Category: Food and Drink

From Amazon:

Here is a positive (five star) review:

At first, the idea of buying this milk online for hundreds of dollars
seemed absurd. Then I started thinking about the Romans. What would the
Romans think of this? Never mind the milk – the milk is common,
pedestrian, it's just milk. Even Romans had milk. No, it's the plastic
packaging. It is transparent, flexible, seals tightly and lasts
forever. The Romans would have never seen anything like it. So based on
this, I decided to buy something that the Romans would have paid any
amount for. Compared to Romans, I got it for a steal.

The Romans had legions and controlled a wide swath of the Earth.
They were the foundation of western civilization. But they never had a
Tuscan milk jug.

Here is a negative (one star) review:

If you have no weapons, I don't recommend Tuscan Milk. Instead, I
recommend getting a set of nunchucks or a club. A broom stick or a
brick are good too. If you can't find anything at all, you can buy the
book Combat Without Weapons available on Amazon. Tuscan Milk does not
work well as a weapon because it is hard to swing and difficult to
throw. It also can't be used to stop any bullets. I read on a website
that it can stop a knife, once. That's not really worth it to me.
Unless you are attacked by cats, and need a distraction, you probably
don't need Tuscan Milk. I wish someone had written a review like this
before I bought the milk. I hope this review is helpful.

The gallon costs $69.99 on Amazon.  I thank Eric H for the pointer.

Addendum: Eric also points me to this review:

"Pros: Inexpensive, easy set up.
Cons: Short product lifecycle. No instruction manual. No optical/coax sound
output."

For every newly converted vegetarian, four poor humans start earning enough money to put beef on the table.  In the past three decades, the earth's dominant carnivores have tripled our average per capita consumption; in the next four decades global meat production will double to 465 million tons.

That is from the new book Heart of Dryness: How the Last Bushmen Can Help Us Endure the Coming Age of Permanent Drought, by James G. Workman.

In Bayesian terms, how should I evaluate this book?  I cracked it open to one page (never start with the table of contents) and found something interesting and blogworthy.  For the random review copy I am sent, the odds of that happening for a single page sample are below 1 in 50.

Matt asks this question and the answers in his comments section cite sugar policy and the VAT.  (Matt's comment, at #62, is the best of the lot.)  USA Coke also competes with free tap water, which is a no-no in Deutschland.  Here is a German site, GuteFrage.net, which asks "Wieso ist Coca-Cola so teuer?" but the answers do not impress.  Here is further German language discussion but again Armen Alchian it ain't.  This German Yahoo post considers the marginal cost of production.

I am more inclined to cite the elasticity of demand.  Here in the US of A people will drink three or four cokes in a row, maybe more.  Or they will buy many cans of coke for the whole family along with hot dogs, Twinkies, Hellmann's mayonnaise, and other utility-maximizing commodities.  But those high-volume strategies require a fairly low price.  I haven't lived in Germany for over twenty years, but my impression at the time was that you would drink one coke at a main meal with your food and that was it.  (You also didn't get very much in the Glas, but that's another story.)  They're weren't aiming for volume sales by lowering the price, so instead they would focus on the upper left part of the demand curve.

I don't know if Matt is referring to restaurants or vending machines.  In restaurants drink prices are arguably a proxy for enjoying the amenities, the table and the service of the wait staff.  If the wait staff have higher wages and benefits, due to European labor market regulation, the drink price might be reflecting that higher marginal cost, even if the MC of the drink itself is low relative to price.

People, can you help out on this one?

Fatty acids derived from pork bone fat are used as a hardening agent in crayons and also gives them their distinctive smell.

Here is more, including a comparison to Leonard Read.

Andrew, a loyal MR reader, has a request:

Tyler, why don't more people like spicy food? What prevents them from trying spicy dishes?

Mexicans acculturate their small children to spicy food gradually, by mixing increasing amounts of chilies into the meal.  It takes a while before the kids enjoy it and at first they don't like it.  If this has never been done to you, you need to make the leap yourself, usually later in life.  The whole point of spicy food is that at first it is painful, causing the release of endorphins to the brain.  With time the pain goes away and you still get the endorphins, although you may seek out an increasingly strong dose to boost the endorphin response.

Not all Americans think this is a good deal.  Older people are less likely to make this initial investment and endure the initial pain.  The same is true for uneducated people (adjusting for ethnicity), who both are less likely to know it will end up being a source of pleasure and who on average have higher discount rates.  What other predictions can be made?  If you and your country are too obsessed with dairy you will be led away from spicy food, one way or the other.  Milk usually counteracts the pleasing effects of chilies.

Jason Kuznicki asks why do they do it?  Why don't they make the "secret menu" common knowledge?  He gives some answers, including:

Americans have some very set though inaccurate ideas about what
“Chinese food” really is. They will generally balk at anything else.
More people will break this way, and avoid the restaurants, than will
break my way, and go to them more often, if they are offered something
new and different.

I would add that perhaps many Chinese restaurants do not want too many non-Chinese customers.  Especially for immigrants, restaurant life is often about ambience, social contacts, and feeling you have a space to call your own.  A restaurant cannot be all things to all people and the #1 best way of judging a restaurant is to look at its customers.  The "beef with broccoli" menu will attract a certain kind of American customer, but without breaking down the sense of segregation and the basic Chineseness of the place.

That said, there is also the fear that the American customers will order from the secret menu and then not like the chicken feet, etc. and give a bad report to their friends.

Thai restaurants don't have secret menus per se, but often you can talk a so-so restaurant into, for your sake, becoming a very good restaurant with real Thai food.

1. Rant about agriculture, hat tip goes to Ezra Klein.

This one is from Jacqueline:

"Tap water?" said Alison Szeli, 26, picking up the clear plastic bottle
with orange letters: "Tap'd NY. Purified New York City tap water."

She studied the description: "No glaciers were harmed in making this
water." She compared prices: Smartwater cost $1.85. Tap'd NY was 35
cents less.

I suspect this will seem odder to you, the older you are.

…the restaurant is designed from top to bottom in a medical theme.
wheelchairs, hospital beds, operating lights, test tubes and more, the
design is completely off the wall. The interior is far more subtle than
the al fresco seating out front.

It's called The Clinic and here is more information, and photos, including information on one of its tastiest dishes.  Here is their imaginative website.  Here is a floor plan with two excellent photos.  You sit in wheelchairs and drink out of IV bags. 

Sadly, I've never been to Iran, though I would love to go.  Here are a few tips for the Iranian food I've had elsewhere:

1. A good koresh (stew) almost always beats a good kabob.  Ghormeh sabzi and bademjan are national treasures.

2. The choice of rice is a central decision.  Get zereshk polo — barberry rice — as much as you can.  Or get cherry rice, rice with pistachio, etc.  All those choices are winners.

3. Lamb shank can end up being dull in a Persian restaurant.  If served with dill the dish is often too dry.

4. Fesanjan, fesanjan, fesanjan.  In Iceland I once ate fesenjan guillemot.  The fesenjan in a can that you find in Persian groceries is actually pretty good.

5. Don't be afraid to smear mast-o-moseer (or musir; the spellings and transliterations vary, as with many of these dishes) into your rice.  Always order mast-o-moseer.

6. Soups are excellent, especially if they are fragrant and have noodle-like entities.  Soups without barley are usually better than soups with barley.

7. In this country Westwood, Los Angeles has the best Iranian food overall.  Check out Westwood Ave. and also Pico.

8. If you are in a country where you do not expect to see Persian food, and you see Persian food, it is usually very good.  As a partial exception to a rule of good eating, a single Persian restaurant can be very good even if there are not other Persian restaurants around.