johnb

Color can certainly vary in eggs, but there's no taste difference related to how the chickens are housed or, within normal limits, of what they eat (e.g. if you feed them onions you may be able to tell, but nobody feeds chickens onions). The egg industry has done carefully controlled tastings, in artificial lighting that masks any color or appearance differences, and nobody can reliably distinguish among different ones based on inherent flavor. Eggs are a good example of what I posted earlier; any perceived difference in taste flows from expectations, not from inherent differences in the eggs themselves. It's your brain, not the egg. Here's an article. Pay special attention to the comments of Pat Curtis on the second page. To the extent that local organic free range etc. reach you in a fresher state that might have an impact, but it's very subtle, and commercially-produced eggs can also reach you quickly and fresh. Me, I always buy cage-free eggs, but that's for humanitarian reasons, not because they taste different.

I've participated in many of these discussions over the years, and read through many others. IMO, in nearly every case, they start with the wrong premise, viz., that taste is based on how things "taste." This is wrong. Here's how I understand what actually happens. Taste happens not on our tongues (or more accurately our noses, where the vast majority of our "taste" receptors are actually located) but in our brains. The brain takes inputs from a host of places and puts them all together into what we experience as taste. It then sends the result to the nerves that are hooked up with our mouthes and we experience that taste in our mouthes. In putting together the taste we experience, the brain uses inputs from the taste and smell receptors of course, but also many other things, including the look of the food, the surroundings, our previous experience with the food, positive and negative associations we have, genetic predispositions we may have, and most importantly our expectations and beliefs about the food we are about to ingest, among others. Nearly everyone assumes what he/she is tasting is what is coming from the taste receptors; the importance of the rest is at best dimly understood, even though the effect of everything else is actually profound in many if not most cases, particularly when discussing the relative quality of like items (think $2 vs. $15 chickens). What is all means is that there can be real taste differences experienced by someone tasting a $2 chicken next to a $15 chicken, but these differences may well not be based on any inherent "quality" difference in the two chickens themselves, i.e. that flavor input coming to the brain from the taste receptors. This difference may come, in whole or part, from another aspect of the inputs that person's brain is using to construct that taste. Our brains play tricks on us, all the time. It needs to be emphasized that the better taste that is being experienced is genuine -- the pricy bird really does taste better and that may well legitimately matter to the individual and be worth the extra price. The point is only that that better taste may be flowing from factors other than inherent differences in the chicken. In effect, those willing to pay $15 for the higher quality chicken may be paying the extra not for its inherent quality but, partly anyway, to fool their brains into thinking it's a better experience, and it is! Of course they don't see it that way. It's complicated.

Thank you Elizabeth for saying that. Transportation, particularly airline, ratemaking is a fascinating subject, for me at least. If anybody has any more questions I'd be glad to try to answer them. By the way, apropos Don's OP that started all this, I have been waiting all along for someone to chime in on the "knee defender" but nobody ever did, so I guess I will. A kerfuffle erupted in the media about this last August/Sept: here is a link to one story that appeared. So others have been thinking about this matter as well, up to and including the occasional on-board fistfight.

It will be a long time before Etihad or any of the Middle East/Asian carriers with private suites and showers etc. show up in Cleveland with a widebody, let alone an A380. But don't despair! If you have the kind of money it takes to book one of those, you can just rent your own private jet, skip the long TSA lines, and go whenever you please, complete with a traveling companion (or cabin attendant) of your choosing.

Dave I don't have any inside knowledge about the current views of the industry, but I'm sure they'd love to go around them if they could, but that's the problem of course -- that's very hard to do. Southwest has been successful in not using outside ticket vendors and selling everything on heir own website, but they have a fairly unique customer base/market that the others don't have. I know that back in the pre-internet dark ages, when I actually was inside the industry, travel agents were how lots of tickets got sold for a 10% commission, and the talk I heard made in clear the lines would have loved to get rid of them. They finally succeeded when the net came along, and what they have now is probably better for them, but they'd like to get rid of it too, but I don't see any way they could do it short of perhaps establishing their own joint operation, but that obviously presents huge problems not least the anti-trust aspect so I strongly doubt it could ever happen. All of this is speculation on my part -- I have no expertise in the area. The article you linked is probably fairly close to reality.

No. The opposite. Sorry if I wasn't clear (I'm never clear). You want the highest credit limit you can because whatever is your balance your credit utilization percentage will be lower, and that's a positive for your credit rating. They don't like to see people who are maxing out their cards -- that's a sign of impending credit problems. The less utilization the better, up to a point anyway. At least that's how I think it works.

The Citi card is currently being heavily advertised, so it must be good economics for them. Same with the Capital One card. Who knows how long it will last; if the economics of credit cards don't change, I suppose there's no reason it will change, for a while anyway. If it does and somebody else has a better offer, then switch -- these days it's easy and since it's become so common it apparently no longer affects your FICO score like in the old days If you're paying an annual fee then it'd hard to justify keeping any card. If I understand correctly the main reason keeping an old card affects your FICO is that one big factor in your FICO score is your credit utilization, i.e. how much you have on account vs. the total of your credit lines. The lower the better, so if you have an inactive card its credit line is still there in your calculation and of course it lowers your utilization rate, and if I understand correctly the fact that you pay off monthly doesn't change that. And having had cards with a good payment record a long time is also a positive as far as I know. I have no idea about the rollover, except if you pay off every month anyway it shouldn't matter much. If you get a new card and don't get charged interest for a while, and you can include rollovers in that, then I guess it's up to you if you want to get that deep into cash management. Note to Costco freaks: starting April you will need a Visa card, and the Citi card so far is only available as a Mastercard AFAIK.

I think we've had this discussion before, but anyway, I'm happy with the Citi Double cash card (It's a Mastercard). 2% cash back on everything you buy with no limits, so for example for $25,000 in spend you get back $500. For me that beats all the points in the world; just give me the money thank you. It is being offered with no interest charges for 16 months I think. No annual fee. For overseas purchases the best I know of is the Capital One Quicksilver (Visa). Like the above but only gives 1.5% cash back. But they have no foreign transaction fee, which saves you a 3% extra charge on the top on overseas purchases. So it's a good deal for any purchase not made in USDollars. No annual fee. I also have Discover and use it during the three-month periods when certain purchases (gas one quarter, restaurants another, and so on) rate 5% cash back. No annual fee. There are various web sites that compare credit cards. Here's one. BTW, when you shift don't cancel your old card (assuming there's no fee). I helps your credit rating not to.

Thanks for asking. It got me looking into it in more detail than I had before. I don't foresee much change in the number of seats, because there are no "next steps" left to take. Seat manufacturers have gotten seat backs about as streamlined (thin) as they can, so there's nothing left to do there (if you can reduce the thickness of the seat back you can reduce the pitch without reducing legroom, but that has probably already reached its limit). Seat pitch (i.e. legroom) has been pretty stable for a while. Thus, increases in the number of pax per plane will come, if at all, from higher load factors (already pretty high) and greater number of hours of flying, but both of those are also near their limits already. The legacy US carriers (American, Delta, United) domestic services all are at mostly 31" seat pitches in regular economy, with 30 or 32" in some aircraft. Southwest is mostly 32 with some 31. The worst case US carrier is Spirit at 28" -- those seats don't (can't) recline -- anybody who flies Spirit I pity you. But their fares are really cheap. Allegiant, another cheapo US carrier, is at 30." In Europe, the two big low cost carriers, Ryanair and easyJet, are at 30 and 29 respectively. Note that often when you see smaller pitches (e.g. 29 or 30) it is on an Airbus jet and the seats on those are slightly wider than on Boeings, which balances things out some. Note that virtually all the US carriers have a few larger seats at a higher fare, so you can have a better service if you are willing to pay for it. And if you are an astute shopper there are always exit row and similar seats with plenty of leg room, but to get those you have to know what you are doing. Seatguru is your friend. Here are two somewhat extreme examples of how airlines will cater to market preferences where folks will pick up the tab for better service. Look at this seatmap of American Airlines' 4 class transcon Airbus 321's. These serve JFK-LAX/SFO and are used by entertainment and tech industry types. The second is this British Airways aircraft, a small narrow-body (A318) fitted out in an all business class configuration with all lie-flat seats; BA uses these exclusively between JFK and close-in London City Airport. These show clearly what the airlines are willing to do for folks who are willing to pay. Here's something that really puts the lie to the idea that the US carriers are so evil. Compare the US seat pitch numbers with domestic services of, say, Lufthansa and its Germanwings low fare subsidiary, or British Airways. Germanwings is at 29; LH is at 30. BA is mostly 30, with a very few going higher. So the proposition that the US carriers' legroom is so bad compared with the big European names is bogus, at least for the domestic services. I don't think your doomsday scenario will ever happen. Legroom is not going to go down. If the legacies were going to reduce pitch they would have by now, but they haven't. In particular, Spirit is becoming a serious competitive problem, particularly for American and Delta to a lesser extent. But those carriers have not reduced pitch and fares to compete with Spirit -- they have both instituted new fares that have extreme restrictions similar to Spirit's fares. If you choose those you are very likely to, among other things, end up in a middle seat, but at least you will still have decent legroom, and the possibility to recline your seat.

Sorry if I sounded condescending. I don't mean it that way, but these constant rants about airlines do grow tiring after a while, to someone who has basically spent his entire life following the industry, having worked (brief stints) with two airlines and having spent many years in the airline consulting field, and having done his graduate work in transportation economics (yes there is such a thing as a PhD in transport economics). I've probably read hundreds of rants about how bad the airlines are, from well-meaning laymen who really don't have much information or appreciation about the complexities involved. The basic problem, as I see it, is that everyone flies so everyone thinks he is an expert on the airline industry. This includes most journalists who write articles about the industry. The truth is hardly anybody understands what is really going on or why we have arrived at the point we are today. There are reasons. I have hinted at them above. Space doesn't allow more than a cursory discussion, but I'll have another shot at the points you made. The short answer is you will get the level of service you are willing to pay for. I have yet to see a single rant that shows the writer actually understands that. Most flyers buy the cheapest ticket they can find, and then feel they should get treated substantially better and are at liberty to bellyache about it when they don't get it. There is a disconnect here. The result of always buying the cheap ticket is the level of service comes down to match the fare, both in the immediate case and in the long term. Many entrepreneurs have tried over the years to start airlines offering premium service. They have all failed. The preferences have been revealed, and they are cheapness, which has clearly been shown to trump comfort and service. Airline managements aren't stupid. They give the market what it shows it wants, not what it says. Cheap is what the market has shown it wants, and so that's what it gets. The system has come be be designed around saving costs to the maximum, in order to offer the lowest fares possible. The flying public would do itself a favor if it finally got its collective head around that. As to government intervention, there are two kinds of that: economic and technical. On the technical side the government, mostly through the FAA, is extremely deeply involved in every aspect of the airline and aerospace industries -- I think most folks in DC understand about that so nothing more need be said. On the economic side, the government used to be deeply involved, but it didn't work. Air travel was artificially expensive and not available to anything like the cross-section of folks it is today. That's why the industry was deregulated. On balance it has been a good thing. Far more people can get from A to B today and at extremely reasonable costs. And the main reason it's a different "landscape" today is because of deregulation, not in spite of it. A return to regulation simply isn't in the cards, nor should it be. Now if you think that the government should set minimum standards for things like seat pitch, fine, but remember, it wouldn't be free. Everybody will be paying more, including those who who would rather have the lower fares. And seats with greater pitch are already available anyway for those who want it. They just have to pay more, which is as it should and must be. There is simply no way, practically speaking, to provide special seating specifically for large people. It would not only be expensive (which would have to be paid for by the rest of the traveling public) but would be a nightmare to book and allocate (however see below). There are larger seats available on most routes, at a higher price, and if you are extremely tall or extremely fat you should save up and buy those. You can also buy two adjacent seats and solve the your problem that way, and not impose your situation on innocent others. That's what that woman should have done, and obese people do it every day. By the way it's not so much a computer problem as it is a physical space/design problem. The airlines do comply with the ADA, and handle thousands of passengers with disabilities every day. All that said, if you or anyone wants to start a movement to get the government to pass a law to force the airlines to equip every airplane with special large seats to accommodate large people, if it applies equally to all airlines then I see no problem, but understand that it will raise costs and thus fares for everybody else. And who exactly decides who gets to sit in those seats and when? And anyway they already have such seats -- it's called first class, or premium coach. I suppose the government could simply force airlines to sell seats in first class cheaply to fat people. I'm not too sure how well that would go over among the flying public at large.

Oh how soon we forget! Those low cost options resulted from the deregulation of airlines that took place in 1978, i.e. getting rid of government intervention that ruled the airline industry up to then (all fares, all routes, the works). The regulated (government intervention) era up until then was an era of high fares, sclerotic route structures, and grossly overpaid workforces that fed back to the high fares. Deregulation led to fare wars and endless bankruptcies of airlines; every airline but Southwest, which only expanded out of Texas after deregulation and had unique advantages, went bankrupt at one time or another after deregulation. I vividly recall a study I did for the Indianapolis Airport in the late 70's -- I was shocked to discover that Delta's baggage handlers there were making the current equivalent of $90K a year to fling bags. That was typical of how things were under the era of government intervention, when the Civil Aeronautics Board decided where you could fly and what you could charge, and everybody pretty much paid the same fare. Nobody wants to go back to that. Contrary to popular opinion, airlines are not eleemosynary institutions -- you cannot provide service between, say, Greenville and Newark for $29 a seat and stay in business, even in 1974. People Express found that out the hard way, and it is just one example of many. The bills have to be paid, and the investors need to get some sort of return. You are not entitled to having airline investors (including me) endlessly subsidize your travel. Those days are over. Piedmont and the shuttles were never low-fare operations. Shuttle fares were high in their times and the service was profitable. By the way, it was Eastern Airlines (ever heard of them?) that pioneered the shuttle (1961) with the guarantee to roll out another airplane if necessary, not Trump. Originally the main aircraft were Lockheed Super Constellations (remember those), later followed by Electras with the Connies as backups. Eastern later (1989) sold the shuttle to Trump in a bid to raise cash to stave off bankruptcy, which it ultimately failed to do. Trump never made money and finally defaulted on his loans, in typical Trump fashion. Citibank took it back and finally USAir bought it. Pan Am started its own shuttle which lasted until Pan Am went bankrupt. Eastern, along with People Express, ended up being owned by Frank Lorenzo, who eventually folded them and New York Air into Continental, which after the shakeout became one of the better airlines under Gordon Bethune. Continental finally took over United (out of bankruptcy), kept the name, and continues today. Santayana was right. Those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.

It's not the airlines that make it difficult to find the fares for better seats with more legroom. It's the Travelocities etc. of the world who don't display them because people don't use them anyway. You can find that info on airlines' web sites. The reason they don't make it easy to make changes is, if they made it easy, then the business travelers who need flexibility and now buy more expensive tickets to get that flexibility would also buy cheap tickets. Then the extra revenue the airlines now get from those business travelers would disappear, and would no longer be there to subsidize that cheap fare you got, so your cheap fares would go away and you'd have no choice but to pay more too. Maybe a lot more. Bottom line: you only get cheap fares if you forgo flexibility. Don't buy cheap tickets and expect you can make changes -- again, you get what you pay for. There are many fare classes on any route/flight with different fares and rules about making changes. This is called market segmentation. Pay less, get less. Don't hate the airlines -- they are responding to the demands of the many different "markets" they serve on each and every flight. By purchasing the cheapest ticket you are placing yourself in the bottom category, and getting a very good deal in terms of price. Here are data on the changes in air fares since 1995. Note that average fares in real dollars (constant dollars) have actually dropped; even with fees, that's still a good deal. Other than electronics, these's very little in this world that can say that. What has happened to the price of, say, housing in DC since 1995? Or cars, or restaurant meals, or just about anything? I trust you're joking when you suggest you believe the flight attendants set up the airplane, clean it, and clean the toilets.

Not really. It actually is the passengers' fault, in that they look at only one thing when booking an airline seat, and that is the cheapest fare. They also don't look beyond the first page of the display in whatever booking engine they are using, which displays based on cheapness. The result is that there is endless and inexorable competitive pressure on the airlines to reduce fares by whatever means they can, to stay competitive and capture business from the flying public that is only looking at fares. Reducing seat pitch (distance between rows of seats) to the absolute minimum is one of the ways to do this and that's what they have done. Spirit is the worst at 28". I hope it wasn't Spirit you were flying, but their seats don't recline anyway -- it would be impossible with a 28" pitch. There is a long history of airlines occasionally offering a better product (more room) at a higher price, only to give up when the market doesn't respond. Currently, some of the legacy carriers are offering "premium economy" seating in part of the economy cabin on some routes, but it costs more and you have to take the trouble to know it's there and book it, which few users of booking engines do. In short, you get what you are willing to pay for.

Some things can well, and some don't. Peas are definitely in the don't category, along with green beans among other things. Also, since peas and many other vegetables lose their qualities quickly after being picked, frozen is not only better than canned but often better than "fresh", unless you can find them just picked (IQF that is, ie sold in plastic bags not frozen bricks). Seems to me I saw something once where Harold McGee made that point. Corn OTOH cans very well.

I think that one reason folks often don't like certain things is due to their mother's having cooked them so badly. Liver is a particular example. It must be undercooked, with a bit of pink left in the center. It is terrible if overcooked. Many mothers overcook things thinking that is the "safe" thing to do, and when they do this with liver they create liver haters. Cabbage and its cousins are similar (mushy brussels sprouts anyone?) Beets can be badly cooked. I myself refused to eat steak until after I went to college. Later I discovered why-- my mother, may she rest in peace, cooked steak to shoe leather. OTOH, cilantro is clearly a genetic thing. If you have the "soap" gene you'll just never be able to enjoy cilantro.

Well now that's a disappointment. We were all looking forward to your ingestion diary, all in one easy-to-follow place. Perhaps not to the Robert Shields standard, but still........

You started it. And anyway the part about Iquitos is probably the most interesting thing posted here in years. So there.

While it is true that both Bolivia and Paraguay are "landlocked" when viewed from above looking at a map (i.e. neither has an ocean shore), neither is truly landlocked in that they both have ports, and in the case of Paraguay are served by ocean-going vessels. Paraguay has important ports at Encarnacií³n on the Paraní¡ River and Viletta (near Ascuncií³n) on the Paraguay River, both of which are reached regularly by small ocean-going vessels. Bolivia has free port privileges at several ports in Peru and Chile on the Pacific and Brazil on the Atlantic; it has river ports in the Paraguay Basin and Amazon Basin serving vessels trading with neighboring nations that, with engineering works, could possibly reach salt water, although it is not likely such works could ever pay for themselves. Currently, the furthest port up the Amazon reachable by ocean-going vessels from the Atlantic is Iquitos, Peru, 2,300 miles upriver from the mouth of the Amazon, making it the furthest distance from salt water of any port in the world serving ocean vessels; Iquitos also has the distinction of being the largest city in the world not reachable by road.

I was in Rome last month and went to the Vatican Museum. It was wall to wall people; you simply walked through long hallways with your group, on the pre-arranged course that all visitors follow, with people everywhere, shoulder to shoulder. You couldn't go faster, you couldn't stop to look at anything, you couldn't really see anything. They give you little radios that your guide uses to tell you what things are, and those don't work too well, so you try to listen but it just doesn't help. All in all, a complete waste of time. I would never recommend anybody bother. Once everybody has been told how important something is, it's too late to see it -- there are just too many other people trying to do the same thing.

Perhaps he uses it because State designated it as the primary and official term for the group over a year ago. click That remains in force AFAIK. Other governments and the UN take the same position on official terminology. Another discussion about the name issue here. Maybe it's all part of a vast right-wing conspiracy being foisted upon us by the Fox/NBC cabal click I think we all should just switch to Daesh for formal occasions, and for those who wish to do so, goat fuckers (GF) for less formal occasions.

Daesh

In-N-Out isn't likely to show up in the mid-Atlantic anytime soon, but for those who want that sort of thing we have a regional chain down here in NC (and neighboring states) called "Cook Out" that is similar to INO in a lot of ways, and in addition to burgers has a long list of interesting milk shakes on the menu. They've made it into Va. as far as Fredericksburg and Charlottesville, so the DC suburbs can't be too far off. Here is a topic I started on the "chains" board of Chowhound a few years back similar to the contents of this one. click

Having a product in stock and then not having it in stock is part of their business model. It's done by design. If you go there planning to buy, say 10 things, likely they won't have one or two in stock, so you'll tend to come back sooner/more often to grab it when you can. So it's a way to get you to come back more often and (this is the key) end up buying more other stuff that you didn't intend to buy. All part of the Costco "targets and treasures" game. You said it yourself -- you will go back looking for those things you're waiting for them to stock. And when you do, they'll have lots of stuff to tempt you. Not having a few things is one way to draw you back in more often. Note --this applies primarily to the package goods on the high racks on either side of the store, not so much the perishables in back or the one-time stuff on the tables in the center. But even there you see it. I was in Costco a week ago and saw, of all things, some packages of just the cap from rib eye (there was a thread here on Rockwell about that cut some time back--click). I've never seen that before anywhere. And like an idiot I didn't buy any. Major Fail. Next time I'm in there I'll look for it but it won't be there. Edit 1 day later: I was back in that Costco this eve., and lo and behold once again I am proven wrong. They did have some of the cap meat. I now I remember why I didn't buy it before -- it's prime and is priced at $18.99/lb. But this time I sprang for some. Anxious to see how it turns out.

I installed separate fridge and freezer, but not sub zero, at about 1/3 the SZ price. They are not "cabinet depth" but regular depth (I had custom cabinets anyway so the greater depth wasn't an issue). I never could, and still can't, understand why anyone is willing to pay SZ prices to get a simple box to keep things cold, but I guess that's just me. I don't know if that option still exists. You pay a heavy up-front cost for those cabinet-depth fridges, and get less space to boot. OTOH perhaps it forces you to not have things in the back getting moldy. To each his own. Edit: Whirlpool at least has a pair like that called "Sidekick"

It's a good idea to check how much electricity old (and less efficient) refrigerators use. The fridge in general is one of the biggest power users in the house. Keeping old ones around can be a significant but unrecognized increment to the monthly electric bill. Much information about this can be had from your old friend Google. One discussion here. Take it FWIW.