About food, but perhaps applicable elsewhere

[Lawrance Timothy] Ryan listed the four criteria that define greatness in any artist:

• They are excellent craftsmen.
• They are innovators—they do something that no one has done before.
• They are “on trend,” as he put it—their innovations are perceived to be of value; people buy their stuff; they aren’t tragic and misunderstood, appreciated for their innovations after they’re dead.
• They are influential—others begin to do what they started.

Michael Ruhlman, The Reach of a Chef: Beyond the Kitchen

Ways of seeing

almost taiwan

One of the most fascinating aspects of the birth of a new science is the new language it creates, allowing us to casually converse about ideas and issues that we were struggling to describe before.

Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, Linked p222

Aside from the obvious sensory disarrangement, the main component of the psychedelic experience for me is a shift in perspective, a way seeing familiar things in a different light. One other way to do this is to read / listen as widely as possible. For example, you can go into a restaurant and trip out on:

• The taste, smell and texture of the food.
• The sense memories the meal engenders.
  
• The provenance of each ingredient.
• The chemical processes involved in their preparation.
• The physical processes of eating and digestion.
• The nutritional content of the food.
  
• The social dynamics between the people in the restaurant.
• The financial side of the business.
• How the place fits into the neighborhood.
• ...and so on.
  

All these things are floating around, different ways to talk about the same thing, and the richness of the experience seems to be in sometimes surrendering to one view and letting it take you as far as it can, and other times being easily distracted, taking a more comprehensive look at aspects that you mostly ignore.

Related posts:
Why I go out drinking more often than before
Mundane in one group
A continuous network of critical states

coop - mickey finn

Primate ethology / Food porn

• Function — How does the behaviour impact on the animal's chances of survival and reproduction?
• Causation — What are the stimuli that elicit the response, and how has it been modified by recent learning?
• Development — How does the behaviour change with age, and what early experiences are necessary for the behaviour to be shown?
• Evolutionary history — How does the behaviour compare with similar behaviour in related species, and how might it have arisen through the process of phylogeny?

Four questions for ethologists, Wikipedia

Back from a few days in Taipei that were 2/3 a lot of fun and 1/3 less so, the latter because of my lingering inability to join the human race and the trouble that this causes with my wife, a matter that, at 38, I really ought to have mastered.

I've arranged my life so most of the time I can be alone and the apparent disconnects between myself and what other people do cause minimal friction all round - the world is happy enough to leave me alone.

It's embarrassing to admit that I have no idea if people socialize in groups only to maximize some later payoff, or is there an immediate reward in the action itself? Because I'm not entirely cynical, I suspect the latter, that people do hang out for the pleasure that it gives, rather than for money, food, sex, status, aid or whatever at a later date. This could be the basis of all my misunderstandings.

Looking at the great apes, I'm like an orangutan and not a chimp, a solitary rather than a social animal. I honestly have no idea what's going on when people get together. Which is rather disconcerting because I am a person, not an alien ethologist or an orangutan, and naturally part of the scenes that I think I'm only observing. My feelings and actions when in groups shouldn't even be second nature, they should be the thing itself, requiring no thought or reflection whatsoever. How much of this is caused by conversations being all in Mandarin rather than English I don't know, but probably less than I think. Like the Taiwanese often say to each other and me: "You think too much."

In Taipei they have more food choices than in Tainan. Because of my habits we always stay in the same small hotel near Shi Da University, and then have breakfast in Grandma Nitti's. The first visit I always have their large bacon cheeseburger, which looks like this:

Inside it's good and pink, and it comes with fries, small salad and a drink:

Grandma Nitti's
Shi Da Road, Lane 93, #8

台北市師大路９３巷８号

Pictures from Almost Taiwan

On walking away from bad food

There used to be a good Sichuan restaurant near here, with the owner from Chengdu. Most of the food was inedibly hot, but - and I've been to Sichuan - it was the real thing. I went there a month ago and the food had gone downhill a lot, perhaps a combination of static prices / inflation / catering to local tastes. I gave it another go tonight and was left filling up on beer and sunflower seeds. The food was no good, so I didn't eat it. At one time I'd have thought that was wasteful, but now I understand that as long as something rots it's being eaten.

I often feel bad for not posting more often, but a truly erratic man is Yechezkel Zilber, who goes weeks with nothing and then several entries in one day. His latest:

Unhealthy food, should be thrown away as soon as you realize that it is negative to eat it. "Do not waste it" is irrational and unethical. The Talmud recognized it two millenia ago, when saying that the prohibition of wasting stuff, is irrelevant when the body is the counter party." The waste of the body is more important".

There has been times when it was crucial to keep food. Nowadays our trouble is the opposite and attitudes should be adjusted accordingly.

His previous post:

cool + true observations...
- how much do you do for your body (instead of wasting time on ... whatever)?
- and why the body as a measure, why not the soul, the spirit, the other ... or what?

English is not his first language. His blog is here.

食い倒れ

According to Wikipedia, 食い倒れ [kuidaore]:

is a Japanese word meaning roughly “to ruin oneself by extravagance in food".