jayandstacey

It isn't necessarily a good thing - but Fact, Right,Truth and Science all have some small degree of relativity - they change with time. I believe that when scientists fight change - in the form of evidence contrary to accepted norms, or a new "truth" - it isn't so much that they're dogmatically attached to their current views - rather that they believe their truths are so fundamentally sound that the new stuff must be scientifically flawed, skewed or otherwise. Theirs is an appeal to the purity of the scientific process, not to a mercenary cause. Why do I say this? Because every scientist believes their truth to be true. Scientists are tasked with finding new facts and continually building on the knowledgebase. But they all must have an underpinning of some known facts - the collection of facts on which they build. When faced with the notion that some brick below them in the pyramid of truth is just wrong...it is their job to ensure that brick is solid - and many times, the brick was just fine and the building can continue. Yet, historically, every branch of science has had a number of revolutions that tore down the pyramid and caused them all to start over building a new pyramid. So the irony here is that despite their advances and how, thanks to science, we know so much today...ultimately, most scientists were just wrong, or at least not fully right. Today's truth, fact, science - is likely not to be tomorrow's. Scientists are skilled builders. They stand on the prior bricks confidently and continue building higher - and all their own evidence points to the bricks below them being solid and true. So somebody points out that a brick in their foundation is bad - doesn't it make sense that they'd press really hard against that? Thomas Kuhn argues that true advancement of science happens when these paradigm shifts (revolutions) happen in science since a new pyramid is started on a (presumably) better foundation. This is good - but it is also Science's job to ensure that if the old will be torn down and a new one begun - that this decision is absolutely, 100% right. Essentially, it is part of the process to doubt and resist in some measure. That's my armchair diagnoses, worth only the electrons moved to convey it. I'm also interested in Dr. Perry's opinion, and will understand if she's not inclined to give it

Nah..they're just human. If someone published a 5 page paper proving how Taco Bell is god's gift to fine dining...you'd fight it pretty hard given your invesment in the opposite. (assuming any of that was possible, it isn't, and yes of course that changes things. But that same forces that established an original scientific assumption baseline will be the same forces that make a new assumption very difficult to take hold and unseat the old. It isn't necessarily a bad thing - but it does mean that the change will have to be 100% RIGHT FOR EVERY POSSIBLE INSTANCE FOR MANY MANY YEARS before accepted....no?)

99% of me is sad that paradigm shifts (the Thomas Kuhn kind) must be painful and involve some degree of selling. 1% of me is jealous. Bully on you! Enjoy Florida.

Cool!!! Thanks. Somehow I think that 10000 years from now the Enlightened Ones will look back at our coca-cola fetish and think we were out of our minds. "Brown carbonated drinks? With a wicked acid masked by an ultra-sweet taste? Consumed with and between every meal? WTH were they thinking?"

Where your studies focused on a food that was significantly different either in the content or preparation from what we eat today, have you ever tried preparing or eating those things?

I'm perfectly fine with the use of photographs for things other than a review. So for instance, on a menu - at that point, I'm in a restaurant and experiencing most of the sensations of the experience. The pictures might help me know the proportion of the ingredients (is this mostly a rice dish, or is a little bit of rice swimming in the rest of the dish?) or help me choose based on other things I see. And as the owner of a restaurant, you'll need to "sell" the restaurant via print and online media - where 5 words might be too many but a picture might get me salivating. It also conveys information about the formality and "vibe" of your place. If I owned a restaurant I'd very much include dish photos on my website. I'm cool with all that and no, I would not extend the argument beyond pictures used in a review. To clarify, by review I mean a restaurant guest who wishes to explain their visit to someone else. In this particular use, I believe what I said above - that pictures, no matter how artful, don't really do justice to a review, even a pedestrian one. To answer your last question - I don't believe it has to do with the intent of the author/photographer, rather the context of its use. So let's use the McDonald's approach: There's a photograph of a Big Mac, and - McDonald's puts it on a billboard with "Exit 46" and nothing else. - I write a review of my trip to McDonalds and the meal I had, including a Big Mac. The McDonald's ad makes me salivate and I pull in. The photo has worked very well. But the review should be telling me what the place is like, how it compares to other McDonald's, whether I enjoyed my meal, the service, the ambiance, etc. I don't think a Big Mac photo, in the review, is doing a whole lot to add to the review, since at its root, a review is opinions of an experience.

I'll add that I appreciate excellent photography and don't mind if others photograph their food (except flashes in dark places). Photos are great as art, and to preserve memories. I can think of a few meals I wish I'd photographed. But in the context of a review I stand by the prior post.

I think he can, and I will try to quantify what I *think* is Don's position on this. If it is not Don's, it is certainly mine. Going to any restaurant is a "complete" experience. It is 3 dimensional, exists in time and involves every sense. When we write a review, we are explaining that experience without appeal to any sense, or dimension or time. Writing a review does not (ever) include an actual scent. Or an actual noise from the meal, or an actual flavor. A written report injects another's thoughts basically directly into the brain...without any "capture" and conveyance of the sights/tastes/feels/smell/sounds that are experienced in a meal. When a reviewer takes a picture and convey it as part of the experience, they are removing ALL other aspects and leaving the viewer with a distorted shell of the experience. That picture is: - 2D, not 3d. - includes no sounds, textures, tastes or smells. - is a instant in time and not the continuum of the full experience. OK, so what? Let's "stretch a point to make a point". Let's say I go to a 5 star place. We are co-workers and I bring you one bite of each of the dishes I had. I take each bite and microwave it to the right tempurature it in the office break room, then serve it to you on a paper plate. YES - I am more accurately conveying the tastes that I experienced, more so than I could ever write. You will experience the same tastes I did and what better way to review and share my fine dining experience? BUT - have I done you any real favors? Maybe a slight bit - but if I write a detailed, quality review, then accompany it with this "taste on a paper plate" - have I added *anything* to my written review to make the case that you should go? I'd argue that sharing a taste like that is detrimental. In every case. So too with photographs. Yes, they show what the food looked like - but so what? In a photo I'm only getting colors and shapes. Maybe I get a bit of useful portion size information - but any good reviewer can convey that easily in writing. THE REST OF WHAT A PHOTO CONVEYS (or more accurately, fails to convey), in the context of a restaurant review, IS DOING NOTHING, OR WORSE, BEING DETRIMENTAL. I might as well cut out a piece of the restaurant's window curtain and bring it back to you and say "see how wonderful the dining experience is???" I've only ever found pictures of the restaurant interior to be of some value as it helps determine if I need to wear a tie. I also understand that journalism and the sale of newspapers/magazines require some photos. But I'm with Don- photos aren't helping, pretty much ever. Dining is a full 3d/in time/all senses experience. To take a small sliver of that experience as a proxy for the overall is as pointless as handing someone a cup of sand and telling them how wonderful your vacation was.

I'm surprised Clyde's hasn't expanded out of the region. The operating formula seems pretty well established. What surprises me is the expansion so close together around the DC area. I'd think they'd be better off expanding into larger population centers with "big splash" large investment restaurants vs. more of the smaller outposts around the beltway. If I were them, I would NOT hit touristy spots, rather find populated areas where they can establish with the locals. Places like Richmond, Baltimore or Philadelphia - I'd think they'd do very well in some NNJ locations. They would find a local investor and share the investment - creating a local version of the Tower Oaks Lodge in the burbs or Old Ebbitt if they are in a downtown location. They trick is they can open restaurants in a way that most others can't - with a very long time horizon. So they can sit for a few years until profitability happens. I wonder why they haven't.

ok, here's a simple idea I just came up with. Every law passed should have an expiration date. Maybe 5 or 10 or 25 years into the future. At the end of the term, the law must either be passed again or it expires. Yes, I know that means legislators will spend tons of time voting on laws that have happened before - but that's their job. I believe we get into these bizarre worlds by the fact that it is hard to repeal a law. It is much easier to tweak an existing one or make a new parallel one. So ideas that are dated or just plain stupid to begin with don't end, they just get more complicated. * edit - yes, I'm sure someone's said this before. I'm also sure there are good reasons this can't work. But so what.

Largent's in Kentlands (Gaithersburg MD) is open this evening; they've kind of been soft opening this week after some testing last weekend. There's no thread for them yet. This likely won't be a culinary hotspot but here's hoping it'll be a viable addition to the neighborhood.

Do you have a more bounded specialty within your field, like expertise based on - a certain geography - a certain time period - a certain group of associated researchers - the whims of your funding source? - or other, or not at all? (I suppose Archeobotany is fairly specialized to begin with) Sliced another way, why would someone in need of Archeobotanist call you vs. another Archeobotanist?

Don Rockwell

Interesting and contrary to my assumption. I can imagine a SuperBowl ad where a guy is tailgating and tosses a frozen Goosefoot patty onto the grill. "Goosefoot?!?! I ate one by accident last time and we won. It's good luck! But it tastes like a dirty old tree branch..." I was actually more curious about the interaction/coordination between yourself and other scientists that might be working on a particular site, or project or toward a particular goal. I literally didn't know if you worked completely in a vacuum and only shared through publishing, or created a team of different disciplines to work in a coordinated way on a particular problem, or somewhere in between. By answering the question you thought I asked, you answered the question I meant to ask Thanks for answering my novice questions! When I first entered the "real world" workforce, it struck me how many intelligent people were around me. I decided early on that if there was at least one person in the room smarter than me...shame on me if I don't leave that room knowing at least one new thing. It is the one collection/currency where I can accumulate vast amounts yet never spend a dime doing so. Thank you - very interesting.

I remember that flight! (just kidding) Yeah, in this Olympics/Superbowl/Holy Grail world we tend to think of everything having a "peak" that everyone else strives for. I keep talking to my 12 year old daughter about her path to the top ranks of the equestrian world. "Dad, I just want to ride and compete and have fun with my friends." Interesting. The multiple lines of evidence thing is where I was going in my next question...

Oh - and one more - the fourth grader in me wants to know what got you into this field. (well, so does the adult )

Cool - so many questions! - What are the 2 or 3 most important unanswered questions in your field right now? The questions who's answers would have the greatest impact on our understanding of the world? - How is a perfect specimen delivered? Via amber? Glacial ice? Ash? Locked in arid sandstone? - I imagine a kind of evolutionary tree of plants/foods. It has thousands, maybe millions of branches, many of which died off at some point. I assume we only know a small % of those branches, and that as we go back in time the picture gets cloudier, despite the diversity decreasing (going back down the evolutionary tree....) So... - How do you identify a specimen back onto that tree? Are you studying cell structure, or DNA, or something else? - or aren't you going that far back in time (ie, maybe you're only working in the last 6000 years; an eye blink in the evolution of plants...(right?) ) - Is a part of your work to identify new (to us) plants and foods? Or does that not come up much? - Do you work with other scientists to extrapolate understanding, for instance, someone else working in a location was able to determine the time frame (say, 10,000 BC) and you then work from that info? - And maybe the simplest question - I *think* you focus on plants that have intertwined with humans - as food or maybe building materials or tools. How do you know that this has happened? I mean, all humans have plants growing all around us - and if my house rolled under a Pompeii-ish ash dump tomorrow, you'd find garden plants, weeds, semi-wild plants, house plants, uncooked food plants, cooked food plants, etc. Is part of your job essentially to sort through all those to provide deeper historical insight?

We've been making a corn chowder with leeks and quinoa. It ROCKS, and with the salt of the broth and the sweetness of the frozen corn - it practically tastes like a winter version of kettlecorn in a bowl. We've also been making veggie kabobs under the broiler with a peanut satay sauce that I could sit and eat straight up. Tonight was salmon Florentine, with some linguini and red sauce on the side. It was pretty good.

The video in Don's link - are they showing pre-formed/frozen patties? are they using the spatula to smush the juice out of them? are they touting these as imported beef? I thought I saw/heard all that.

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Have you ever read something, thought "that guy's an idiot!" then realized it was your own writing?

Naw, its just good old fashioned ad-selling. Make something rediculously bad, post it, go semi-viral, make the visitor clock through 15 pages to see it all so they load new ads... and deposit the loot.

We really enjoyed this place and I can't believe we've walked by it for 15 years and just passed it up. I figured it was a burger and frozen-fries bar scene. The highlight for me is the space - a clubby brick-and-leather downstairs bar is flanked on 3 sides by a mezzanine level restaurant seating. All tables have good people-watching from above the bar, and the tables near the front an also see out the giant windows to the street activity. We enjoyed the Artisanal Cheese (all 3) $19. While a little pricey, the cheeses were excellent - a nice blue cheese that was very earthy (I usually dislike blue cheese as it tastes (to me) like a cheese with bits of tin foil in it. This was sharp but...subtle, not metallic sharp. very nice), a Cardona goat cheese that was nice and mellow and an Airco cheese with a bit of a smoky flavor. We split the Artisanal Grilled Pizza $12 that I thought was so-so. The mascarpone tasted odd to me and the inner crust wasn't as crispy as I prefer. We did eat all of it and saw others enjoying the same. If this was a nadir, it wasn't a disappointment and seemed a very good value. We also split the Seared "Diver" Scallops $31 over grits with spinach. The dish seems really simple and thankfully so - it doesn't mask the buttery scallops. Though a bit expensive for the preparation we really enjoyed the large scallops. The service was excellent - skilled waitstaff, waters topped off, amuse bouche, melon sorbet palate cleanser - I'd never expect this kind of stuff from the outside look of the place. So it's been there 15 years and has a market and makes their own pastrami and all these wonderful things. I guess, as for us finding this, better late than never

It started with the executive mansion chef.

Thanks Mr. Boone, notwithstanding the vomit