Cafe Verite

Standards are important. Without standards we get garbled, impenetrable prose; we get mushy spaghetti drowning in watery sauce; we get spongy, undercooked (or something!) French bread that flattens between our teeth rather than divides satisfyingly into bites--a bit of crunch, a bit of crumb. And, most dispiriting of all, we get grainy, watery, flat coffee.

One of the distressing realities of American life is that very few culinary standards obtain.  You can't know whether a "good Italian place" creates sumptuous, lively dishes or whether they sling pale, tasteless, improperly cooked dreck.

Yuka Cafe, Brussels

You can't know whether you will get a good cup of espresso at a cafe with which you are unfamiliar until it's served.  Sometimes it's watery, sometimes it's bitter, sometimes it's watery and bitter.  Sometimes, it takes 10 minutes to be curated and tastes like iron filings. Until recently, here in Europe, every cup of espresso was good, and quick.  One might be a little better than another, but they were all acceptable.  Each had substance.  Each had an a full, heady aroma, a languorous chocolatey-bitey taste, the crema shivering atop the liquid.  Some had more than that.

The proliferation of Keurig "K" cups and capsule-pods for espresso, however, threatens this culinary equilibrium.  In London, and in Oxford, where I have been living this year, I have come across K-cup coffee in a number of places, but I thought I could put it down to a lack of British espresso tradition.  But on my my most recent trip to Paris, I had the memory of some fantastic meals marred by the hot pod-capsule water served at the end.  I have had lazy, sunny flaneur afternoons ruined by coffee I did not want to finish. Fortunately, it was not widespread, but even in Paris, I now began to look not merely for a place that looked comfortable, but for some clue from the outside of the place as to whether it was a real cafe, a real restaurant.  I regret that there is, as yet, nothing definitive I can offer short of an inspection and lengthy interrogation of the staff.   Here in Brussels, where I have traveled with an old friend, it is more widespread.

It doesn't have to be like this.  In Britain and Europe, the Real Ale and Honest ("Head is not Beer") weights & meaures campaigns forced bar and restaurant owners to use glasses with a liquid volume line on them.  And every establishment pours right up to the line.  There may be a nice head on the beer, which can certainly add to the taste, but you are not being cheated by a gassy line.

At this juncture, I don't see the need for government intervention.  Maybe just a decal on the door, or low on the window saying they make real coffee.  It would be a start.

Power of the Small States, Part 2

Yesterday, I wrote about the power of the small states within the Electoral College system--

And whereas California has 38,800,000 residents, and it has 55 electoral votes, or about 705,000 people per elector; and Wyoming, with 550,000 people, has three electoral votes, or about 183,000 people per elector. This discrepancy means that a Wyoming resident has 3.8 times the voting power of a California resident. Sixty-five Wyomings could fit in California, meaning that if California were scaled in the same way, California would contribute 195 votes to the electoral college. The winner-take-all nature of the contest (except ME and NE) further amplifies this unbalanced scenario.

One further latent anti-democratic issue in the Electoral College is the prospect of a three-way race where no one wins a clear majority (270).

When no candidate wins 270 electoral votes, the Constitution provides that the House of Representatives elects the president in such a case. If it were the full House voting, and since, ideally, the House's membership reflects the nation's population, this election would be relatively fair. However, this process provides that each state receives only one vote, further diluting and diminishing the power of large states, and utterly disenfranchising the people of the United States.

Given the undemocratic nature of the EC, if an elector switched his or her vote so that the EC vote matched the popular vote, would this be a good thing?

#FaithlessElector #ElectoralCollege 

Lonely, Jet-Lagged Middle-aged Man Makes Coffee for Absent Wife (Onion?)

Oxford area man, James McCrone, lonely and jet-lagged made two cups of coffee this morning--one for himself, and one for his wife, who is still traveling.

"It was so automatic," he said, "the crema on the espresso was perfect and I wanted to show it to her...but she's still on the East Coast.  I guess I'm just an old married man," he sighed.  McCrone reports that he is also only sleeping on "his" side of the bed even though for once in his life he can sprawl across the mattress with impunity.

When reached for comment in transit between Philadelphia and New Haven, his wife, Rutgers University Professor Lisa L Miller, said "That's really touching.  And the coffee does look good."  By way of clarification, she added, "but don't believe what he says about 'his' side of the bed. I won't believe he isn't taking up three-quarters of the bed without independent corroboration; and I would be skeptical (and furious!) regarding how such evidence was obtained.

Power of the Small States in the Electoral College

The Electoral College process favors people living in small states. We all know that each state has the same number of electoral votes as it does members of Congress. Since congressional apportionment in the Senate favors the small states, the electoral college therefore favors small states, first by giving them the malapportioned Senate votes, and second by amplifying the voting power of those votes.

For instance, California has 38,800,000 residents, and it has 55 electoral votes, or about 705,000 people per elector; and Wyoming, with 550,000 people, has three electoral votes, or about 183,000 people per elector. Which means that a Wyoming resident has 3.8 times the voting power of a California resident. Sixty-five Wyomings could fit in California, meaning that if California were scaled in such a way it would contribute 195 votes to the electoral college.

The winner-take-all (except ME and NE) further amplifies this scenario.

Many respond that ours is a Constitutional Republic, that the Electoral College and the Senate protect us from “tyranny of the majority” and/or “mobocracy.” This misses a key point: where and when are we prepared to say that the loser gets to win, to dictate policy? Under what circumstances?

For more on this:

The Electoral College Favors Small States

Unfairness of the Electoral College

Knowing

This isn't really a post about the election or the novel, but I've been reading The Bourne Identity on this trip to the US and have found it interesting--it's a good read, but what sticks in my mind particularly about the story has to do with how it relates to memory, knowledge and meaning. "Bourne" finds himself able to remember all kinds of very specific things--names of hotels, banks, French, and he knows them without knowing he knows, kind of like the way you try to retrieve the name of a movie or actor or book and find you can't, only to find yourself moments later blurting out the name, almost like your mouth knew it and your brain was somehow in the way.

I wonder if my iPhone is experiencing any similar disjunctures.  We are traveling and can't get cellular service, so we have to rely on wifi even for texting.

I spent a month here in Philadelphia in Sept of 2015, and I find that texts from my wife will suddenly ping at me as I walk by Toast restaurant or the bookstore.  I'll stop and think, "why did that work now?" and have to cast my mind back to September, try to reconstruct what was going on..."did I stop here for coffee?  Is this that little place I had lunch? What's going on?"

It also puts me in mind of Light in August by Wm Faulker:  "memory knows before knowing remembers...."  I could Google the whole passage, but I'd need wifi

Coercion

Novels are a like a big game of "what if?"  When I found that Electors did not have to vote as they had pledged to vote, I felt the situation sounded ripe for mischief, and I thought, I wonder if.... Interestingly, when I began shopping Faithless Elector around, the rejection comments were along the lines of, "this is too far-fetched," and "it could never happen."  


I have recently come across Robert M Alexander, reporting for CNN, who noted that during the 2012 election, an investigation by the Associated Press prior to the election revealed that as many as 5 Republican Electors expressed uncertainty regarding whether they would actually vote for Mitt Romney if he carried their state.


Moreover, in the fiercely contested 2000 election, it turns out that many electors were the target of vigilant lobbying campaigns. Some even received thousands of e-mails; at least one Elector received a death threat.  A group founded by two college seniors, called Citizens for a True Democracy, even published the contact information of 172 Republican electors online and asked people to urge them to put "patriotism before partisanship" and give their electoral votes to Al Gore.

So while Faithless Elector plays at “what-if?” it turns out this is no child’s make-believe game, but is (potentially) deadly earnest.  What passes in the pages of Faithless Elector hasn’t happened, isn’t meant to happen…but it could happen.

The full text of Alexander's report is here:  Rogue Electors Threaten Election's Integrity