Hard News: The joke that went too far
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except the S&L crisis was sooooooo tiny and minor compared with what we are witnessing now.
i'm not being facetious either. it was a big deal then.
but the magnitude of the current "problem" is, well, almost incomprehensible.
you may have noticed that more than 30% of all US bank deposits are held by just three banks. this is unprecedented.
and the UK has way more concentration now. and Benelux, etc.
"last man standing" scenario. "too big to fail". except they're not.
US$700 billion is just the final chance to loot the treasury before it all disappears into one big deleveraging black hole.
yum. -
(Yorkshire, Earl Grey, Irish or English breakfast, caravan, gunpowder, green - we offer the lot) ...
Leopold (or any other tea afficiondo): I haven't been able to get Twinings Darjeeling tea for ages. It used to be available intermittently from local supermarkets. Any idea where I might find it these days? It really is the 'champagne of teas'.
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Twinings Darjeeling is available in the UK shop Browns Bay. However there are other good Tea Merchants around. AHa in The Stables in Elliot Street, Chapters in Mt Eden. Chapters have a very wide range of Teas and of course you can partake on premises and read a magazine or even buy a book. great place Sunday mornings to read the papers etc
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you will never be able to get espresso as good as what a cafe can make.
@Stephen Judd: Now I have my Domobar Super and Masser Mini I reckon I get a better coffee at home than 95% of cafes in AKL - working from home got all that much more enjoyable...
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Cultivating connoisseurship beyond what you already like is making a rod for your own back.
Wise words. As a connoisseur of fine single malt whisky the only Speysiders I have are for culinary purposes. It is isn't that I don't like them, just that they don't do anything for me. Also I am not a price/age snob. One of my all time favourites is Bowmore Legend, no age statement, cheap, but seriously smoky.
I know people who refuse to drink anything other than silly money old Speysiders which taste of nothing more than the wood they have lain too long in. Know what you like, revel in it and hang what the next guy thinks. For the record I'll drink anything else especially if it's peaty, briny, seaweedy and of course smoky. Unless its a Bruichladdich or a Laphroaig (though I haven't tasted 'new' Laddie yet, so am reserving judgement).
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@Peter
I quite liked the Bruichladdich I had a couple of years ago (I think it might have been on special at Glengarry's) and I'm currently on a cask-strength Laphroaig (courtesy duty free, as you never see it in NZ). Was your "unless" positive or negative? I agree with you about the smoky - it's a key ingredient for me, which is why I like Twinings Lapsang Souchong as an evening tea.We don't have access to quite the range of single malts in NZ that a resident of Dundee might, sadly. I remember a memorable night in the Bouquet Garni bar in Welly (might have been called something different then) at the bottom of Boulcott St. The manager had a wide range of malts and blends and I spent a very pleasant evening on his penny trying a selection ;-)
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joke that went too far
I jumped on the outrage wagon at first reading that headline.
Now I wonder whether Russell has subtly but deliberately outed Clinton Smith as the initiator. If so, ups to you sir. It was a nasty attempt to scam Slater, hoping he would post the email verbatim without validation then flipping it back to Key after taking screen shots etc of the offending post. Slater obviously more intelligent than given credit for. That was a long way from a joke.
But this coffee thread just makes me feel....inadequate. I am as big a caffeine addict as any, but with my shop grind and ikea metal bodum its like turning up to a wine tasting with Marque Vue.
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Now I wonder whether Russell has subtly but deliberately outed Clinton Smith as the initiator. If so, ups to you sir.
If not, actually. Way to conspiracise though!
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its like turning up to a wine tasting with Marque Vue.
Kind of. But if you really like Marque Vue, and those poor saps are paying $100 a bottle, who's getting value for money?
I am a ferocious coffee snob but I freely acknowledge I'm taking it past reasonable levels. Also, if you give me a nice cup by your standards, I will take it happily. Only rude people turn their nose up at what they're offered.
It's not a question of inadequacy. It's about whether you get a kick out of your investment. I like the taste of my home-roasted beans, I am confident that the kit I use to brew gets the best out of them, and the savings over cafe coffee please me, but if you really like Nescafe Gold, I'm sure I do you no favour convincing you otherwise.
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bummer. I prefer the conspiracy :^)
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And Russell since you are still up I am really looking forward to your spin of the Palin Biden debate outcome. Obama was nice and won the people, McCain was right but lost. Palin-Biden seems to be reversed.
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"conspiracise"???
Nice neologism, I may steal it!
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@Stephen
Got any good pointers (or links) on home roasting? I've thought about it (creating marvelous new blends etc) but I'm nervous about wasting the beans by making them undrinkable.Like a forgettable brewing experience from the past. (I've never seen so many bottles explode...)
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Peter - Lagavulin?
When I get a royalty cheque, I buy Lagavulins I havent yet tried...my extreme indulgence...
Mark Harris - you can get cask-strength Laphroaig from Whisky Galore in Christchurch & Meehams in Dunedin-I'm a coffee afficionado, but my small serious espresso machine lives in my van. For everyday purposes - my morning get up & get up caffiene- I prefer my s.s jug and excellent grounds (that I keep in an airtight unrefrigerated porcelain container) - a foreign friend called the result 'Dutch farmhouse coffee." Dunno about that, but the coffee has kept me alive & going for nearly 40 years-and is delicious-
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@Islander
And you can order online! That's lovely, thanks. (except for the prices - aiyeeee!)Lagavulin's nice as well.
And now I find that Wilson's Lammerlaw is reborn as Milford, I might give that a try as well. IMHO Lammerlaw was a fne drop, and up there with many I've tasted from the 'old country'
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As much as I think Russell should never mention Whaleoil on PAS again and that the use of a honey trap is underhand, I take a small amount of pleasure from the fact that Whaleoil might just be smart enough to have doubt about any info (scandalous or otherwise) that is brought to him in future.
@Steve Barnes & Evan Yates regarding the browsers. I have been dedicating this week to the use of "other" browsers. Chrome is OK. It's "incgonito mode" is a feature that I think will be adopted by the competition. Safari seems like a step in the right direction with the use of 'ctrl-back arrow' to go back, other than Safari has completely frozen 2 days in a row. When the other browsers freeze & fail, I find myself reverting to (my gold standard) Opera, which for it's 'rewind' & 'fast forward' features and the zoom (rather than Safari's text only zoom), the speeddial and the ease of use in ad-blocking. I'm constantly finding myself attempting to use rewind and fast-forward in the other browsers and wishing that my little experiment with other browsers was over.
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If anyone is still awake after my comment about browsers, I'd encourage them to view the Media7 that Russell linked to earlier.
Ater reading many/most "news articles", I find myself feeling that I've gained absolutely nothing in doing so and consumed a collasal waste of time.
Well played Media 7 team!
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Slater obviously more intelligent than given credit for.
interestingly, that still makes him an idiot.
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Got any good pointers (or links) on home roasting? I've thought about it (creating marvelous new blends etc) but I'm nervous about wasting the beans by making them undrinkable.
A couple of good starting points:
Green beans are between $10 and $15 per kg, so it's not too traumatic if you ruin them.
It isn't too hard to make something drinkable, especially for filter/plunger methods (espresso as always is a difficult one).
Remember that once up on a time, everyone roasted their own coffee. Industrial coffee roasting is the innovation, and it required considerable marketing effort to get people to accept pre-roasted coffee. If you normally buy cheap grounds from the supermarket you can definitely do a lot better.
Having said that, I think the quality of NZ's boutique roasters is very high, so home roasting is only worth doing if you enjoy doing things yourself.
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Apropos Mr W Oil and friends - isn't it hilarious that these fierce critics of the "mainstream media" fail at the fundamentals of journalism.
Phil Kitchen may have looked at this, and he should have. It's his job. But did you see a series of teaser articles in the DomPost? No, because it is elementary practise to verify your information before you publish it.
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And I see Mr. Slater is now trying to bully poneke, the hubris of him and his offsiders is truly astonishing to behold.
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@jon_knox
Totally with you on Opera, speshly the built in eMail client and the notes feature (excellent for research, copy to note and you have the clip you want saved and if you double click the note it will take you back to the site it came from well handy)
I had a look under the bonnet of Chrome and discovered that it seems to be built like an operating system for a dumb terminal. Put that together with Picassa for your pix, google docs and google apps etc., bingo, cloud computing. -
And Russell since you are still up I am really looking forward to your spin of the Palin Biden debate outcome. Obama was nice and won the people, McCain was right but lost. Palin-Biden seems to be reversed.
How so? The CBS and CNN snap polls gave it to Biden by large margins, which was also the case for Obama. Biden had the better of the Ohio viewers' Worm on CNN too, especially at the conclusion.
Palin didn't screw up, but she repeatedly refused to answer the questions as asked (as a TPM commentator put it, "Is Gwen Ifill dead?") and she started to garble her answers as it went on. She did well enough by the low standards that have been set for her, but she was (literally at times) reading it off cue cards.
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And I see Mr. Slater is now trying to bully poneke, the hubris of him and his offsiders is truly astonishing to behold.
Quite:
"Let me tell you one thing though Poneke, get anything wrong and I’m going to gun for you on the blog."
What a dick.
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I had a look at Whaleoil for the first time (I'm newish to this, you understand and still think I ought to be cleaning the kitchen floor instead - and that's probably true) - but heavens to betsy - as they say somewhere on the planet - who could be bothered reading Whaleoil's infantile drivel - not me - ever again - I'll just read your comments. They're much more entertaining.
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