I just successfully signed up for the new Google Health service.
It effortlessly linked up with my account at Walgreens, where they will now update each other. Google now knows slightly more about me than most of my family members.
Thank goodness.
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Author Archive for Aaron
I heard tonight that my friend Joanna in Boston not only got a huge promotion to a fancy corner office but also acquired two kittens. They are - as far as she can tell - sufficiently weird, and have commenced to take over her home.
Since I am completely and totally tired of politics for the moment, here’s a meaningless homage to her new cats. I promise, back to economics shortly.
… But here’s a hint: We will be having a special advance screening of Iron Man this Thursday. Here’s to hoping it goes over well. In the near future we will be spending a lot of our summer doing elaborate promotions.
I would like to live in a world where carpenters make their money by building things, filmmakers make money by producing movies and kitchens make money by preparing food. Unfortunately this is not the case.
Kern’s Kitchen owns the copyright to “Derby Pie,” meaning they and only they control the rights to produce that specific pie, and only they can refer to their creation as such. If you manage to create a strikingly similar (read: exact) pie in your home or restaurant, you might well be infringing on their legal rights.
Chef Rick Paul found this out this week. Kern’s Kitchen sent a private investigator into his Frankfort restaurant to catch Paul in the nefarious and outrageous act of selling food to customers. The nerve.
Kern’s has promptly gotten the courts involved, a practice they are not at all shy about employing. Having pacified Iraq, stopped global terrorism, bolstered the economy, achieved energy independence and made our public schools the envy of the world, the government now has plenty of resources for pie-gate.
Over the years, Cox said Kern’s has probably filed 25 lawsuits, “and we have prevailed on every single one. We tend to get larger settlements when it’s a second offense.”
At first, “we put people on notice and ask them to sign a letter agreeing not to infringe,” Cox said. “When they sign the letter, we keep a record. The next time, we sue them.”
Kern’s biggest cash award in a court case “has probably been $25,000 or $30,000,” Cox said.
Thus says the Frankfort State-Journal. Kern’s Kitchen isn’t the only one pouring money into litigation as opposed to gastronomy. If you hold a raffle for a big screen TV to watch the NFL’s well known championship game, you better not refer to it as the Super-you-know-what. That name’s copyrighted. The NFL can and will ask you to stop. The same applies to the large college basketball tournament commonly held in the third month of the year.
So if anyone needs me, I will be in my kitchen trying out pie recipes and thinking of popular-sounding names for them. I’m thinking of some kind of lemon custard thing with a light egg foam on top, but nothing is solid yet. I could make a fortune charging other people for the right to sell it…
In the meantime, I will let Chef Paul have the last word, since he usually does anyway:
“I think they probably would be better served going after some of these people on the Internet that are advertising Derby Pie as their own recipe, every day.”
I got home from work at about 3:00 am this morning. I did some minor things around the house, got a snack, turned on a movie and went to bed.
I was still awake at 4:37 am when the house started a strange quivering. It was like the wind from a strong thunderstorm, only continuous. I would guess it lasted from 30 seconds to one minute. It was an earthquake centered in Illinois that I felt all the way in southcentral Kentucky.
You can see a REALLY fantastic seismic recording of the earthquake on this page, for at least a while. See if you can spot the earthquake:
It was disconcerting to say the least.
As Derby day approaches and many Kentuckians dig out their silver cups and refresh their memory regarding their mint julep recipe, I feel a need to fix something. Do not, do not, do not ever follow this recipe, method, or… well, anything really.
The link goes to Jeffrey Morganthaler’s discussion about one very, very wrong way to make a… well, some sort of drink that claims to be a mint julep at least.
However, the young lady in the video was clearly chosen for two reasons — neither of which is her skill or ability.
Tax avoidance is the catch-all phrase economists use to denote activities you would not otherwise engage in, other than in an attempt to avoid paying some sort of tax, or to lower your overall tax liability. Maybe you don’t work as much as you could to avoid being bumped up into that next income tax bracket, or put in that questionably necessary home office.
Well to the surprise of no one, tax-happy France has even placed excises on it’s signature product. The city of Paris has a tax on wine served in restaurants… but it’s levied by the piece of stemware or glassware used.
National Geographic’s Intelligent Travel blog has the story about a trip to the restaurant in question. I’ll let you read the whole thing for a better idea of how they avoid this tax, but here’s a hint:
Having served my time behind the bar for about 6 years, I’m becoming more and more dismayed about the current state of cocktails as I find them practiced.
Bartending is a craft. It’s an art and it’s a science but first and foremost, it’s about service. Thus for the betterment of drinkers everywhere, some advice:
- First, be fast and accurate. Except in very rare occasions people are not at the bar to see you or to sample your latest squid ink and pomegranate juice specialty drink. They’re there to hangout with their friends, listen to music and locate prospective sexual partners. You taking too long with your vanity projects only impedes these goals. If it takes you more than 90 seconds to make a bloody mary, simplify your recipe. Move the drinks, move the customers and move the money.
- Making great drinks with 15 ingredients and 10 minutes of your time does not a bartender make. The question is: when its 1 am and you’re down to half bottles of gin and tequila, lemonade, one lime, a two liter of Sprite and some frozen orange juice concentrate, can you keep the party going?*
- Give the people what they want. Don’t bemoan someone for ordering a Bud Light instead of your favorite microbrew from Lithuania. Give them their damn beer and shut up.
- A martini is vodka or gin with vermouth and an olive. NOTHING else is a martini. Stop naming them ____-tinis. It’s a cocktail in a triangular glass. Accept this. Even a change as small as replacing the olive with an onion keeps it from being a martini. (That’s a gibson.)
- Know your trade and know your tools. Study up. Read Dale DeGroff’s books and get some DVD’s. You practice an ancient and honorable profession, so take the time to do it right. Even if you work in a dingy corner bar you can still provide Rainbow Room class service. Keep things clean and be able to get to all your tools quickly.
Thank you.
* Yes you can. Mix up the orange juice concentrate with the Sprite. Add the tequila in about a 5:1 ratio and use the lemonade to add some tartness to taste. Serve with ice and garnish with slices from the lime. Now sit back and wait for the inevitable sexual advances.
