johnb

Forgive me for veering wildly off topic, but wouldn't it be funny if a grammar nazi swooped in and insisted it should be "fewer than 10 years old"?

The reason we correctly use less, not fewer, in this instance (less than 10 years old) is because in English the convention for denoting age is to use the verb "to be" not "to have."  The use of the verb "be" logically causes age to become a quantity, not a count. If we instead used the verb "have," as they do in Spanish, then we would indeed say he has fewer than 10 years. But as it is, we are speaking of a quantity of age, not a count of years, so we correctly say "less than 10 years." Got that?

One way I assess the classiness of supermarkets is by looking at their express line signs.  Wegmans' and Publix's, for example, say "fewer than 10 items", while Winn-Dixie (and I'm pretty sure Wal-mart) say "less than 10 items." You can pick up clues about a company from things like that.  I can't say about Safeway and Giant since I don't live in DC these days.

Speaking of Wolf Blitzer, one of my pet peeves about CNN is the constant use of epicenter when center would do. This particular malaprop is showing up everywhere these days.   Using "epicenter" is an attempt to make something seem really really the very very center of whatever it is, but of course center is already a superlative -- you can't be any more at the center of something than the center.  Epicenter actually has only one valid meaning: it is the point on the earth's surface directly above the center of an earthquake, so it's not even a "center" to start with.  The ultimate stupidity occurred on CNN yesterday when they said "the epicenter of the earthquake was 50 miles below the surface." Stupidity is as stupidity does.

If you, like me, knew virtually nothing about this problem, except that you've been hearing murmurings about it on the news, this is a good article to start with - it's written at the level which assumes you know nothing:

"How Water Crisis in Flint, Michigan Became Federal State of Emergency" by Jessica Durando on usatoday.com

"Who Poisoned Flint, Michigan" by Stephen Roderick on rollingstone.com

People do not realize how *expensive* it is to maintain our infrastructure. I worked with the wastewater section folks at EPA for a few years, and I got snippets of just how important drinking water (as opposed to wastewater really is). Don't get me wrong, they're both important - you don't want untreated wastewater to be spewing out into our rivers and bays, but both of these involve underground pipes, and that is *very* expensive to implement, and many of the materials currently used for those pipes are decaying and decrepit, not to mention downright dangerous in some cases. CSOs (Combined Sewer Overflows) are both dangerous and disgusting during heavy rains, but that's another topic entirely - when I was there, long ago, estimates were so high to fix everything up to standards that it was all considered "pie in the sky." But things like this are what happens if you don't.

Rachel Maddow, to her credit, has been talking about this issue for a while.  The Rolling Stone article, as usual, is excellent.  This happens when the people in control combine a don't-care, ideologically-driven attitude with plain incompetence. The lead was always in the pipes -- the problem is that the chemicals used to clean the remarkably bad Flint River water leached it out.  Flint should have never been switched away from its previous and perfectly good Detroit source; it is a massive failure of governance at many levels of government, vertical and horizontal.  When you vote in [right-wing goons NO! DR] like Rick Snyder this is what you risk.

Some fun facts about water:

Did you know that there are orders of magnitude more molecules in a drop of water than there are drops of water on the entire planet?  Combine this with the fact that all water throughout the world is constantly being mixed up, what comes out is the fact that there's a good chance every drink of water you take, even fossil water, has molecules that have passed through the bodies of practically every human (and indeed every creature) who has ever lived.  So you are ineluctably connected in some way with Jesus C., Adolph H., and everyone else.  Something to think about.

Did you know that over 20% of the world's not-frozen fresh surface water resides in one single lake that most people have never heard of, Lake Baikal in Siberia?  Baikal blows away the Great Lakes in terms of water volume.

Did you know that, if the story of Noah's Flood is true, and the flood covered the earth (presumably the highest mountain on earth), then, with what we now know, the depth of the flood would have to have been at least 29,000 feet above sea level?  That would require roughly a tripling of the amount of water on the earth, which would have had to come from somewhere, in only 40 days of raining (calculate the rate of that rainfall).  Equally importantly, it would have had to drain off somewhere.  Where exactly that somewhere is is less clear. Keep in mind that the total volume of water on Earth is not known to have changed much or at all for millions of years -- the same water just keeps circulating around.  This is the type of thing that makes one wonder about those who believe literally what they read in certain books.

Is anyone else having issues with the view new content button?  It used to work fine, and with no changes on my part, now it only shows 1 or two topics.

Yes.  Having come in from the "view new content," I cannot reply to the Bitcoin thread -- I get a box in the upper right saying "You cannot reply to this topic" and the little blue button to the left of the topic on the new topics listing isn't there.  IIRC the same thing was happening yesterday for the "when the weather calls for supplies" thread, but now, even though I still don't have the button on the left I can in fact reply.  All other topics are acting normally.  Very odd.

My topic listing seems to be OK.

I'm using Chrome on a Mac, but I tried using Safari and got the same issue exactly.

John, how confident are you in these dates? It's been almost two years, and I've forgotten where I was - do I need to fact-check them? (It's certainly no trouble to click on each website and check, and it's incredibly helpful that you included them.) You'll be able to check my progress by seeing that I've hyperlinked the names with the websites as I've included them.

If anyone else spots articles such as these, please link to them here - I'm sure this has all been done before, in various forms; now, it's just a matter of compiling the compilations.

Fairly confident in most cases.  Sometimes it was difficult to find mention of a specific date or there were different dates in different sources, and in some cases I found a date in a source not linked here -- I didn't link everything I found.  Unless one has serious funding it isn't always possible to pin these things down with precision; precise historical records of restaurant openings and closings going back dozens or hundreds of years are not easily available, and one must rely on what one can find on the net.

I'll second what Joe H says.  I don't book hotels very often any more, but on our trip last March we needed a room for several days in Singapore.  Long story short -- I found a fairly good rate at the Fairmont (great hotel by the way) on some booking site but in the event called their booking office to double check.  Turns out they have a policy of matching any on-line rate, apparently if you are in their frequent stay program.  I joined on the spot, gave them the rate I had found, they went to the website and checked it, and gave me the same rate.

Unrelated side story: my only regret from that stay is that that room had the most comfortable bed Mrs. B and I have ever slept in, and we neglected to check out its manufacturer/type while there -- since then we have replaced our mattress, and wish we had known what that one was (I suppose I could have contacted them, but....).  The new one has turned out to be good but not that good.

I failed to notice until recently that one of the oldest in NY, Sevilla from 1941 (it is noted in my long post #31 from March 10, 2014) was recently honored by being included in the 2015 James Beard American Classics list.  Thought it was worth a mention.  Others on our list so honored by JBF in past years include Barney Greengrass, Peter Luger, Mario's, and Totonno's Pizzeria.

There is another JBAC winner in NY that closed in 2012, Prime Burger, which was established in 1938.  It should be added to our list in that it was still in operation when DR started in 2005 (as per the qualification criteria in post #1). As of this moment its zombie web site is still up, here.  The owners have opened a new place in Hastings-on-Hudson but it's unclear to me whether that qualifies as an extension.

Occasionally I spot an article that mentions a place that qualifies be added to this list.  Here is one that just came up:  Peter Pan Donut & Pastry Shop in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.  Open for over 62 years, which would put it around 1953.  According to the photos on their website they appear to specialize in fairly elaborate donut types.  

I tend to avoid doing international arrivals at Chicago if I can help it. I was stuck in their queues for over two hours one day. No thank you for a return. Short connections in Charlotte are another no no. You often have to sprint across terminals to make your flight. I think most travellers make their own personal do's and dont's after accumulating scars.

I'll agree with the recommendation of the ITA Matrix. You can make some really granular queries with that tool (down to the routing codes) which I haven't been able to manage elsewhere.

Miami also used to be a horror show, but since I don't travel much any longer I don't know what he current situation is.  But the fundamental problem still exists, namely that all the flights from a particular area tend to arrive within a very narrow window (early morning in the case of Latin America) ) so the system gets bogged down every time.  So if you are coming up from Latam, I would suggest an alternate gateway if possible, particularly if you don't have Global Entry.  Generally speaking, less popular gateways (but not too small) are preferable if you can make them work for your particular circumstances; back in the day I used to fly Continental through Newark and got back to DC same time as if I had come through Miami, only with 1/10th the hassle and lines in Miami. Same is true of flights from Europe, which tend to arrive in mid-late afternoon and gum up the works.

There's another new thing called Mobile Passport.  Available in four airports so far but more coming. Free.  I tried it once in ATL without much luck but if it works it can be helpful.  More info here.  Only for Customs and Immigration on arrival however; nothing to do with TSA on departure.

Speaking of PreCheck, here is a story that just appeared in a travel newsletter I receive.

The price curve of many things (wine, restaurants, shotguns, paintings, trophy wives, kitchen ranges, suits, hotel rooms, cars, whatever) is shaped like a hockey-stick, with the price of the very top end jumping wildly higher than whatever is in second place.  There is no correlation with quality increase.  It happens simply because there are many super-rich out there who need to prove their superiority/success/manliness (to others, to themselves) by owning or consuming the best and most expensive of whatever it is, according to reputation as determined by "experts," certainly not because they really understand and appreciate what they are consuming.   I like to think smart folks (that would be me and you, not them) are in some sense advantaged by this, since we get to have the almost as good if not better at a far more reasonable price.

John, thank you so much for posting this!  I'm planning another trip in September and having fun playing with ITA matrix.  One thing I haven't figured out yet is how to choose a different return flight from the one suggested, although I can peruse all the combinations (which is tedious).  Still, this is so much better than any of the other sites I've tried.

Glad you have found it to be useful.  Let us know of any good tricks you discover while exploring it!

John, this is my area of career expertise (high-speed searching) - it's what I did for almost 20 years. What do you mean by "matrix search?" Do you mean the use of multi-processing?

Whoa cowboy!  My computer knowledge is way too rudimentary to respond in any meaningful way to that. Perhaps I slightly misspoke -- What I meant was more along the lines of the matrix style they (used to) use to display the flight results, and I think that's also what they are referring to in their name.  It's a historical thing.  Way back when they started they were trying to get more information to fit within the real estate available on the typical computer screen, and that's when they came up with the matrix display.  If you remember how Orbitz displayed information back at the beginning you may recall the look of it. They've mostly abandoned it since in favor of other approaches, like the time bars, but you can still see a ghost of it in places, for example what returns in Orbitz or Google Flights if you click on the "flexible dates" tab (identical information on both); the information they display is the same information you can find in ITA if you click on "calendar of lowest fares" on their start page (though the latter doesn't work the same way and doesn't look the same, but it's based on the same information underneath).

So, how do you choose?  What factors are important to you, and why?  What other considerations do you have?  What websites do you recommend checking?  What are your tricks and tips for finding your preferred itinerary?

Wow.  You really go at it!  I'm impressed.

My main recommendation for flight searches is a little-known site called ITA matrix. or matrix.ITAsoftware.com.   ITA was started by a bunch of MIT computer scientists, to develop high speed and high information airline search tools -- they were the original developer of the matrix style search engine that was adopted by Orbitz when they started up several years ago.  It is now owned by Google, and is the power behind Google Flight Search, Kayak, portions of many major airline web sites, and many others.  They keep their basic site out there, accessible to all, presumably as a testbed, and you can use it in its raw form. AFAIK it is the best way available for the average person to search for flights.  The site start page is here.

ITA is an extremely powerful flight search site, that can handle many options you may want to explore, although you have to go up a learning curve to get the most out of it.  I'm sure there's a lot it can do that I still haven't figured out, but even a basic, first-time use of it is yields more information than other flight search engines.  It cannot be used to actually book  -- use it to search, then go to the airline or another booking sight to buy the actual ticket.

Here is their explanation of the range of flight/fare combinations available in a typical city pair (3.6 BILLION possible combinations for a BOS-SFO r.t. on a particular day(s) that they did as a sample) -- it illustrates the problem of doing these searches.

One feature I really like about ITA matrix it what they call "time bars."  This is an incredibly rich but economical graphical display format showing all the flights from your search; the bar format shows visually the total flight time, location and length of layovers, etc.  for 20-30 flights in a single page, making it easy to compare the most important factors for your decision, i.e. cost, departure and arrival times or all flights in the itinerary, total flight time, and where and for how long you will lay over. You can get to the time bars from the first results page -- on the first results page from your search click "time bars" in the upper right corner of the box showing the flights that resulted; the display will shift from the default (a straight listing of flights) to the graphical format.

I've been told, publicly and privately, that nobody ever learns anything from "these" discussions, and that I'm wasting my time in an exercise of futility.

Here is a refutation of that statement by counterexample: I have now changed the title of this thread from:

"ISIS, not ISIL"

to

"Daesh, not ISIS, and Certainly not ISIL"

because since I began this thread, I have *learned from these discussions* what "Daesh" is, and it is a far more appropriate name for these subhumans than ISIS. For English speakers, it also completely removes any direct reference to "Islam," which shows appropriate respect to the 1.5 billion Muslims in the world, as well as removing any direct reference to the ridiculous notion that this pack of dogs is somehow a "state."

From this point forward, I'm using the term "Daesh," and will no longer refer to these murderers by any other name.

"France Says the Name 'ISIS' is Offensive, will Call it 'Daesh' Instead" on theweek.com

"World Leaders Have Taken to Calling ISIS 'Daesh," a Word the Islamic State Hates" by Laura Reston on newrepublic.com

"Daesh: the Word ISIS Doesn't Want You to Say - and Why Politicians are Using it More than Ever" by Jason Silverstein on nydailynews.com

"Words Matter in 'ISIS' War, so Use 'Daesh'" by Zeba Khan on bostonglobe.com

"What Does Daesh Mean? ISIS 'Threatens to Cut Out the Tongues' of Anyone Using This Word" by Nicola Oakley on mirror.co.uk

DAESH, assholes, DAESH! And if you cut out my tongue, I still have my fingertips so you're going to have to kill me, and even if you kill me, this message is going to remain on the internet until the end of time, so Fuck You!

Nofense, but I thought I already had gone over all that in the first reply in this thread (post #2) back on November 16.  Economy of language is a worthy goal, n'est pas?

One of their Singapore locations turned out to be in a shopping plaza directly under our hotel.  I had heard of it, but in the event just stumbled into it.  It's all true.  Hard to get enough of the stuff.  The truffle one is worth a try once, but not fabulously better than the plain XLB.

I was wondering if someone would bring this up, but as the current population ages, the elderly will become more computer-savvy.

True, but even so, if a computer-savvy young or old person were, say, in the kitchen and slipped on a banana (wonder why I thought of that), busting his head on the floor, even if he could why would he drag himself to the computer, pull himself up into the chair, and type out a request to emergency services, when all he has to do is whip out his cell (also a computer) and call it in the old-fashioned way?

Also, gets less blood on the keyboard that way.

A clever little chic she is!

The Arlington County non-emergency number was completely worthless based on my one experience with it - the person on the other end of the line was of no help at all. You try to be responsible and not tie up emergency resources, but when it's *this* difficult to convey information, it just isn't worth the trouble.

FWIW several weeks ago we heard a police helicopter overhead early in the morning and I called the Fairfax County police in their Reston station.  I did not call the 911#, believing that someone would answer in the station and this didn't seem to be quite a true emergency.

A computer answered and gave me a half dozen choices for which button to press.  It took almost two minutes to hear all of them including several other extensions.

I hung up and called 911.  The helicopter overhead sounded like it was going to land in our backyard.

I am still outraged that any police # would have this kind of response.

What I was told by the emergency operator was interesting, too:  "there is a fugitive and a chase-we should lock our doors."

Welcome to the wonderful world of electorates who view all governments as inefficient and wasteful, and based on that attitude refuse to pay enough taxes to support needed public services, vote in "conservatives" who promise to cut taxes, then turn around and complain when the services aren't there because taxes have been cut to the bone.  Pay less, get less.  Not saying either of you two are in the "cut tax" category, but everybody suffers the same.

Don in answer to your question, I doubt many currently elderly folks are ever going to use a computer to call emergency services -- they are still in the line phone era.  Trust me.  Anyhow I think cell phones are much more likely to fulfill that function than computers (smart phones are of course computers).  As to how things will be done once everybody has gone to VoiP, the answer to that has to come from somebody way above my pay grade, but given how we are all being tracked these days I imagine it's not a major hurdle.

I would be remiss if I failed to note that not only is there a banana problem, but the same thing is happening with Florida oranges and threatens all citrus everywhere, including of course naval oranges.  In fact I may have conflated the banana issue with the Florida citrus issue in my mind earlier, but basically the same thing is going on with both.  With citrus the problem is what is called citrus greening or huanglongbing.  It is a fungus carried by the Asian citrus psyllid, a bug.  It has already reduced Florida's orange crop to a shadow of what it once was and will wipe it out soon if an effective solution isn't found.  Same will happen to all citrus eventually, heirloom or mass produced.  Here is a fairly good article.  Bottom line is that while there may be some "old-time" types of solutions, which particularly the Brazilians with their huge plantations have been able to employ, genetic engineering is probably the only way in the end to save the day.  To the extent that is true, once again we can look forward to an exclusively GMO future for a major food type, in this case oranges, lemons, limes, grapefruit, and so on.

I'd also like to add that these big, inexpensive bananas that we have access to have zero taste, in my opinion - that's why I rarely buy them - I see a strong parallel here between this and other types of mass-produced foods.

One more question: Is the Gros Michel "DONE done," or have they frozen a seed somewhere? With DNA, it ain't over 'til it's OVER.

Taste isn't as good as the older types, but IMO even the Cavendish tastes OK if you eat it when it's at its flavor peak, which most people don't (they eat it way too soon -- you should wait until until a day or two after those little black spots appear, and NEVER REFRIGERATE A BANANA).

And yes AFAIK Big Mike is for all practical purposes a goner -- anyway, he wasn't much different from the Cavendish, just another big banana that could be grown and shipped economically, maybe a little sweeter it is said.

As I understand it, if you're calling via VoiP the available systems can't tell exactly where you are well enough to route your emergency call to the local 911 dispatcher close to you.  This isn't a problem with line phones (that system knows exactly where the phone is you're calling from) or the cell system (it at least knows which tower is handling your call, which is a pretty good approximation of your location).

There are hundreds of varieties, some say thousands, including both the plantain types (for cooking) and the sweet types (that we commonly refer to a "bananas.")   "Cavendish" mostly refers to the cultivar that you find in every grocery store and a few of its cousins.

Here is the Wikipedia article.  Here are some images.   Yes, these are what you might refer to as "heirloom" bananas.

BTW, part of the problem with developing resistant banana types is that they are mostly triploids, meaning instead of having the usual two chromosomes per set (the famous double helix) they have three, and thus are sterile (seedless), and can't be propagated sexually.  This is why the Panama TR4 thing is so threatening -- developing new and resistant strains is a slow process when you can't use sexual reproduction, which gives the disease an advantage.  But today we have genetic engineering to come to the rescue, especially CRISPR-Cas9 to speed things up, so maybe the scientists will be able to solve the problem in time.  Of course the result is going to be GMO bananas, so folks will need to decide how they want to think about that.

Bananas also come in diploids (2) and tetraploids (4).  Polyploidism (more than two chromosomes per set) is more common than one might realize -- besides bananas, think seedless watermelons, most wheat, some fish, some strawberries, and many other organisms, though most can reproduce sexually.  Chromosome sets can go up at least as high as 12 (dodecaploids). Enough genetics for today.

When I was in Hawaii, I had the best bananas I've ever eaten - they were about half the size of the ones you normally see around here, very soft, and very sweet. Are these what you're referring to at the end of your post? 

Yeah, but there are many varieties, widely available.  Look around any latino or asian market; they'll likely have several types, all small, some red, some yellow, and so on.

I never knew that the Navel Orange (the "navel" is the protrusion which contains a second fruit) was the result of a mutation that occurred in Brazil around 1810-1820.

More importantly, all naval oranges are not only the same species, but the same individual.  In other words, genetically speaking, there is only one naval orange tree in the entire world -- all the "trees" that you see out there producing the fruit are clones from the same original individual.  There is no genetic diversity at all.   Among other things, this suggests that If some nasty pest were to suddenly show up and attack, the population of these orange trees would have essentially no genetic defenses, and would be subject to possibly being wiped out worldwide practically overnight.

Something similar to this is happening right now to bananas.  The world banana crop is mostly a single cloned variety, the Cavendish, which is being attacked by a new version of the Panama disease that wiped out the previous banana type, the Gros Michele (known affectionately in the business as the Big Mike), in the 50's.  The disease (Panama TR4) is certainly going to wipe out the Cavendish eventually, so the race is now on between the geneticists and the disease to see if the industry will be saved.  In a few years we'll know if we still have easy access to the big inexpensive bananas we are all accustomed to, or whether there will only be a few varieties of very expensive and small types available on the market.  The latter are often quite tasty, but very difficult to cultivate and transport, certainly on anything resembling a large scale.

Ratio of dark meat to breast meat has to do with breeding methods more than anything. Some time ago -- before I was born, probably -- mass-consumer poultry farming companies got the idea in their head that we love breast meat. One only has to sit at a Thanksgiving table and witness everyone and their dog hoarding the dark meat to know this isn't entirely true but if you look at sales numbers for chicken breast compared to legs or thighs at the supermarket, you can see where distributors got the idea. So ever since then, the average birds you pick up at the grocery store, whether it's a chicken or a turkey, has been specifically bred to maximize breast meat. So next time you're shopping for a whole bird, compare the breast on a generic Butterball to that of an organic, free-range, heritage, whatever you want to call it, bird. The mass-market one will have a breast that looks almost engorged, oversized to the point of ridiculous. The other, more expensive, bird, will have a more even distribution of white and dark meat, without a breast that looks like it's been injected with botox.

What you say is partly true but it's much more true of turkey than of chicken.  Turkey has been bread to maximize breast size to a much greater degree than chicken.

The American preference for white chicken meat is based, in my opinion, primarily on the mostly erroneous idea that white chicken meat is significantly lower in calories than the more flavorful dark meat -- actually the difference is small.  The preference for white meat turkey is probably based mostly on the difficulty of carving a turkey leg which is full of those little bony things and is usually cooked to dryness to boot.

In practice, and in contrast to turkeys, dark meat of chicken is used up by selling it cheap and exporting lots of chicken legs.  That's great for those of us who prefer dark meat -- we buy thighs by the bag and eat cheap.

Key point is that, as you intimated, the relative breast size is based on breed, not on how the bird was raised.  So if your free-range organic bird has a small breast, it's not because of how it was raised and fed, but its breed; an "organic" turkey can have just as much of an oversized breast as a butterball.  Of course, a "heritage" breed presumably is old-school so would be expected to have a smaller breast.

My absolute favorite part of all poultry is the oyster, which is part of the thigh where it meets the backbone.  I'd be happy if someone would breed chicken/turkey to maximize the oyster, but of course no one ever will because hardly anybody knows about it.  Whenever I see anyone carving a turkey I ask them to turn it over and dig out the oysters, which I nearly always have to point to.  But OK, more for me.

Don't forget also the relative size of the leg meat in relation to the breast meat - chickens that walk around have more meat on their legs.

Are you conflating egg production (chickens kept to lay eggs) with broiler production (chickens kept to produce meat)?  These are totally different and distinct.

Chickens that you eat (broilers), both low end and high end, are raised in roughly similar conditions, in chicken houses, and have been "walking around" roughly the same amount.  None have been constrained by being raised in cages; cages are strictly for egg producers.

Only a very tiny proportion of chicken meat in commerce comes from chickens that ever laid an egg, caged or free-roaming, and you only get it when you sit down to a nice bowl of canned chicken noodle soup or canned broth or something along those lines, because by the time they reach the end of their egg-laying careers they are about 1.5 years old and no longer suitable for table use.  Essentially all chicken raised for fresh meat has been walking around, for their short life spans of just a few weeks.

Many expert wine drinkers can indeed identify specific wines tasted blind.  Wines are different and distinct.  But there are stories that go the other way.  I recall many years ago, when I was just getting interested in wine, I subscribed to a wine and spirits newsletter that always included a blind tasting article, where the tasters were persons in the trade.  On one occasion the tasting was of sweet sherries.  Gallo Livingston Cream Sherry was the winner, basically wiping out Harvey's Bristol Cream and others.  In another example from that era, I recall an article in a British wine magazine in which Cognacs were tasted blind, again by folks in the trade.  In that case the organizer slipped in a bottle of good single malt scotch and said nothing.  Nobody realized it was a scotch.

Take it FWIW, but no question we can fool ourselves.