good. I forget sometimes that Stephen Colbert is so ... weird. And good.
Shamefully enough, I'd never read Wal/zer's "Spheres of Justice." I just started it recently, and the SoJ framework--that "No social good x should be distributed to men and women who possess some other good y merely because they possess y and without regard to the meaning of x"--provides an interesting way of getting at what's so icky about Klout: that it's institutionalizing a particularly shallow and repellant (to us disaffected Mineshafty types, anyway) form of dominance, where social influence--"brand strength"--is the supreme currency, convertible into all other social goods without regard for those other goods' particular meanings or nature.
Oops. For those not familiar with the book, I meant to link to its Google Books page, and (though I haven't read it yet), this NYRB exchange w/ Dwor/kin.
I don't find Klout icky. Lame, sure.
Wordnet says both are fine, asshole.
(I kid. I mean, not about both being fine, since they both are.)
Thanks for that reference, trapnel.
169: "repellent" is more influential.
To be honest, I generally use -ant for the noun, and -ent for the adjective. But sometimes I mix it up! I'm crazy! Who knows what I'll do next?
And Klout is totally icky.
And I still think 137's link is amazing. Gotta smile at that guy. I seem to have missed Spanx altogether, though.
OT: Did the wicked Umbrella Corporation in the Resident Evil movies descend from the humble shop of Catherine Deneuve's character and her mother in Les parapluies de Cherbourg?
One can only think: Of course.
What kind of wallpaper does the Umbrella Corporation have?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f9/Prisoner_sm.jpg/225px-Prisoner_sm.jpg
FWIW, the term of art is "Key Opinion Leader," (KOL)at least in Med Device.
One of my grad school professors who is super into Klout for some reason just posted this on Facebook (which he is also super into):
klout:"the standard for influence since 2008." huh? for such important stuff would be more comfy with a longer record. think j stewart. klout: the most trusted name in fake social-climbing. getting better at bogus influence-peddling too
I just checked and I have a klout score of 52.91, with particular influence in "economics," "youtube," "communism," and "teens". Repellent enough?
Mostly by the fact that you have a Klout score at all, though.
||
These Olympic games are going to be a barrel of laughs.
|>
182: anybody who goes and checks has one.
My 'klout' has dropped over 25% just in the last month. Don't pay any attention to this comment!
I wanted to see what it was so I went to google. I typed as far was "klou" when autocomplete gave me two suggestions, "klout" and "douchebag".
183: Unauthorized brand use detected. Cease and desist immediately, sir, and you will not be harmed.
Inspire a generation.
I just got a FB friend-request from Rory. So (1) yay!, but (2) I suppose we are going to need to have a talk about whether UNG and the hausfrau have the password to her FB, as I don't particularly care to be giving them access to my FB page.
|| 8 am morning after prom. No boy, and no car. |>
182: It says I'm holding steady at 11 after my not giving it permission to look at anything other than my FB page. I'm trying to care and failing.
189: Do you have a large boombox, and is it missing? If yes, locate said boombox. The person standing underneath said boombox holding it aloft is your son. The car in the background is yours.
It gave me a 17, and I only connected my Twitter account, where I have a whopping 19 followers. Some weird algorithms going on there.
Seems like Carp is about to stress-test this blog's ethos of principled hedonism. Good luck!
You wouldn't have wanted him to drive the car home drunk, right?
Boy located, although communication not yet had. No word on car, but no reason to worry.
Phone lost 2 or 3 days ago. Annoying for us, worse for him.
Let me be the first to congratulate Biohazard and Cady on their outstandingly low Klout scores!
199. As a fb refusenik, I bet I could beat them, but you know? I can't be bothered to find out.
178: FWIW, the term of art is "Key Opinion Leader," (KOL)at least in Med Device.
Ah, thanks Chopper. Right, "opinion leader" -- because "opinion maker" sounds just a tad too manipulative.
You should check the car for dead hookers, Satanic paraphernalia, zip drives with social security numbers, and Special K residue.
What's wrong with the last three items in 203?
I mean, except that zip drives have been obsolete for a decade.
zip drives have been obsolete for a decade
God, has it been that long? Time flies.
You know what else will be obsolete in a decade?
You know what else will be obsolete in a decade?
The last thing you'd ever think of, I expect.
I know. Therefore I'm thinking about it. We can probably make some informed predictions: paper books are endangered, but there's ongoing dispute on that, and quite possibly it will be secondhand books that largely disappear.
Anything other than high-speed internet may disappear. That's a problem for those in infrastructurally challenged environments.
Some of the humanities disciplines are endangered: they just don't provide the skill sets our economy (the job creator class) says it needs.
I'm not sure how well rubber (elastic) bands are going to fare.
I hold out some hope that I, personally, will not be obsolete in a decade.
Shoe trees. The coiled cords on telephones. Several varieties of cheese. Inside voice. Panic.
Honey bears. Engraved stationery. Hybrids, but not chimeras.
Shoe trees.
THIS IS THE FUTURE, BAVE. THE DISTANT FUTURE!
You know what else will be obsolete in a decade?
Adding machines, hand-cranked apple peelers, ditto machines, slide rules, wringer washers.
That's all my 401k is invested in.
I too panic about the shoe trees: they get no respect, and I do like them.
Seriously, though, I'm troubled about the low/high-speed internet. A friend recently moved from the city to what he calls the country (which is actually about 30 miles outside the city), and yo, there is no cable there, no DSL, no Fios or anything like that. They have a satellite dish for the television they desire, but that does not provide internet access, of course. They figured out that they can pick up a wifi connection a lot of the time, but it's off and on, and they revert to a backup dial-up connection when necessary. However, many websites are structuring themselves in such a way that you can only barely manage on dial-up: the connection times out. Trying to do his online banking in this situation is a trial.
No joke. The connectivity situation up in NH at my now-deceased mother's house is much the same. Websites are making themselves increasingly uncongenial to those on low-speed. It amounts to a disenfranchisement of large segments of the populace.
I imagine I sound shrill, but it really is a thing that affects many people through no fault of their own. The assumption that everyone, oh, just everyone, obviously has high-speed internet access, is a problem.
they can pick up a wifi connection a lot of the time
If this is the case then somebody quite near them has figured out how to have high-speed internet.
214: That's not what I thought a shoe tree was -- I see they call it a shoe tree, though. I thought a shoe tree was like a rack that either sits on the floor, or hangs on a closet door, on which you hang a number of pairs of shoes.
I have friends who live in the exurbs of Babb, MT (a thriving metropolis you can look up) and make their own electricity. Which they use to get internet from outer space. Seems to work fine.
Boy is home. He and a bunch of kids (12 girls, 7 or 8 boys) went to his date's house. Her parents collected everyone's keys, and abandoned them to whatever liquor they'd managed to get older kids to buy for them. The parents (who camped out in their yard) made breakfast (banana pancakes) this morning. A fine time was had by all, although there's a lot of hangover going on.
219: I think they're doing it off a cell phone wireless connection? I haven't been able to get the story straight: they initially figured it out because they can get a cellphone connection at the house. Then they figured out that through Verizon (something Verizon calls MeFi, or MyFi, or MiFi), there's a little box you can put next to the computer that can pick up the hotspot. That was how it was explained to me.
I have no idea. as you can tell.
Parsi, when did you go off the 56k?
My verizon phone can serve as a wifi hotspot. You just have to sign up for that plan. And not be one of those places where phones don't work.
Also, I'm pretty sure you can get hi speed internet via satellite. But sure this is a real lack of infrastructure concern.
222: My phone can extend wifi to any thing with wifi capabilities. Of course, I have a 200 mb data plan.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babb,_Montana)
Pwned by 224. Typing on a phone is slow.
From what I understand the problem with satellite internet is that it's pretty asynchronous; downstream is very fast (like, nearly cablemodem speeds, maybe?) but upstream is kind of crappy because of latency. Which is not a huge deal unless you're trying to do something like skype or online gaming or whatever that has a lot of upstream. For general purpose web browsing probably not a problem.
I am troubled that parsi assumes everyone has internet access.
224, 227: I guess that's what they're doing.
225: Also, I'm pretty sure you can get hi speed internet via satellite.
Apparently they tried to make that work, and it wouldn't, for some reason. There were many conversations with many people about it all, and much ensuing consternation.
Yes, it's a real and serious lack of infrastructure concern, and not just for upper middle class people, but for numerous people nationwide: it's a problem when our society, driven largely by those who are apparently clueless, moves to put everything online in a way that's accessible only to those with high-speed.
Never mind not having internet access or a computer at all.
I mean, I can't really care about these loser hicks, but I guess it's a problem in the abstract. Where's IT to fix my printer?
It is not enough to be an urban sophisticate, others must be loser hicks.
It wouldn't be a bad idea to do something about it. The loser hicks don't really prefer being loser hicks.
And pace Yglesias (who, I guess, has declared that everyone, everywhere, will have a cell phone any minute now!!), the market is not going to take care of it.
230: The latency is theoretically* the same up or down, but with any kind of decent non-chatty protocol the user experience is not very sensitive to the delay for downloads unlike things that by their nature require a lot of back and forth. For instance via Wikipedia: The internet latency mentioned above makes satellite Internet service problematic for applications requiring real-time user input, such as online games or remote surgery. Gee, d'ya think?
*However, it does appear that big providers like HughesNet divvy up the bandwidth even more unequally between up and down than is the case for broadband.
221 I remember reading an article about parents NoVa getting arrested and sentenced to a year or two in jail for doing something similar. They'd come home early from a trip, found the kids throwing a party, so they collected the keys, told everyone to crash there, and sent the kids off the next morning. Apparently some law pushed by MAD which has gone from being against drunk driving to believing a more drunk driving deaths is a small price to pay for limiting underage drinking and making sure parents don't try to teach their kids to drink responsibly.
Somebody here got in trouble for that, but in this case some kid left the party and got in a fatal accident. I'm not sure how a parent would protect themselves from that kind of trouble as my guess is you'd be open to a kidnapping charge if you physically tried to stop someone from leaving.
237 -- One of our city councilmen was pushing for something like that last year, or the year before. It didn't take. Now he's running for Congress. I'm inclined to vote for him in the primary, notwithstanding that.
His ad on SSM.
232
Yes, it's a real and serious lack of infrastructure concern ...
Why? If you choose to live in the middle of nowhere you may have to drive a while to find a supermarket too. So what?
I'm not sure you're paying attention, James. People often live in places that aren't exactly in the middle of nowhere, yet still have limited internet services.
Anyway, the point is that ... actually, never mind.
Hummus with berbere powder is pretty delicious.
Shearer's right. People living in the middle of nowhere is wasteful, and we should subsidize it less.
Sorry, that was me.
I used to live in the middle of nowhere and a large percentage of the people I've met since leaving would have happily subsidized me to stay there. The people in the middle of nowhere subsidized my leaving, but there weren't many of them. It wouldn't have been hard to outbid them.
I don't understand 243. There are many ways to live 'in the middle of nowhere' (where by 'nowhere' I guess we're meaning a place without high-speed internet access).
Some of these people might be 30 miles, or 20 miles, outside of a city or town, and they live there because it's too expensive to live in the city.
Sorry, I'm thinking this through: so we're subsidizing that 'middle-of-nowhere' behavior by hiking up the price of property (and property taxes and so on) in the city? Which means that the cities/towns fund the outer reaches. I gather that's the idea.
But I am talking about people who live in further reaches because they can't afford to move further in. You'd have to tell me how we reduce the cost of housing further in.
I believe the first "further" in 246.last should have been "farther".
Oh good Christ. I wasn't serious. Why not end rural electrification, as well. Fuck 'em if they don't share my urban aesthetic preferences.
248 to 243. But high speed access/digital divide stuff has precisely zero to do with urban sprawl, and precisely everything to do with rural poverty.
The rise of people designing web stuff with mobile users in mind mitigates many of the disadvantages of not being able to get DSL or cable high-speed internet in a given place. And really, if you're concerned about the internet haves versus the have-nots, the real gap is between people who do and those who don't have the background and access to pick up all the basic digital literacy you need to look things up, or (say) pay your taxes online.
The rise of people designing web stuff with mobile users in mind mitigates many of the disadvantages of not being able to get DSL or cable high-speed internet in a given place.
(Since we're apparently talking about people who do have cell phones, cell signal, computers, etc.)
I am in favor of the government providing free or reasonably priced basic services to all. In this day and age, and certainly in the future, high speed internet access is a basic service similar to electricity or clean running water.* I don't think we should provide those services free of charge to anyone who wants to build a house anywhere, but anyone who isn't in favor of, broadly speaking, making sure that poor rural areas have reasonable internet access, just as poor urban areas do, IMO is not a progressive.
*It's possible that wireless infrastructure will take care of this problem completely, but I doubt it.
Of course (blah blah blah shut up already, me) it certainly is a problem that poor rural areas have second- and worse-rate infrastructure. And websites that value accessibility certainly need to recognize that -- but it seems a little off to pin one's concerns on the loss of low-speed-friendly websites rather than, say, the lower-level presumption that everyone has access to and the ability to navigate the Internet at all.
Which is to say I basically agree with 252. My objection was to the focus specifically on the decline of low-bandwidth-friendly stuff.
253 -- Well, that's totally reasonable. I was just responding to the Shearer/Upetgi "hey not everyone gets a grocery store" argument.
I believe that a comity-like state obtains between us.
Gaseous Wyoming comity will be obsolete soon enough.
Memorialized wistfully in Lastfart Mountain
the real gap is between people who do and those who don't have the background and access to pick up all the basic digital literacy you need to look things up, or (say) pay your taxes online.
In my real life, I often notice that the digital divide seems to spring up around who is expected to check their email as part of a job and who isn't.
A lot of people - myself included - wouldn't have the wherewithal to get started with a computer without significant support structures who have a vested interest in me having access to a computer. It's easy for me to own a computer now (and obv. I can afford one) but from 1996-2003 I couldn't get the hang of a personal computer. Things would go wrong, and the hassle of sorting them out outweighed the hassle of going to the computer lab.
I assume there are a large number of people who still use a phone instead of email because they are incapable of communication without instant feedback to let then know when they are making sense.
it seems a little off to pin one's concerns on the loss of low-speed-friendly websites rather than, say, the lower-level presumption that everyone has access to and the ability to navigate the Internet at all.
Obviously access (and the digital literacy that follows from it) is the first priority, but if you try doing what you need to do via dial-up for any length of time, you find that it's increasingly difficult. It's particularly difficult to upgrade versions of software -- something like the latest version of the free Adobe Reader for pdf's takes 4 hours to download. Anti-virus software is increasingly so huge that it takes ages to download or upgrade.
It may well be that these things need to be that huge; if so, high-speed internet connections will become a necessity. Or it may be that the makers assume everyone has a high-speed connection (there are a lot of unnecessary bells and whistles attached).
Certainly gmail doesn't work very well on dial-up. Luckily they provide a 'basic' versions without all the bells and whistles.
The last digital divide is between people who have servants who do internet chores for them, and everybody else. I will tell you more about this when my weekday amanuensis arrives tomorrow.
Certainly gmail doesn't work very well on dial-up. Luckily they provide a 'basic' versions without all the bells and whistles.
Wait, they make (and support) a special version so that the small minority of people who are on dialup can continue to use their free email service? That... seems impossible to complain about?
Sure the dial-up version is nice. Other than that and the aqueducts, what have they done for us.
246
Some of these people might be 30 miles, or 20 miles, outside of a city or town, and they live there because it's too expensive to live in the city.
20 miles from the nearest town is really in the middle of nowhere. I find it hard to believe that people move there because they can't afford to live anywhere else.
Not sure if I knew anyone in the US who was aged 20-40 and didn't have a PC at home in 1996. It was sort of assumed that you had one in grad school and there was free dial up for all students.
It may well be that these things need to be that huge; if so, high-speed internet connections will become a necessity. Or it may be that the makers assume everyone has a high-speed connection (there are a lot of unnecessary bells and whistles attached).
I'm pretty sure it's both, but I don't really see the problem except for people in places where you don't have access to either broadband or decent cell phone based web access. Yes, it costs money, but so do phones, and for the very poor who can't afford it there are libraries with free unlimited wi-fi and free but limited computers.
265: I'm complimenting them on it, Sifu. And I don't know whether it's a small minority who are on dial-up: if it is, it may be because the non-participants don't even try. Dial-up doesn't get you very far any more.
I understand that this registers for many as a whine rather than a legitimate concern, but one further note: new computers haven't come with a dial-up modem for years now. You can add that on, if you're savvy enough to realize that you'll need it, and it costs extra; or you can buy an external modem later.
The middle ground (low-speed) is dropping out. It's really not the case that if people don't have access to high-speed, well, at least they have some kind of access. They barely do. It's more that it's high-speed or nothing. Which is to say that we have an infrastructure problem.
There is a widely quoted figure that it was 10% of domestic internet use in 2008. No idea what's happened since then.
External USB modems cost less than $20.
I don't disagree that there's an infrastructure problem -- the penetration of broadband in this country is painfully low compared to other countries -- but I am having trouble figuring out how the content side of things is the problem. Something like gmail really doesn't have a lot of fat, code-wise (google is paying by the byte to serve those pages, after all; it is very much in their best interest to optimize things). But, you know, you want to do more, you need more bandwidth. The modern web isn't particularly designed to work well over 56k connections, but on the other hand 56k internet connections weren't designed to support things like real-time thin email clients or streaming video or dynamic software updates or basically anything that happens on the internet now. Believe me, I used to design websites that had to work efficiently over dialup. That is not a lot of headroom.
Speaking of things that I haven't encountered in years, being around a bar where everyone smokes is now really annoying to me.
270: I think a lot of people who don't have high-speed access just drop out.
271: god, yeah. I don't think I used to mind it that much and now it's unbearable.
My usual bar closes its kitchen too early, so I went to another one. I ordered the hummus because how could I not.
I used to smoke a pack and a half a day and now I can't stand it.
It's a very smooth hummus, served with tortilla chips.
The hummus is good. It's made by a Greek guy who used to live on my block.
It's a shame that not everyone can afford a cell phone, and support for CB radios is so thin that people without cell phones just drop out of the wireless communication arena altogether.
One bartender, one cook, three hobos, forty grad students, and me. It takes a while to get a beer and I feel old and bourgeois.
10-4, good buddy. You hit a brake check and we'll have that bear in the air for ya til ya hit the peg.
I went to dinner with a big group last night and was kind of disturbed to realize they were almost all either grad students or beginning postdocs. I felt really old.
286: oh I don't even want to hear it.
A buddy of mine who has his Ph.D. in Chemistry and just did a postdoc at a very good school just got into med school and plans to attend. That's so much school.
A buddy of mine who has his Ph.D. in Chemistry and just did a postdoc at a very good school just got into med school and plans to attend. That's so much school.
Just looking closely around here, there's some bullshit on that map. And a whole lot of blank space.
290: I have no idea what data it's based on. I assume self-report from broadband providers, but who knows.
Eg, I'm in a blank spot, while it's colored in across both the street uphill of me and the street downhill of me. I guess you aren't reading this comment. (Which explains my low klout).
Do you have everything turned on, Charley? Also, it can take a minute to update after you get to a given zoom level/location.
Yeah, it's really funny how they have these little holes up here, and then claim coverage places where even a phone won't work.
A guy with a Bon Iver beard, a trucker hat, and a fleece vest pulled out a pipe, so I left.
Oh, now pipe tobacco I actually still love the smell of.
Damn, I should smoke a pipe.
Too bad it would give me a headache and make me feel horrible.
I don't mind pipe tobacco. The social gap was just not bridgeable.
I couldn't figure what parts were ironic and which were for real.
I thought we established that people no longer did things ironically?
I assumed that was an ironic argument.
Irony died on the tenth anniversary of 9/11.
A lot of irony was lost in the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
300: I think we're into Irony 2.0 now.
A guy with a Bon Iver beard, a trucker hat, and a fleece vest pulled out a pipe, so I left.
We made love on a vintage army blanket this afternoon. Bon Iver got a distant look in his eyes. He said, 'I love to feel the rough wool against my skin'.
Irony died when the first kid said, "I'm only into irony ironically."
306: I saw that earlier today but couldn't figure out if it was good or not.
307: I don't think you genuinely believe that, neb.
296: You should probably only have left if he'd been wearing Bon Iver's beard. Although perhaps not even then.
I don't know who she is, but I only know who Bon Iver is because people tweeted the grammy's.
She's Bon Iver's beard, dude.
Which is admittedly could be just gossip, and gossip is the least interesting form of conversation, granted. However, neurotic speculation about whose look is intended ironically is the least interesting form of gossip, so jokes at the expense of the latter tendency are actually more interesting than gossip itself. On the other hand, intentional jokes at one's own expense about the latter tendency are also more interesting than gossip, so it all pretty much evens out.
I am aware of all internet conventions meanings of the word beard.
I know who both of those people are but I thought she was about 15 years older than him and in a totally different subgenre with a totally different fanbase.
... Kathleen Edwards was born in 1978? So... she's been writing songs from the point of view of hard-scrabble hard-bitten housewives since she was at most 23.
Also, Stevie Wonder first recorded the Beatles' song "We Can Work It Out" in 1970. For those keeping score, the first line of that song is "Try to see it my way," and that irony-mongering motherfucker was congenitally blind.
A guy with a Bon Iver beard, a trucker hat, and a fleece vest pulled out a pipe, so I left said: "I didn't know this was going to be that kind of party!"
Ned may really be on to something here. I would also like it duly noted that Johnny Cash once performed a song called "Cocaine Blues" about being a coke addict who shot his girlfriend and wound up in jail as a result, despite never having met that precise description in his own life. Further investigation may reveal yet more such bald-faced lies from country artists of numerous generations. (And folk artists, too. Nana Mouskouri, for instance, may not have physically witnessed the episode she describes in this Christmas classic, let alone the even more absurd proposition of her actually having been the titular "Little Drummer Boy" as the song very clearly implies.)
The deadly rot in our arts may well go deeper yet. I'm quite sure "jazz" will turn out to manifest similar corruptions... but even beyond, the implications are truly terrifying. Generations of opera singers have portrayed themselves as "Figaro" in an opera about the marriage of that famous gentleman... but surely all of them cannot have actually borne that name in real life!
316 is funny.
My experience (in Canada, but the internet is, like, everywhere) with a shitty non-smart "feature phone" was that, in the space of 2 years, websites that had scaled down, simple mobile versions cut those versions in favor of iPhone/Android optimized versions that didn't work on my phone's browser. The default for that kind of "mobile" site seems to be to revert back to sending the user the full site, which wouldn't work on the phone at all. I went from being able to get bus schedules by route/stop number within seconds to not getting any bus schedules at all except by non-internet text message. Also, many sites that did keep the simple mobile site started crashing the phone's browser, which crashed the phone. I'd have upgraded to a better phone, but contract rules made that unfeasible.
Of course, if the non-smartphone phone dies and everything becomes a smartphone, this won't be a problem anymore. And it was a pretty minor problem for me, anyway.
bus schedules at all except by non-internet text message
Meant to add that the text message stuff wasn't really bus schedules, just the next five buses to come to that stop. Useful for that, but useless for route planning.
He watched a man play keno, just to touch his thigh.
I drove through Reno today. Didn't seem worth stopping in for any reason.
I'd get a glass of Pinot then just eat some pie.
Oh, right. I remember you went up 395 a few years ago. I'm going the opposite direction, but there's too much stuff* in my car and too little stuff in my bank account to make this more than a drive-by sightseeing trip.
*Or at least not the right stuff. With camping gear, I could take a longer trip. But motel rates are too high for that.
I've taken the Reno bus out of Las Vegas many times, but never gone further than the whorehouse at Lida Junction, where I caught a ride to school.
325: If you look at the subsequent comments in that thread you'll see that my impression of Reno was not very different from yours.
There's some pretty good Basque food in Reno.
It would be a real shame to travel all the way from Bilboa to Nevada in order to open a restaurant and then discover that you suck at food preparation. One assumes you'd try harder until it worked.
I just realized that with a little jogging around in British Columbia, you can take 395 all the way north to the Alaska Highway and then into Alaska. Surely that's up there with the best North American road trips.
Shooting at noises in the dark: Can it cause problems?
"The turkey yelled, 'Don't shoot!', but I thought it was a trick.
I should sell an ordinary coach's whistle as a "safety turkey call."
(But, you know, if folks want to try US 93 -- still worth it even though they rerouted around Sun Valley -- they should drop me a line, and we'll have some fresh bongwater or something . . .)
I went around the Olympic Peninsula to Astoria and then up the Columbia river to pick up 97 at Stonehenge, then down 97 until Klamath Falls where I cut over to 395. It's been pretty great, except the weather on the Olympic Peninsula made it pretty much impossible to see the mountains.
