Open Threads

Yesterday, I discovered that there is a place a few miles from my house that makes nine different kinds of bitters for mixing with cocktails (orange, cherry, rhubarb, lemon, peach, whiskey-barrel aged, old fashion, grapefruit, and mint). According to the guy who runs the place, it is the only place in the world that produces nine different kinds of bitters. The place is called Fee Brothers and, remarkably, it’s been run by the same family since 1863. They still have the same cash register they did when the place opened (I tried to take a picture with my cell phone camera but it didn’t come out very well).

If this were New York City, Fee Brothers would have been the subject of at least one Sunday Styles article and would likely be accorded the same kind of civic respect as the Pickle Store, Russ and Daughters, and the OCD guy in Midwood who makes the pizza with the five cheeses. But since this is flyover country, Fee Brothers is just another unusual business in a slightly sketchy neighborhood that no one pays much attention to locally. (They told me that they do a lot of their business with bars and restaurants in San Francisco and New Orleans.)

I bought cherry, orange, and whiskey-barrel aged bitters yesterday. I made a Manhattan with the whiskey-barrel aged ones and a margarita with the orange bitters. Both came out great. But I don’t know much about mixed drinks. Does anyone out there have any ideas on drinks to make with exotic bitters?

And to take this perhaps one step too far, what kinds of old-tymey foods would be good to eat with weird old-thymey drinks? What movies would be good to watch while drinking them? I’m thinking of throwing some kind of party. I’ve already settled on the music.

Clinging to bittersPost + Comments (92)

It is just a beautiful day here, so you are on your own. I’m going to be out and about- checking the shelters to see if I can find the right friend for Tunch, doing laundry, washing the car, hitting the market, etc.

Have fun.

Open ThreadPost + Comments (53)

Now playing in Itunes, Tabula Rasa– Bela Fleck, V.M. Bhatt, and Jie-Bing Chen.

And don’t mock it until you have listened to it.

*** Update ***

Listening to Jazzmatazz, now.

Afternoon Open ThreadPost + Comments (97)

At the very least, can the news networks get a clip of her singing something different? Also, get off my grass.

Flame on.

*** Update ***

I’m not a hater. I thought it was great- the first 32,000 times I heard the story.

This Website is Officially Sick of Susan BoylePost + Comments (123)

An action shot:

Behave.

Open ThreadPost + Comments (149)

Sully links to an excellent Times blog piece on how, predictably, the least educated are being hit the hardest by the recession:

The overall unemployment rate for the more educated is only 4.3 percent. Individuals with a high school degree, but no college, have a 10 percent unemployment rate (not seasonally adjusted). The unemployment rate for high school dropouts is 15.5 percent. Moreover, the unemployment rate gap between the most- and least-skilled is widening, not narrowing. Between February and March, the unemployment rate for college graduates increased by one-tenth of a percentage point. Among high school dropouts, the unemployment rate increased by four-tenths of a point.

Sully then comments:

Charles Murray was onto something, wasn’t he?

So I haven’t actually read that Bell Curve book, largely because I think it’s very unlikely that a single “intelligence quotient” measure exists in any meaningful way and because I think that human beings like to do things like invent bogus measures of superiority, pretend that what is being measured is hereditary, and then use these findings to justify the status quo. I did glance through this summary of the book and was stunned that the last item was ominously titled “A Place for Everyone“.

So, let me ask: do people like Sully and Murray actually believe that they and their friends are members of a genetic “cognitive elite” and that some portion of the rest of the population belongs in a “more lavish version of the Indian reservation”? Or am I simplifying things.

In a related noted, Nick Kristoff has a good piece on ways to increase educational/intellectual attainment among Americans living in poverty. Which brings me to my last question: is the Sully/Murray stuff at some level an argument against taking government action towards rectifying the country’s educational inequality problem?

There’s a place for usPost + Comments (130)