Robot Monkeys

Today I had to go to SF to pickup my visa and my custom timbuk2 bag, and so I decided to spend the day, and check out the nation’s only $20,000 coffee maker imported from Japan at Blue Bottle Cafe (66 Mint, near Moscone Center, NOT the kiosk in Hayes Valley).

I went in thinking, “So how much is this going to be? It can’t be more than four bucks. If it’s ten, I’ll laugh and leave. It’s brew for crying out loud!” I went up to the counter and and saw the prices for the siphon bar. $10 for something that I can’t remember (I thought “Libertine,” but that’s not on their website) and $11 for Ethiopian Gololcha . I got the Golocha. (So much for laughing.) Total with tax: $11.94

I got a number and sat at the counter in front of the $20k siphon machine. The machine consists of a metal box with 5 halogen lamps with metal light dampening filters over them to keep people from being blinded by them. A small glass Florence flask is filled about half way with hot water and brought to a boil. Once the boiling starts, an open cylinder with a long tube at the bottom containing a spring loaded paper filter connected a ball chain, and the ground coffee is lowered into the flask. As the chain touches the water, the water begins to rapids boil (I have no idea really why. The chain isn’t heated or anything.) The cylinder seals the top of the flask, and the water boils up through the tube and into the cylinder. The barista stirs the coffee a bit a with a bamboo paddle to ensure good mixing. As the water cools, it flows/dribbles back down the spring and chain into the flask. Once complete, the they serve you the flask (along with the stand used to hold it over the lamp), two clear coffee cups, and a cloth napkin, and two caramels. The the flask holds about four cups, so I guess it’s more like $3 a cup.

So how was the coffee? The first sips, when the coffee was still very hot, you could really taste the oils in the grounds. As the drink cooled, the it developed a fuller taste. It was a very very smooth drink. Not harsh like an espresso, more like a pressed coffee, but there almost no particulates in the cup, unlike a french press. It was good. It was interesting to taste, especially how the flavor changed with the temperature, and it was interesting to watch it brewed. But as I told two women who asked me on the way out how it was, I’m not entirely sure it’s $12 worth of interesting.

Still, I think you should try it, but go with a friend and split the bill. Perhaps bring two friends.

The Blue Bottle, also has a “Kyoto Style Iced Coffee Machine”. (Actually, I guess they have two. No word if they were thrown in with along with the siphon bar.) The machine looks like a really tall titration setup. There’s a large sphere half filled with water and condensation at the top. The water drains down through a metal funnel into another much smaller sphere that then drains to two independent valve controlled drip spouts. Each spout has some sort of gauge on it, but I couldn’t make out what it was. Maybe it was a thermometer, I don’t know. The water then drips down into a 1.5 liter cylinder below. When I asked the barista about the machine, she said it took 8 hours to fill the cylinders. I guess you have to call ahead, because I seriously doubt they serve day old coffee, but placing an order for coffee the day before sounds absurd.

The two women I met at Blue Bottle, suggested I try the other new fancy coffee machine in SF, the $10k, single cup, clover machine at Ritual (1026 Valencia, in The Mission). I drove across town, and gave it a shot. There, I ordered the Nicaraguan La Union for a much more “reasonable” $3 (including tax). It was much more bitter coffee. Harsh, perhaps is too strong, but I’d call it raspy. The clover is supposed to give a smooth cup, but I wouldn’t call it a smooth drink. Maybe the beans was just the wrong choice, I don’t know. For all the coffee I drink, I know pretty much nothing about it. I’m not a coffee snob. As long as the milk and grounds aren’t scorched in my latte, I’m fine. (As seen in this review of my favorite Cali coffee shop, The Perg. Of course, that guy is a pretentious asshole, as illustrated from his decidedly lukewarm “top tier” reviews.)

What I really look for in a coffee shop isn’t the coffee, but rather the atmosphere. Of these two places, Ritual wins. Blue Bottle has a very pretentious feel, which I guess isn’t surprising given that it has a $20k imported coffee maker in it. Blue Bottle is also a small place. A very cleanly decorated place. White walls, light oak bar and tables. It just has a very clean look to it. Ritual is similar, but they have local art on the walls. The current art are cartoons from Paul Madonna, including this one. Still, neither really have quite the vibe I look for in a coffee shop. Ritual is much closer, but really, I want something with crappy furniture, and some indie art on the wall.

The verdicts: Try the $20k siphon bar, to say you’ve tried it. It’s fine cup of joe, but if you have to choose one to hang out at, hang out at Ritual.

Not only do I dislike Hillary as a person and as a candidate, but I can’t stand what she represents: dynastic politics. I can’t see this as healthy for a democracy. Especially when it’s so damn transparent. Hillary hasn’t done jack shit, and when she ran for Moynahein’s seat it was obvious this day was coming, and it’s right on schedule. The only difference between her and Jo Ann Emerson, or Jean Carnahan is that Bill is still alive. In this sense, she’s Cristina Fernandez. The motivation is the same, the circumvention of the 22nd amendment, and her election will continue our descent to a banana republic.

Is it too late for Jeb to get in the race?

Or better yet, Chelsea versus Jenna! I mean, why shouldn’t we continue the 20, perhaps even 28 straight years of Bush-Clinton rival dynasties. Chelsea is 27, 28 this Feb 28. In 8 years, she’ll be 36, old enough to run. I look forward to her claims of having “16 years of White House experience” and “the two best presidential advisors anyone could hope for, my mom and my dad!”

Jesus. Can you imagine that? 28 years straight years of the same two families running the country? Two generations being born and becoming adults under the same two families. What the hell? (”They always told us anyone could be president. I knew that was lie. My name wasn’t Bush or Clinton.”)

What the fuck is wrong with this country?

During the Florida Republican debate, Tim Russert asked the candidates if they were going to still argue for the war even though 60% of the people are against it.

The most cogent statement was from Giuliani when he pointed out that Hillary was for the war right up until a majority of the people turned against it. Of course he was trying to use his steadfastness for this midlife crisis war was a good thing.

McCain actually talked about “winning” versus “surrendering.” What exactly does “winning” mean John? What does “victory” look like? I honestly have no idea what it would look like in Iraq, and even less what a victory over global terrorism would. It’s a canard.

Romney tried to say that Iraq was a threat, and that war was worth it because of 9/11.

Huckabee implied the war was about 9/11 and even said that we still don’t know whether or not Saddam had WMDs. We do Huck.

I hate them all. Except for Ron Paul. He’s the only one that apparently still believes in causality.

No, I hate Ron Paul too, just not about the war.

It’s now nigh impossible to find anything historical information about a current topic by searching Google. Google has modified their algorithm to rank the most recently update pages much higher than older pages. Normally, this is fine, but sometimes you’re searching for something related to a timely topic, but you don’t want the timely topic itself. For example, when writing today’s post about the “stimulus” package, I wanted to find out when Bush’s $300 tax rebate occurred. I couldn’t find it with Google. All the results on the the first page for “300 dollar stimulus package” on the first page are about the current talk of the 600 dollar stimulus package.

So how did I find out what year it was?

1. Googled “300 dollar stimulus package” and got a first page full of results about 2008’s $600 per person stimulus package.
2. Remembered that Futurama had an episode about it
3. Remembered a quote from Bender in that episode
4. Googled “bender 300 hundered 1 dollar hooker bots”.
5. Found a link to The Simpsons on WikiQuote (”Krusty: Ahhh, there’s nothing better than a cigarette. Unless it’s a cigarette lit with a hundred dollar bill!”).
6. Guessed that http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Futurama was a valid url, and typed that into the browser.
7. Searched that page for “300″ to find a quote from Zoidberg (” I ate garbage yesterday, and it didn’t cost me $300!”) and identify the episode (”Three Hundred Big Boys”).
8. I look up the airdate of that episode (June 15, 2003), and assumed that year.
9. Went back to Wikiquote to add the Bender quote I was looking for.
10. Decided that it was in 2003, and that I wanted a relevant link to a 2003 article.
11. Searched for “300 dollar stimulus package 2003″ and got essentially the same results as I did without the 2003.
12. Got frustrated that all of the pre-2008 results were behind a pay wall at (Can you say “strategic alliance?”).
13. Issued at least 10 more fruitless queries for a 2003 article about the Bush stimulus package that wasn’t behind a pay wall.
14. Gave up.
15. Decided to click on a WSJ blog post from January 10, 2008, entitled “Bush Stimulus May Have Only Modest Effect.”
16. Read the first two sentences of the post:
    

    The two changes repeat similar measures taken in 2001 and 2002. In 2001, the Treasury sent “advanced payment” checks of $300 to single tax filers and $600 for joint filers.

Jesus Christ. 16 steps, at least 14 queries, an incorrect guess, and almost an hour later, I had my answer, or as they say in the IR field “fulfilled my information need.” There’s two ironies in this experinece. First, the information I wanted was found on a very recent page because apparently whoever wrote that WSJ post used Lexis-Nexis and/or didn’t have to deal with the flood of timely results from Google. The second is that buried down at the bottom of the Wikipedia page about the Futurama episode is this quote:

The idea for this episode came from George W. Bush announcing that he would give all Americans a $300 tax refund. This occurred shortly before the events of 9/11, which led to many people in the US forgetting about it.

This isn’t the first time this problem of timely results drowned out desired historical results. It’s happened a couple of times this month to me already. This is horrible. Bad results. Pay walls. This is the single worst search experience I’ve had since the bad old days of Yahoo and Altavista in the late 90’s. I’ve forgotten just how bad a bad search experience really is. This isn’t just not getting any results, and going home empty handed, this is getting wrong information, and then correcting it by happpen stance.

This is not an acceptable user experience at all.

Wow seven years, and at least two “stimulus” packages later (2001 and 2003), and it’s free money time again. What to do? What to do? Buy one $600 hooker bot, or 600 $1 hooker bots?

Great economy. Best economy evah. Way to run the economy. We’ve come full circle in one administration.

Pull that one lever that the republicans always pull, and get the same completely predictable tepid results.

Great Job.

Didn’t see that one coming.

Good riddance.

“Save it for Queen Dopplepopolis”

Cupertino. jdkoren@gmail.com

Santa Clara University ugrad
Johns Hopkins Alum ‘04

New Jersey. drkoren@optonline.net

There can be only one.

Hillary won Nevada. She’s leading in all the Super Duper Tuesday states. She’s the nominee.

Goddamn it.

I put it it 50-50 that Obama is the veep nom. I don’t know who it would be if it wasn’t him, but I could easily see her not picking him. As I said, Obama will be wasted as a warm bucket of spit, but he’ll take should take the offer if it’s given. Better to be “Vice President Barack Obama” than “The Junior Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama.”

Obama’s only hope is that Edwards would somehow remain viable enough to grab delegates and then pledge them to him, but that won’t happen. Edwards wouldn’t pull such a trick; and more importantly, he’s no longer viable.

Hillary won’t bring the troops home. That bitch voted to kill 4,000 and wound – many severely – 28,000 more because she thought it was politically expedient. She didn’t want to look “weak.” Instead, she wanted to look just as stupid and warmongering as the Republicans.

Goddamn her.

She knew the vote was for war. It was obvious. Now she’s trying to say, “But I didn’t think they’d actually go to war! I was trying to threaten war!” If that was truth, she’s a goddamn fool that shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the government. She doesn’t have the judgement to be trusted with even picking up the damn trash.

The whole war from the beginning didn’t make any sense. All of a sudden Iraq was now supposably “a clear and present danger.” Why? Nothing changed in 10 years. And for the antimultilateralists and antiinternationalists to all of a sudden talk about having to “save the UN from irrelevancy” was laughable. And she either bought into it, or was so fearful for her own political aspirations, jumped on the bandwagon and hit the war drum.

Fuck you Hillary.

She won’t bring the troops home. There’s no doubt in my mind about it. Oh she might bring some home, but at the end of four years, there will still be thousands there. I’ll say 10,000 to 20,000 still there. She won’t pull them home because, just like that tragic son of a bitch, LBJ, she doesn’t want to look weak. Democrats have to show they’re just as willing to throw lives away on fool’s errands as the Republicans. Women have to not only show that they’re willing to kill young boys just like men, but in fact, they have to show that they’re more willing to kill in order to prove they’re not weak.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, it will all be in a quest to win over those that believe that she killed Vince Foster in a crack cocaine fueled satanic lesbian orgy.

Fuck you Hillary. And fuck you America for making have to vote for this damn foolish bitch in November.

So I was watching the repeat of last night’s “A Daily Show,” and Jon Stewart ran a clip of McCain and Romney in the Michigan debate prior to the primary.

Watch it:

Romney’s line was very familiar.

Growing up in Southern Illinois and seeing the main industry, coal mining, leave the state, and how that affected the economy, I know what deindustrialization does to people.

The mines started to leave probably 20 years ago, and ever since then, there’s been a parade of politicians of all stripes and locations saying, “I’m going to revitalize the coal industry. I’m going to bring back the jobs.” and for 20 years that’s been a lie.

Running for governor? Fly into Williamson County Airport for an hour, and read from your yellowed copy of the speech your father gave back in 1989 about how you’re going to revitalize the coal industry, then fly back out.

At this point, it’s so pathetic hear. When someone says, “I’m going to bring back the same jobs left,” they mean, “I don’t have a clue to help you.” The economy has changed, and you have to adjust, and adjusting is hard. It’s painful, and there’s no guarantee that happy times will come again. I don’t know what the answer is for Michigan or Southern Illinois, but telling people that you’re going to roll back the clock and make everything like it was isn’t a real solution. It’s a lie. It’s worse than that. Whoever says that, is trying to give false hope.

Romney such a goddamned panderer. There’s got to be a special place in Mormon Hell for guys like him.

I fear that Hillary is going to sew up the nomination on Super Duper Tuesday.

Nothing like voting for someone who voted to kill thousands of young American men and women, maim thousands more and god only knows how many Iraqis because she thought it was politically expedient.

3,926 and counting.