On Tue, 02 Nov 1999 00:52:47 GMT, Kip Williams <k...@home.com> wrote: >Bernard Peek wrote:
>> In article <381D76A6.42BF5...@mediaone.net>, Elisabeth Carey >> <lis.ca...@mediaone.net> writes
>> >On the other hand, the fact that (unless things have changed) lots >> >more cattle in the British Isles are grass-fed rather than grain-fed >> >for most of the year seems a more likely suspect, especially given >> >that that's known to cause a difference in the taste of the meat.
>> That's definitely true, it even changes the flavour of the milk.
>Hershey's Chocolate Syrup was a revolution in milk flavoring. Before >they invented it, the only way to get chocolate milk was to feed cows >lots and lots of chocolate.
Yes, and then the cows broke out in really horrible acne, and you couldn't sell the resulting leather. -- Vicki Rosenzweig | v...@redbird.org r.a.sf.f faq at http://www.redbird.org/rassef-faq.html "I get by with a little help from my friends." -- Lennon/McCartney
On Mon, 01 Nov 1999 17:14:37 -0500, Geri Sullivan <g...@toad-hall.com> wrote:
>Time for me to get back to the salt mines so I can pay for that suite, >which I need and want for reasons other than the rasff party. I won't >mind if someone else wants to host the party in their suite, or if >rasffers coming to Minicon want to chip in and get a suite to have for >the weekend, but I'm happy have it in my suite again next year if that >will be of help. Vicki, do you want to host again, or pick this year's >host(s) from the hordes of wonderful volunteers who would likely step >forward if asked?
I don't want to host again--I found that it was such a popular and successful party that I was having some trouble coping with the noise and had to go hide in the hallway, which is, I think, sub-optimal for the host of an event. I'll happily help you pick a host, though. -- Vicki Rosenzweig | v...@redbird.org r.a.sf.f faq at http://www.redbird.org/rassef-faq.html "I get by with a little help from my friends." -- Lennon/McCartney
In <MPG.12875034aa083371989...@news.elcjn1.sdca.home.com>, Mitch
Wagner <thrill...@sff.net> wrote: >And Microsoft WON the browser war. IE now has more than 50% market share >of browsers.
Just because people *have* them doesn't mean they use them. I have, let's see, five versions of IE on this computer (four with various AOL versions, one stand-alone), but I use Netscape.
-- Marilee J. Layman Co-Leader, The Other*Worlds*Cafe relmm...@aol.com A Science Fiction Discussion Group Web site: http://www.webmoose.com/owc/ AOL keyword: BOOKs > Chats & Message > SF Forum > The Other*Worlds*Cafe
In <941444169...@zhochaka.demon.co.uk>, db...@zhochaka.demon.co.uk
("David G. Bell") wrote: >And what the fuck is it about you and farmers? I'm a farmer. If I want >to comment on these changes based on my experience, I'm going to mention >how they affect farmers. I describe _my_ experience and you come up >with this sort of snide answer.
Speaking of farmers: In the grocery store parking lot today I saw a big working pickup (as opposed to the little stylish ones) that had painted on the drop gate: "If Dolly Parton was a farmer, she'd be flat busted, too!"
-- Marilee J. Layman Co-Leader, The Other*Worlds*Cafe relmm...@aol.com A Science Fiction Discussion Group Web site: http://www.webmoose.com/owc/ AOL keyword: BOOKs > Chats & Message > SF Forum > The Other*Worlds*Cafe
>In <8E7146CA9izz...@198.7.7.86> P Nielsen Hayden <p...@panix.com> wrote: >: gfar...@panix.com (Gary Farber) wrote in >: <7vjfsg$68m...@news.panix.com>: >[. . .] >:>Well, sure. And I have no idea as to the effect of growth hormones >:>as used in the US upon taste. For all I know, they cause disgusting >:>horrible tastes. Beats me. I just wonder what reason you have to >:>go to them to guess about this stuff. For all I know, it's clover, >:>sunlight, French cow feed, cosmic rays, a triad plot, or any of a >:>thousand other sources. "Might" be, after all. Maybe it's Mr. >:>Mind. Maybe it's a satanic curse. Maybe it's that damn Pokemon >:>show. Do we have any reason to pick one over any other? >:> >:>I lean towards Pokemon, myself.
>: You know, I'd ask why on earth this utterly innocuous and trivial >: matter should provoke such a barrage of nastiness, except that we've >: been here before innumerable times and there's no point.
>Well, I certainly need education with clue-by-four if the above is a >barrage of nastiness. I intended it and see it as a barrage of silliness >to enliven an innocuous question, myself. Was I actually unintentionally >nasty?
It seems unlikely that you could write those words above and think they were silly. Either you've really lost your feel for what you write, or you're backpedaling.
-- Marilee J. Layman Co-Leader, The Other*Worlds*Cafe relmm...@aol.com A Science Fiction Discussion Group Web site: http://www.webmoose.com/owc/ AOL keyword: BOOKs > Chats & Message > SF Forum > The Other*Worlds*Cafe
> And Microsoft WON the browser war. IE now has more than 50% market share > of browsers.
Is that a meaningful figure?
My computer has IE on it, because it came with the machine and I don't think that piece of offal is even worth the investment of time it would take to remove it.
I never use it. But I bet they count my machine (and others like it) in that figure.
> In article <E28707F1B6010C79.AC53A971AE27CBD4.1C19CFF733B06...@lp.airnews.net>, > Elaine Y. Fisher <elai...@airmail.net> wrote: > >My computer has IE on it, because it came with the machine and I don't > >think that piece of offal is even worth the investment of time it would > >take to remove it.
> I also think you're being unfair to IE. I'm something of a Unix bigot -- > I use Linux exclusively at work, and most of the time at home; I use trn > to read news, pine to read email, and Emacs and LaTeX for word processing. > Nevertheless, I think that IE is far, far better than Netscape -- it's > more polished, more stable, more standards-compliant, faster, and > prettier. Netscape's lost the browser war because they haven't put out a > notable product in quite literally years now. I wish that Microsoft would > release a version of MSIE for Linux that's as capable as the Windows > version.
What I don't like about IE is what I don't like about a lot of MS products -- they're so sure that they know what I want to do and how I should do it, that they've made it difficult for me to set it up so it actually *does* do what I want, how I want it to.
My personal opinion, gained from trying to use it, is that IE is extremely frustrating. I happen to prefer Netscape. Is that unfair? I don't think fairness enters into it -- it is simply a personal preference.
> In <kare-0111991335350...@ppp-asok01--045.sirius.net> Mary Kay Kare <k...@sirius.com> wrote: > : In article <7vjfsg$68m...@news.panix.com>, Gary Farber <gfar...@panix.com> > : wrote:
> : Maybe it's a satanic curse. > :> Maybe it's that damn Pokemon show.
> : There's a difference?
> : Yesterday's paper carried an ad for the First Pokemon Movie! Be afraid, > : be very afraid.
> Like I haven't already been asked how eager I am to see it?
> : MK--who will probably give her 9 year old nephew something Pokemon for > : Christmas, sigh
> "Gotta get them all!"
This meme has been running around in my head since the exchange between Kip Williams and Patrick. I hope no one will find it too disrespectful:
I wanna be the very best like no one ever was, To catch them is my real test to contain them is my cause.
I will travel across the land searching far and wide, Now that the seal is broken, I must put them back inside.
Pocket Pope!
Gotta catch'em all, It's you and me I know it's my destiny Prepare for trouble.... Make it double..... To protect the world from infestation Unite all people through divination ....
(Lucifuge, Memnon, Moloch,
Pinkachoo, Charizar.... )
Gotta catch them all, gotta catch.... Hey kids! Get your pentagram now and collect the entire set.
> >> > And yet the overwhelming majority of people who access the Internet do > >> > so through Microsoft software. I would say that makes Microsoft quite > >> > successful as an Internet company.
> >> By that criterion Microsoft is also a successful hard drive company.
> >Not true; Microsoft doesn't make the hard drives.
Geri Sullivan wrote: > Yep, and I like giving people options. The bottom line is that it's a > rasff party, right? So we could come dressed in something talked about > on rasff, or bring rasff-related party food, or....
I can just see it now. A room full of sombreros and flippers.
In <kare-0111991335350...@ppp-asok01--045.sirius.net> Mary Kay Kare <k...@sirius.com> wrote: : In article <7vjfsg$68m...@news.panix.com>, Gary Farber <gfar...@panix.com>
: wrote:
: Maybe it's a satanic curse. :> Maybe it's that damn Pokemon show.
: There's a difference?
: Yesterday's paper carried an ad for the First Pokemon Movie! Be afraid, : be very afraid.
Like I haven't already been asked how eager I am to see it?
: MK--who will probably give her 9 year old nephew something Pokemon for : Christmas, sigh
"Gotta get them all!"
-- Copyright 1999 by Gary Farber; For Hire as: Web Researcher; Nonfiction Writer, Fiction and Nonfiction Editor; gfar...@panix.com; Northeast US
> In article <381D76A6.42BF5...@mediaone.net>, Elisabeth Carey > <lis.ca...@mediaone.net> writes
> >On the other hand, the fact that (unless things have changed) lots > >more cattle in the British Isles are grass-fed rather than grain-fed > >for most of the year seems a more likely suspect, especially given > >that that's known to cause a difference in the taste of the meat.
> That's definitely true, it even changes the flavour of the milk.
Hershey's Chocolate Syrup was a revolution in milk flavoring. Before they invented it, the only way to get chocolate milk was to feed cows lots and lots of chocolate.
-- --Kip (Williams) amusing the world at http://members.home.net/kipw/ (really misses that chocolate beef we used to get)
>> > The history of the computer industry is littered with companies >> > that failed to react to new trends: Digital Equipment Corp., Wang, >> > Data General, and Prime Computer, to name four.
>> Ken Olson is a genius.
>Absolutely true. And one of the real measures of his genius is that he >turned Digital on a dime several times, scrapping his original >architecture in favor of the PDP (my brain is slow this morning - his >original architecture may have been an older version of the PDP) and then >scrapping the PDP in favor of VAX/VMS.
I do think Ken Olson is some kind of genius, and probably the opposite of whatever kind of genius Bill Gates is. Minor points: PDP (Programmable Data Processor) wasn't _an_ architecture, it was a bunch of architectures; PDP-8s aren't PDP-11s (which themselves incorporate a bunch of architectural differences about the amount of memory they can access, etc, and which came in various levels of integration from wirewrap on boards to LSI-11 chip sets) which aren't DECsystem-10s which aren't DECsystem-20s which aren't VAXes -- now there's an architecture, if you can imagine Paul Hogan pulling out a microVAX and showing it to someone who's tried to mug him by showing him some kind of 8088 laptop -- which aren't Alphas.
He didn't scrap PDPs in favor of VAXes; PDP development continues even today, over two decades after the first VAX release, and in fact Mentec, the company Digital sold the PDP business segment to, continues to develop PDP operating systems and, I think, hardware.
Digital did put the kibosh on DECsystem development in favor of VAX development in the middle-1980s, and produced a bunch of unhappy and alienated customers, some of whom went off to out-engineer Digital in making DECsystem clones. (Foonly, XKL systems, etc.)
>Under Olsen, the company also laid >a lot of the groundwork for Alpha. Olsen's mistakes were failure to grasp >the importance of PCs and client/server computing, but that shouldn't >detract from his accomplishments earlier in his career.
Olsen's mistake, and this is exactly why he is the anti-Gates, is that he believed Digital should be making and selling the best possible technology, and that customers would appreciate that, buy it in great numbers, and pay premium prices for it. EG, give the customers what they need, not what they think they want, and don't put a lot of effort into persuading them they want what you have.
You can argue that the market swing, with Windows Terminal Server and network PCs, is now back toward in the multi-user system, server-centric, dumb-client universe that VAXes did really well with. You can even argue that Olson was technically correct - but it just didn't matter; it wasn't what people wanted to buy.
(Another part of Gates' genius, incidentally, is setting up a situation where his operating system competition, hardware companies, were invited to try to win in marketing commodity PCs, competing almost entirely on price. This is a brutal business and easy to lose big piles of money on, and it tends to distract the people engaged in it from doing new OS development.)
-- Alan
=========================================================================== ==== Alan Winston --- WINS...@SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU Disclaimer: I speak only for myself, not SLAC or SSRL Phone: 650/926-3056 Physical mail to: SSRL -- SLAC BIN 69, PO BOX 4349, STANFORD, CA 94309-0210 =========================================================================== ====
Vicki Rosenzweig wrote: > >> That's definitely true, it even changes the flavour of the milk.
> >Hershey's Chocolate Syrup was a revolution in milk flavoring. Before > >they invented it, the only way to get chocolate milk was to feed cows > >lots and lots of chocolate.
> Yes, and then the cows broke out in really horrible acne, and you > couldn't sell the resulting leather.
We got around that by calling it "alligator skin."
In article <E28707F1B6010C79.AC53A971AE27CBD4.1C19CFF733B06...@lp.airnews.net>, Elaine Y. Fisher <elai...@airmail.net> wrote:
>Mitch Wagner wrote:
>> And Microsoft WON the browser war. IE now has more than 50% market share >> of browsers.
>My computer has IE on it, because it came with the machine and I don't >think that piece of offal is even worth the investment of time it would >take to remove it. >I never use it. But I bet they count my machine (and others like it) in >that figure.
I bet not. Usually when they do this sort of analysis, they do it by analyzing the actual User-Agents that Web sites see hits from. It's still imprecise, sure, but it doesn't count software sitting unused.
I also think you're being unfair to IE. I'm something of a Unix bigot -- I use Linux exclusively at work, and most of the time at home; I use trn to read news, pine to read email, and Emacs and LaTeX for word processing. Nevertheless, I think that IE is far, far better than Netscape -- it's more polished, more stable, more standards-compliant, faster, and prettier. Netscape's lost the browser war because they haven't put out a notable product in quite literally years now. I wish that Microsoft would release a version of MSIE for Linux that's as capable as the Windows version.
Rachael Lininger <linin...@fozzie.chem.wisc.edu> wrote in article
> One of my cookbook authors noted that she made a trip on the same airline, > with the same meal each way. She said that the chicken on the > US-<somewhere in Asia> flight was bland, and that the return trip chicken > was simply delicious. She attributed this to different diets--many Asian > chickens are fed on wheat germ.
> I haven't tried any Asian chickens, though.
It sounds plausible to me. When I lived in India about fifteen years ago, chickens ran around the streets and farms eating grain and bugs and garbage and what have you, and they were absolutely delicious when they ended up on my plate. Chicken in America is almost tasteless in comparison.
> Yep, and I like giving people options. The bottom line is that it's > a rasff party, right? So we could come dressed in something talked > about on rasff, or bring rasff-related party food, or....
I would come dressed as the Pope, but then Marty would be forced to follow me around explaining that I was only infalliable when speaking ex cathedra on points of church doctrine.
Perhaps I could come dressed as worldcon.
- Ray R.
-- *********************************************************************** "But at my back I alwaies hear Magneto's minions hurrying near" - Marvell Comics, "The Mysterious Men of X"
Ray Radlein - r...@learnlink.emory.edu homepage coming soon! wooo, wooo. ***********************************************************************
>>I wanted to use it as the title for a review of a benefit folk gig for >>Clause 28 a long time ago, but got squelched. (Clause 28 in the Local >>Government Act ages and ages ago, like 1988 or so, was attempting to >>prevent any money being given by local government to anything that >>showed homosexuality in a positive light. There was a strong movement >>against it.)
>I was under the impression that the relevant section had never been >repealed. Though it's funny how things have changed very quickly; it >now has the feeling of being one of these historical, never repealed >but still ludicrous pieces of law, like shooting Welshmen in Chester >after dark with a bow and arrow.
It does seem to still be in force, given that a Ceefax note I saw a couple of days ago (sorry about the vagueness, I've been to sleep since then) referred to a Labour Minister saying Clause 28 would be repealed when the time was right. Why isn't the time right, now, I wonder?
Alan "I hate it when the clocks change" Woodford
Men in Frocks, protecting the Earth with mystical flummery!
>lis.ca...@mediaone.net (Elisabeth Carey) wrote in ><381D76A6.42BF5...@mediaone.net>:
>>On the other hand, the fact that (unless things have changed) lots >>more cattle in the British Isles are grass-fed rather than grain-fed >>for most of the year seems a more likely suspect, especially given >>that that's known to cause a difference in the taste of the meat.
>>Fat content also affects flavor, and the American cattle industry >>has been raising leaner and leaner cattle for years now. I don't >>know if the British cattle industry has been under the same >>pressures for leaner meat, but if not, that's another likely >>explanation, without reaching for the bogeyman of hormones.
>You may be right. Good points.
And, if I may speak briefly as a hunter, the hormones most likely to negatively affect taste are unlikely to be found in the fat of a steer, ox, or cow.
Buck venison, OTOH, can be downright nasty if you don't trim every bit of fat. Doe needn't be handled quite so carefully.
I don't know if the use of hormones subtly affects flavor. As Lis pointed out, what the animal eats _does_ affect flavor, often significantly. Years back, there used to be something called Wickstrom Beef (TM), which was an early attempt at organic beef production (no hormones not produced by the animal itself, no prophylactic antibiotics). For obvious reasons, we ate quite a bit of it at home. I honestly couldn't tell the difference between it and anybody else's beef. (Cue story of me, a cousin, an air rifle, The Bull That Wouldn't, Ever After, and The Punishment. It's not for the squeamish.)
-- Doug Wickstrom "Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances." --Lee DeForest
On 1 Nov 1999 10:11:36 -0600, linin...@fozzie.chem.wisc.edu (Rachael Lininger) excited the ether to say:
>I haven't tried any Asian chickens, though. Doug? Does this sound right?
It's hard to say. Most of the locally-raised chicken I ate was prepared in local dishes, and was Highly Spiced. Of that which was not especially spicy, I cannot be entirely certain that it was, in fact, chicken. There was a dish prepared by a certain Chef Abo (his name, not a pejorative on his ethnicity, which is Japanese) called "City Chicken," which looked suspiciously like a large dove, to me. There is also the time the (Philippino) street vendor's claim of barbecued chicken that was absolutely proven to have been once capable of barking and lifting one leg to urinate. Japanese street vendors have also been known to substitute such "meats" as rat and horse intestine in their supposedly chicken yakitori, though my guess is that any that I ate was actually chicken. Yakitori having a rather strongly-flavored sauce, though, the spice problem creeps in.
Part of the problem with asking me is that given a choice, I usually opt for something other than chicken. It's not that I dislike it, really, but it's just so _ordinary_ unless exotically prepared.
-- Doug Wickstrom "We find two great gangs of political speculators, who alternately take possession of the state power and exploit it by the most corrupt ends-the nation is powerless against these two great cartels of politicians who are ostensibly its servants, but in reality dominate it and plunder it." --Friedrich Engels
On 1 Nov 1999 20:46:23 GMT, Andrew Plotkin <erkyr...@netcom.com> excited the ether to say:
>Avram Grumer <av...@bigfoot.com> wrote: >> Is that "all"? Isn't this RASSEFF, where we peel aside the skin of simple >> assumptions to gaze upon the naked viscera of truth? And then talk about >> food or cats?
>Frankly, if naked viscera are connected with either food *or* cats in your >mind, I don't want to know about it.
>--Z (no, I don't ask what goes into politics either. Violins, however, >are usually made from sheep bits, not cat.)
Not even sheep, any longer. The last set of strings I bought was in 1994, and it appears that I will actually wear them out before they break or go false. They have nylon cores, and I do wonder why it took so long to make such an obvious improvement. Maybe it was the previous bad experience with steel.
There was, of course, a time when I wore the strings out anyway before they broke, but I was also playing 6-8 hours a day, instead of about 20 hours a year.
-- Doug Wickstrom "ISO 9000 is an attempt to turn everyone into bureaucrats. This works about as well as attempts to turn bureaucrats into people." -- Samuel S. Paik
Loren MacGregor <churnwo...@worldnet.att.net> wrote: >"Rocky's" chicken was not such a startling introduction, because I >had read about it before tasting it, and had deliberately sought out >a restaurant that served these range-fed chickens. (There was a >lawsuit some years back, in which Rocky's was sued for the use of >"free-range," basically claiming that "free range" was not a defined >term under the FDA and thus could not be used as a descriptive, and >that allowing Rocky's to use the term was therefore unfair >competition. If I recall correctly, Rocky's lost.)
I've often heard that really cheap chicken tastes of fish; but the only place I've ever eaten fishy chicken was the US. Presumably this is again due to limits on what can be put into the food the chickens are fed (though I only sometimes seek out the much more expensive corn-fed free range chicken here.)
edd...@cobrabay.freeserve.co.uk (Eddie Cochrane) wrote: >The only burger chain in the UK to have promoted the >idea of choosing just what goes on your burger was Wendys IIRC, and >they've not been all that successful, which is unfortunate, as I quite >like theirs.
It wasn't quite that they were unsuccessful. They were relatively early into the fast food business here, so had some excellent sites (most notably Cambridge Circus as far as fannish locations go, I should think). But the UK operation was bought by Grand Met, who shut it down and turned the sites into Pizza Huts. Since then they've launched again; but it's a much tougher market now. And their burgers, while tasty, are much, much more expensive than McDonalds or Burger King. Well more than twice the US price.
linin...@fozzie.chem.wisc.edu (Rachael Lininger) wrote: >What if she says, "The best >physical modelling programs indicate that your child is going to grow up >to be fat?"
Rather off at a tangent from the discussion; a majority of adults say that they would abort a fetus with the 'fat gene'. But you know, people say all sorts of things in surveys.
Mitch Wagner <thrill...@sff.net> wrote: >Parents control their children's lives. This is natural, and a good thing >- anyone who thinks otherwise has never been in a supermarket with a >screaming toddler and a parent who takes the attitude, "Ignore him, he'll >wind down on his own."
I'm interested in your suggestions as to what you might do instead.
Give in to the toddler? (I really don't think this is a good long term answer unless you want a grade A brat.) Go somewhere else and not shop? (This is a limited class of the above.) Hit the toddler? (Not noticeably effective at stopping them screaming.) Try to distract the toddler? (Few generals have been as resolute as the average two year old) Desperately bribe the toddler to be good? (Not bad, but how many rides on Thomas the Tank Engine can you take? And it doesn't always work.) Not take the toddler shopping? (Not much of an option)
What we do is let her scream as much as she likes, while explaining to her that (a) she can't get out of the trolley and (b) she can't eat any of the food until we've paid for it, for just as long as it takes. But this is no different from ignoring her, as far as the general misery of other shoppers goes.
Supermarkets are a particularly stressful environment for small children. Marianne is pretty agreeable as small children go, but supermarkets quite regularly tip her over the edge.
