Let It Go

Yikes - here I am looking at the stack of New Yorker magazines that I'm slowing sending to the recycle bin and here's an article from the December 15, 2014 issue:  Let It Go - Too Much Stuff

It's a story about hoarders - from the small scale of the author's mother's collection of polystyrene food containers, to Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edith (Big Edie and Little Edie) in their twenty-eight room mansion Grey Gardens.

There have been two movies on the pair of Edies.  I've seen the 2009 HBO movie with Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange, but not the 1975 documentary.  The Beales' were looked upon as eccentric and the HBO movie portrayal was quite sympathetic.  They were crazy, but not despicable. Then the Hoarder reality series showed us more hoarders than we knew existed.  TV viewers were not as excepting of hoarders in every neighborhood.  Is everyone just a few food storage containers or magazines away from turning into a hoarder?  The article states that there is a well-established link between hoarding and aging.  I suppose you could look at as an attempt to hold onto the past and youth.  Draw your own conclusions.

My lesson here is to throw out those old magazines!  It's time to stop saving issues dated prior to my Dad's death and wondering how I might have shared and discussed articles with him.  He died on December 14, 2015.  The "Let It Go" article was from December 15, 2014.   Now the week is coming around again.  Time to let those old New Yorkers go.

So Many Potential Favorites, So Little Time

The New Yorkers are stacking up in the house. A few on the kitchen table, more on the end table, another little pile on the coffee table, some more in my office room, all waiting for me to read the interesting articles before they go in the the recycling bin. Articles in recent issues seem oddly self-important, as if the writers are trying to prove how clever they are. Ah, we are soooo cool, we are in the New Yorker. During the search for gems on obscure topics, I check the date on the cover. Before my Dad died, or after. Before the coma, or after. The time warp of days during the two months between surgery, coma and days of clueless doctors and tests, then awake but never really Dad. And finally no more hope. Last October to December.

Blueberries and More from the Taste Makers

Remember blueberry snowcones? A hot summer afternoon and the refreshing cold of shaved ice flavored with bright blue sweet syrup? We knew that blueberries didn't taste this "blue" but that was okay. Reading "The Taste Makers" in the November 23, 2009 issue of the New Yorker makes you realize how the flavor business has evolved into ever greater illusions of taste and sight. Raffi Khatchadourain follows and profiles Michelle Hagen, a flavorist at the Cincinnati labs of Givaudan, a Swiss company that is the largest manufacturer of flavors and fragrances in the world.

I put some fresh blueberries on my cereal this morning - they are kind of yellowish on the inside and the flavor is quite subtle, nothing like the blueberry pomegranate sports drink in my refrigerator. But as Hagen says about creating a flavor, "It's not like you are getting judged on how close you are to the real fruit. At the end of the day you are getting judged by how good the flavor tastes." Unless of course we're talking about energy drinks like Red Bull - which have what is called an "unbalanced" energy note, which is best described as a spiky note. "So when I build energy flavors with our client it has got to taste bad".

What's interesting is that many of the flavors are "natural" in that they are derived from essential oils from lemon, orange and lime peels. So, even if chemically reproduced, they can often be listed as natural flavors on the product label.

Aside from the explosion of different soft drink flavors, there are essentially two sides to flavor research - make cheap junk food with questionable ingredients seem "delicious" - or mask a reduction in sugar, salt or trans fat, things that are are harmful in excess, which is a good thing.

A case of the former - the example of an unnamed company working on a tasteless "slurry" consisting largely of starch, oil and salt, which a client was hoping to transform into a marketable product. The client has the company's in-house chef prepare dips such as guacamole, using fresh ingredients and then have the company's flavorists mimic them chemically...injecting...the slurry....
I think I'll have to pass on the "guacamole" now available at various fast food restaurants on foot longs and as taco sides.

Mind and Brain are They the Same?

The NYorker article, "Two Heads" presents Pat Churchhill's ideas on neuroscience as fairly easy to understand;
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/02/12/070212fa_fact_macfarquhar

Basically, the mind is a biological entity, not a computer program. All those ideas about emotions and feelings just neurons firing?

However, going directly to the web page of Pat Churchhill serves up a big batch of "Huh?" http://philosophy.ucsd.edu/faculty/pschurchland/index_hires.html Plus the navigation is a bit awkward - needs work.

Result - most of us still need high level language skills to grasp the ideas of neuroscience. Read the New Yorker article/abstract.

And to confuse ideas/sciences - how does this all fit together with physics and the theory of everything vs. string theory? After all, how do various types/branches of science plow along with their pet theories without regard to the others?

Sell the Sizzle

I was searching the New Yorker archives yesterday for a couple old favorites and inadvertently found a favorite 50 years older than anything in my subscription history. What advertising or sales person hasn't heard the adage - "Sell the sizzle, not the steak!" And here it is - back when it was a new idea - from 1938! - The Sizzle by John McNulty. http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1938/04/16/1938_04_16_021_TNY_CARDS_000170940?currentPage=1

Give credit to Elmer Wheeler and his Tested Selling Institute. Makes you wonder how many ideas today are really new or just forgotten by a culture of short attention spans with little interest in history.

DWC, How About Those Chinese Drivers

If you've ever wondered how or why Chinese drivers have achieved such a bad reputation that people want to issue DWC tickets, the "Wheels of Fortune" article by Peter Hessler in the November 26, 2007 issue explains a lot. You're not sure whether to laugh or cry. The abstract on the New Yorker website does not do the article justice: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/11/26/071126fa_fact_hessler

It doesn't even mention the reflexive honking with ten distinct meanings, including hooooooooonnnnk for attention; hoooonnnnnk, hooonnnnnk for irritation; and honk, hnk hnk hnk hnk hnk hnk hnk hnk hnk hnk for pure panic. There are even items on the drivers' exam regarding honking. Question: When driving through a residential area, you should a) honk like normal. b) honk more than normal, in order to alert residents. c) avoid honking, in order to avoid disturbing residents.

That was the laughing. The crying part is the statement that a 2004 World Health Organization report that China, with 3% of the world's vehicles, accounted for 21% of its traffic fatalities. Overall, however, the tears from reading the article were of laughter. One critical point: the study guide for the exam describes how people drive, not how to drive. Basically, there appear to be no actual road rules. A case of too many cars too quickly and, unfortunately, figuring out how to drive came later.

The Contributor section of the issue notes that Mr. Hessler is working on "Country Driving", a book about driving in China. I can't wait.

Ben Franklin the Blogger

Twenty-five years of "Poor Richard's Almanack" with assorted essays and proverbs as described in the January 28, 2008 article "The Creed" by Jill Lepore made me picture Ben as the first blogger. He fits the mold: self-published, revising awkward prose into pithy sayings, popular with everyday folks, and quite a bit of satire. Read the article: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2008/01/28/080128crat_atlarge_lepore