{"id":8653,"date":"2013-10-26T07:35:48","date_gmt":"2013-10-26T14:35:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=8653"},"modified":"2013-10-26T07:48:03","modified_gmt":"2013-10-26T14:48:03","slug":"saturday-stew-from-our-super-secret-menu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=8653","title":{"rendered":"Saturday Stew from our Super Secret Menu"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-8131\" alt=\"Observation Stew\" src=\"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/stew.jpg\" width=\"100\" height=\"75\" align=\"right\" hspace=\"5\" vspace=\"5\" \/>Whew! This first full week back after shutdown has been a busy one. As a result, I never found a collection of articles that formed a theme that yelled &#8220;post me&#8221;, and I was so busy that the news I was reading never inspired a rant. Still, I did collect some articles, and I would be remiss if I didn&#8217;t share them for your Saturday News Chum stew:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>TV Economics<\/strong>. As I&#8217;ve gotten older, I&#8217;ve found I&#8217;ve gotten more interested in subjects that bored me when I was young. One of these is economics, and <a href=\"http:\/\/priceonomics.com\/the-economics-of-a-hit-tv-show\/\">this article explores the economics of a hit TV show<\/a>. The article explores that odd beast that is the TV pilot season, how shows get pitched, and why the process is so risky. It seems even riskier than a Broadway show.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Getting Rid of Stuff<\/strong>. Hmm. This is another economics article &#8212; perhaps there was theme I never saw. In any case, <a href=\"http:\/\/benguild.com\/2013\/10\/20\/store-sell-old-stuff-with-amazon\/\">this article explores the economics of &#8220;fulfilled by Amazon&#8221;<\/a>. In other words, we probably have all sold stuff through the Amazon Marketplace. The problem with doing that is finding a place to store the stuff while waiting for it to sell, and then remembering where you stored it when it actually sells. &#8220;Fulfilled by Amazon&#8221; is a way to ship your junk to Amazon, <em>have them store it<\/em>, and have them ship it when it eventually sells. I may very well explore this in the future.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Tapping It Out the Qwerty Way.<\/strong> In yet another economic story, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stltoday.com\/news\/local\/metro\/typewriter-interest-growing-among-young-people\/article_88ab2919-5894-53e1-bd02-a8118399490c.html\">the youth of today are rediscovering&#8230; typewriters<\/a>. Typewriters are hot again, because they make you write in a different way &#8212; a way that is more tactile, a way that tends to preserve mistakes and imperfections, and is unique to the person and the machine. Related to that is a person to waxes rhapsodic-ally about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fasthorseinc.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/25\/my-life-and-the-keyboards-ive-loved-and-lost\/\">the keyboards he has loved and lost<\/a>. This includes not only manual typewriters, but the lovely Selectric keyboard (which was a nice keyboard), the TRS-80, and the Apple ][. Alas, he also doesn&#8217;t include the great keyboard that was the IBM PC.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Food Economics<\/strong>. A couple of food items. First, Starbucks &#8212; that purveyor of over-roasted coffee &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/clareoconnor\/2013\/10\/23\/starbucks-opens-its-first-tea-bar-as-ceo-schultz-bets-on-90-billion-market\/\">has decided to start exploiting Teavana and open some tea bars<\/a>. These are going for the folks that &#8212; quite rightly &#8212; believe tea to be the better beverage. The problem, however, is that Teavana is all style and no substance &#8212; it is zen-like overpriced tea. I&#8217;d much rather get my tea at a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.coffeebean.com\/\">Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf<\/a> or a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.peets.com\/\">Peets<\/a> than <a href=\"http:\/\/www.teavana.com\/\">Teavana<\/a>. Still, they estimate tea to be a $990 billion market. In other food news, did you know that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.buzzfeed.com\/jessicamisener\/this-is-mcdonalds-alleged-secret-menu\">McDonalds has a secret menu<\/a>. Participation may vary, of course. Looking at the items on this menu, most are &#8212; to me &#8212; disgusting. Then again, I guess it is no worse than the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.in-n-out.com\/menu\/not-so-secret-menu.aspx\">In-N-Out Secret Menu<\/a> or even <a href=\"http:\/\/aht.seriouseats.com\/archives\/2011\/03\/the-in-n-out-survival-guide-we-ate-every-single-item-on-the-secret-menu.html\">the super-secret menu<\/a>. One more food item from this morning: Here&#8217;s an article on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/business\/la-fi-beef-rebranding-20131027,0,2898533.story\">how they are trying to find new cuts of meat in the cow<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>We Got Lists<\/strong>. Two recent lists have caught my eye. The first is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.buzzfeed.com\/alannaokun\/improvements-to-everyday-products\">a list of genius improvements to everyday products<\/a>. I like all of these ideas &#8212; in particular the washable keyboard. But almost every item on this list is a hit, from the circular plug to the displaying USB drive to the cereal bowl. The other is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.buzzfeed.com\/gabbynoone\/body-hacks-to-make-your-life-easier\">a list of body hacks to make your life easier<\/a>. I particularly like the notion of forcing yourself to work out 5 minutes a day, and I&#8217;ve got to try the tip regarding sinus pressure.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Caltrans Earth.\u00a0<\/strong>Earlier this week, I got an email from someone at Caltrans exploring greater GIS integration for my pages. He pointed me to a fascinating site they are working on: <a href=\"http:\/\/earth.dot.ca.gov\/\">Caltrans Earth<\/a>,\u00a0 which integrates Google Earth and all sorts of data the Caltrans map department has (but not all, and I made some suggestions).\u00a0 My only complaint is that it is way too slow and requires far too many downloads. While exploring that site, I discovered <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dot.ca.gov\/hq\/tsip\/gis\/caltrans_earth\/overview.php\">their main page<\/a>, including their <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dot.ca.gov\/hq\/tsip\/gis\/caltrans_earth\/map_catalog.php\">map catalog<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dot.ca.gov\/hq\/tsip\/data.php\">their data page<\/a>. I particularly like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dot.ca.gov\/hq\/tsip\/hseb\/products\/TravHwy02.pdf\">the Traversable Highways report<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Whew! This first full week back after shutdown has been a busy one. As a result, I never found a collection of articles that formed a theme that yelled &#8220;post me&#8221;, and I was so busy that the news I was reading never inspired a rant. Still, I did collect some articles, and I would <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=8653\">Read More &#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71,56,43],"tags":[385],"class_list":["post-8653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-news-chum","category-roadgeeking","tag-economic-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8653"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8656,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8653\/revisions\/8656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}