They are also wrong, and indeed wicked. Heinz ketchup is something like a precious work of art: it's that rarest of things, an instance of perfection. It may be that many have forgotten one of the most interesting articles ever written about the human palate; if you have, read it again. It starts with the question of why there are so many 'gourmet' mustards and spaghetti sauces ('gourmet' is in scare quotes in deference to Ogden Nash); but there is only one ketchup.
It turns out the reason is that ketchup, and particularly Heinz ketchup, happens to be perfect.
There are five known fundamental tastes in the human palate: salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami. Umami is the proteiny, full-bodied taste of chicken soup, or cured meat, or fish stock, or aged cheese, or mother's milk, or soy sauce, or mushrooms, or seaweed, or cooked tomato. "Umami adds body," Gary Beauchamp, who heads the Monell Chemical Senses Center, in Philadelphia, says. "If you add it to a soup, it makes the soup seem like it's thicker--it gives it sensory heft. It turns a soup from salt water into a food." When Heinz moved to ripe tomatoes and increased the percentage of tomato solids, he made ketchup, first and foremost, a potent source of umami. Then he dramatically increased the concentration of vinegar, so that his ketchup had twice the acidity of most other ketchups; now ketchup was sour, another of the fundamental tastes. The post-benzoate ketchups also doubled the concentration of sugar--so now ketchup was also sweet--and all along ketchup had been salty and bitter. These are not trivial issues. Give a baby soup, and then soup with MSG (an amino-acid salt that is pure umami), and the baby will go back for the MSG soup every time, the same way a baby will always prefer water with sugar to water alone. Salt and sugar and umami are primal signals about the food we are eating--about how dense it is in calories, for example, or, in the case of umami, about the presence of proteins and amino acids. What Heinz had done was come up with a condiment that pushed all five of these primal buttons. The taste of Heinz's ketchup began at the tip of the tongue, where our receptors for sweet and salty first appear, moved along the sides, where sour notes seem the strongest, then hit the back of the tongue, for umami and bitter, in one long crescendo.There are some things a civilization ought to preserve, and art is one of them; art that approaches perfection especially. The man who thinks to improve our lives by removing the sublime, even if it comes in a ketchup bottle, that man is an actual enemy of humanity.
This phrasing ["You Lie!"] is not a "breach of protocol," as the NYT would have it, but part of another protocol. Kenneth R. Greenberg, scholar of dueling (and baseball, oddly enough; he had some interesting things to say on the intersection of those two things in the post-war American South), noted:Now, another scholar named Greenberg -- I don't know if they are related -- wrote a piece on the Jews of Savannah, Georgia. I believe this is the piece, although you can't see the relevant part if you don't have access to an academic library. If memory serves, it recounts the story of how Jews in Savannah were accepted into the community early compared to the rest of the country, as proved by the fact that they were challenged to duels and fought them; for, as Kenneth Greenberg describes at length, gentlemen dueled only with equals. If they were challenged in the terms of honor, and allowed to fight as honorable men, then they were equals in fact.Only certain kinds of insulting language and behavior led to duels. The central insult that could turn a disagreement into a duel involved a direct or indirect attack on someone's word -- the accusation that a man was a liar. To "give someone the lie," as it was called, had always been of great consequence among men of honor. As one early-seventeenth-century English writer noted, "It is reputed so great a shame to be accounted a lyer, that any other injury is canceled by giving the lie, and he that receiveth it standeth so charged in his honor and reputation, that he cannot disburden himself of that imputation, but by the striking of him that hath given it, or by chalenging him to the combat."
Three breaths before Rep. Wilson shouted out that President Obama was a liar, President Obama had said that "prominent politicians" who spoke to concerns about potential end-of-life issues were spreading "a lie." Every Congressman present understood themselves to be a prominent politician; those who had expressed concerns about that issue, then, stood accused to their faces of lying. Rep. Wilson, of South Carolina, responded in anger and in kind.
It may be hard to understand if you aren't from the South, or a similar culture: but "giving the lie" in this case is the furthest thing from a mark of racial disrespect. It is a mark of accepted equality.
If a Southerner accepts you as an equal, and you call him a liar to his face, you will have to fight him. That is courtesy, not discourtesy: he wouldn't bother to fight you if he didn't respect you. He would snort at you, or strike you, but he would not respond to you in the language of honor.
Of course, these days we do not duel, and the only way such an encounter can terminate is with an apology. One was offered, and accepted -- the wager of battle, such as it is today, has been fulfilled according to the ancient forms. It may look strange to places that have not known such wagers in their lifetimes, but this sort of exchange was once the lifeblood of American politics. The South, as always, sustains.
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This is a cross-post, but I expect it'll interest a few of you.
William McIntosh, the "White Warrior" of the Creek nation, had risen to the leadership of the Creeks in spite of being of mixed Creek and Scottish blood. That Scottish ancestry offered no shame to a warrior people: he was of the blood of John Mohr McIntosh (the Gaelic byname meaning, "the Great"). John Mohr was recruited by Georgia's own founder, the heroic Sir James Edward Oglethorpe, friend of the Yamicraw nation, to guard the early colony against Spanish raiders from the south. Chief William was of the blood also of General Lachlan McIntosh, who served with General Washington at Valley Forge and helped to negotiate treaties for the establishments of forts in the west during the Revolutionary war; he thereby opened the West to later expansion. General McIntosh also killed Declaration of Independence signatory Button Gwinnett in a duel. Finally, he was a direct descendant of William McIntosh, who was sent by the Revolutionary government to the Creeks to aid them in fighting the British.
Perhaps out of loyalty to this revolution, or out of loyalty to his fathers who fought for it, Chief William McIntosh made a deal that put the lands of the Creek Nation under the jurisdiction of the state of Georgia. Shortly thereafter, he was assassinated in his home by tomahawk; but the transfer of authority held in spite of his murder.
What had heretofore been forested country began to be cleared by homesteaders, who wanted a place to grow food for their families and crops to sell at market. As they cleared a particular patch of land in west central Georgia, they began to notice that the land began to erode far more than other lands in Georgia. The erosion was serious enough to be noteworthy in the 1830s. One can imagine the early farmers wondering how bad it would get. The topsoil, and their livelihood, was washing away: where would it stop?
Here.
You may not have ever heard of Alfred E. Smith -- I had not, before tonight -- but I think we can all agree that what follows are the best speeches of this Presidential campaign.
UPDATE: See the updates below. What appeared to my inexpert eyes to be an order (on account of saying ORDER and having the Judge's name on it) is not, in fact, an order according to Valerie. I've left the original text of the post unaltered, in recognition of my error (which I regret most deeply).
A much remarked, minor story in this election was the question of Senator Obama's birth certificate. We've all ignored it, except to try to shoot it down, because it sounded like a wacko conspiracy theory; and anyway, the campaign produced a birth certificate.
In ignoring this story, we may have made an error. Some of you will recall that the issue arose briefly a little while ago when a Clinton camp supporter filed a suit demanding that Sen. Obama produce various documents to prove that he is able to run for the Presidency.
US Federal District Court Judge R. Barclay Surrick has denied Sen. Obama's motion to dismiss the suit, and has ordered him to produce a certified copy of the original long version of his birth certificate. Presumably, Sen. Obama will comply.
However, the judge's order also states that, according to the law in effect in 1967, Sen. Obama lost his citizenship when he was adopted in Indonesia. He has therefore also ordered Sen. Obama to produce a certified copy of his Certification of Citizenship and a certified copy of his Oath of Allegiance.
These must be produced within three days of the order, which was dated 29 September, 2008 -- I think that means, "tomorrow."
UPDATE: As I look at the document more closely, I realize that I may be using the wrong terminology -- I am not a lawyer, so I'm not sure if the whole document is the 'order' or if just the first page is the 'order.' I'll gladly accept corrections for any errors arising from my inexpertise in legal matters.
UPDATE: Valerie, in the comments, says that this is not an order, but a draft of an order showing what the plantiff would like such an order to look like. I'm going to assume she knows better than I do.
So, doubtless you have all seen this video. It's ten minutes long, and provides a straight-line explanation for the current financial crisis.
We have had a good discussion on the matter below. Since this video is taking off and has gotten a lot of attention, though, I'd like to hear some focused criticism on its claims. Where is it wrong? How is it right?
I'll start: this is plainly a partisan video, that intends to cast blame on one side where there is blame to go around. That isn't helpful when Speaker Pelosi does it, and it isn't helpful here. In terms of understanding the crisis, though -- as opposed to laying blame for it -- where is it right, and where is it wrong?
UPDATE: Per the comments, YouTube has pulled the video. It can now be viewed here.
The purpose of this post is to debate and try to understand exactly how our financial systems failed. This post is the right place for clean debate on the systems: how they were supposed to work, how they really did work, and what to do about it.
In the extended entry, I'll repost a series of comments from an earlier post -- we went a bit off-topic -- and we can run with it from there.
A friend of mine sent me this link to the DOD IG report on corruption in Iraqi Cell Phone contracts. I was vaguely intrigued, since one of the big early success stories in Iraq has been the flowering of the cellular phone industry (as well as the satellite television industry, and a few others). I had an IRAQNA phone myself while I was over there. Crystal clear reception to the USA; kind of horrid reception if you're calling a buddy a few blocks away.
So I know it's big money, and it's not shocking to hear there is some corruption. I was rather surprised by the tagline:
This 146 page US Defense Inspector General's report, written at the For Official Use Only level, pertains to a fraud investigation centering on Iraqi-British billionare Nadhmi Auchi, who is connected to Presidential Candidate Barak Obama via former Obama fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko.
Well, yes, he is: Richard Fernandez of the Belmont Club did a good part of the work on that. I hadn't realized, however, that Auchi was so important to Saddam's weapon smuggling program as well.
It's a long report, but you may wish to read it for yourself in spite of that.
Judith Warner is a bestselling author and a blogger at the NYT who produces (I have learned today) a blog called "Domestic Disturbances." Her writing was panned by Prof. Kenneth Anderson, who called it condescending. I have only read the one piece of it she wrote, so I won't say he's wrong as a general thing: but I thought this was a piece that showed a great deal of the right spirit. Let me explain.
She writes about attending a McCain-Palin rally in Virginia. She confesses that she intended to go as a joke, and to mock the attendees -- but she ends up being taken by the kindness of the strangers, their hopes for Gov. Palin, and the evident joy of their lives. It scares the hell out of her.
No, it wasn’t funny, my morning with the hockey and the soccer moms, the homeschooling moms and the book club moms, the joyful moms who brought their children to see history in the making and spun them on the lawn, dancing, when music played. It was sobering. It was serious. It was an education....Now that's a start. Let's explore it a bit.For those of us who can’t tap into those yearnings, it seems the Palin faithful are blind – to the contradictions between her stated positions and the truth of the policies she espouses, to the contradictions between her ideology and their interests. But Jonathan Haidt, an associate professor of moral psychology at the University of Virginia, argues in an essay this month, “What Makes People Vote Republican?”, that it’s liberals, in fact, who are dangerously blind.
Haidt has conducted research in which liberals and conservatives were asked to project themselves into the minds of their opponents and answer questions about their moral reasoning. Conservatives, he said, prove quite adept at thinking like liberals, but liberals are consistently incapable of understanding the conservative point of view.
Based on a number of interviews with military officers in Iraq, I have compiled a strategic update on the situation post-Surge. You can read the summary, the whole analysis, or the transcripts of the interviews if you prefer to make up your own mind.
Tensions are getting higher with the election's approach, so I want to emphasize that this post is in no way intended to be disrespectful of either side. A liberal friend brought up an interesting point, and I wanted to bring it to your attention here because of Winds' location right at the center of the blogosphere. My only interest is to expose the question to a larger community, to see if the observations hold true in a broader sense than in the smaller community that reads Grim's Hall.
We were recently welcoming a new reader, and asking her to tell us a bit about herself. In return, I thought perhaps we should all tell her a bit about ourselves. (Which is a useful exercise, actually -- it might make a good concept for the Winds community as well.)
At the end of a long string of comments, Jeffrey -- a committed liberal and Obama supporter, whose friendship I greatly value because of his careful thinking and insightful critiques -- noted that, unlike the rest of us, he hadn't mentioned anything about his family history. He wondered why so many people felt that was important.
The question reminded me of Prof. Althouse's post about one of McCain's earliest commercials, the one that started with old footage of Theodore Roosevelt, then FDR, then young McCain, then McCain today. She wrote:
