To those of you just joining the broadcast I am currently doing an academic year abroad in Lebanon. These are just some thoughts I felt were necessary to share with...well someone I'm not sure who reads this.
Let me clear up some illusions that you may or may not have concerning Lebanon, and Beirut specifically. First, the Lebanese are a multilingual people who speak French, Arabic, and English. So far here are my findings on this...in retrospect I hesitate to say illusion, so I shall rephrase it to an statement. Now this statement is thrown about willy-nilly all over the internet, and by the Lebanese themselves. Even our own CIA world fact book lists french as spoken here. Well if we shipped a Frenchman to the moon we could say that french is spoken on the moon, when clearly it is not a lingual-franca despite the prevalence of cheese on said astral body. All joking aside there is some french here. One will find it on the menus, the street signs, and rarely someone passing by will be speaking it. But that my dear francophone is as far as the dream goes. One of our first days in Beirut we went to a restaurant and upon sitting down I was delighted to see that the menu was in french. Imagine my confusion when upon ordering in french the waiter looked at me in utter confusion, I must have looked at him with utter confusion at that point and it soon became apparent to both of us that neither of us knew what was going on, but he gave me a look that said “this is a restaurant, you order food here, you do understand that right?” So I ordered in English and he nodded and smiled and came back later with the food I ordered. I had a similar experience in Italy, I thought that sharing a border as they do with France I might get to use some french to help me get along. However french only confused the Italians beyond any hope of understanding what I was trying to say. I did much better with short English sentences and lots of gesticulating.
In theory Lebanese people speak 3 languages and interchange them as they go. The reality is that the Lebanese people speak Lebanese Arabic, know a few phrases in french (if anything) and speak a level of English that varies widely. The Arabic class I took at UNM, turns out it was Egyptian, and all the phrases and whatnot that I remember have turned out to be 70% useless. Not useless because they aren't useful, but useless because the Lebanese dialect is spoken here, and while the two are not incomprehensible to each other they are different enough to make what I remember of minimal value. The french I know (up to and including 201 at a university level) has proved useless outside of reading things. I haven't (successfully) spoken to anyone in french outside of the 202 class I’m taking.
The other interesting factor I’ve noticed is that those individuals who do speak some french(or claim to*) are older, usually more affluent individuals. Here is my theory, someone versed in the topic please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. The french mandate was enacted by the league of nations after WWI and the fall of the Ottoman empire. Mandates were pretty much the European powers cutting up the middle east to suite there desires. France happened to get the area we now call Lebanon, and through collusion with the Maronite community managed to have a relatively successful exploitation. I say collusion because it was primarily the Maronites wanting to carve out their own state in the region that they worked so willingly with the french to create “Lebanon” the vast majority of the Muslim population (which was and still is the majority of the population, it's currently 59% currently as of a 2007 census I believe) wanted to rejoin with Muslim Syria (another french mandate.) But the Maronite Christians saw an opportunity to create a nation for themselves and so worked with the french.
The point of this history lesson? Those who wanted seats of power. Those who wanted to do well in business. Those who wanted the best education. Those people had to deal with the french to achieve those goals. As is still the case if you want to successfully deal with the french, it requires that one use their language. Which leaves the people of Lebanon with social stigma that states “knowledge of french probably equates to money power and intelligence.” So knowing french was a sign of the sophisticates, it separated them from their hoi polloi Arab speaking countrymen. Since everyone pretends to be above their station in life of course, lots of people learned french. There was a time I imagine when Lebanon truly was bilingual. However, the french mandate ended and in 1946 the last french troops were pulled out of Lebanon.
Crazy as it sounds, that was 64 years ago, over half a century. That's 3 generations of people who've no longer had any reason to maintain the french component of the overall language profile. That mixed with the almost viral like nature of English and what we see today is the tail end of some serious attenuation of use for french within Lebanon. It's a cultural remnant of something most Lebanese weren't even alive for.
Assertion number 2: the Lebanese are CRAZY drivers. Frankly I saw just as much swerving and weaving in Italy. Don't get me wrong here traffic is hectic, and people do use their horns WAY to much. But watch the traffic for a while and clear order and pattern emerges. Imagine a game of chicken at every light, every crossing etc. This is pretty much how traffic works here. Who wants it the most is who gets it. There are lanes, but they are ignored. Now to most Americans (and I assume Europeans) this sounds horrifically dangerous, and it should be, but let's take into account the compounding effect of so many people doing it. In Beirut traffic is so horrific that it can take over a half an hour to drive what would amount to maybe a 15 minute walk. In all the vehicle rides I’ve taken in this city the car rarely makes it over 30 miles an hour and even then it's only for a moment or so. As a result I also haven't seen many bad accidents, people just can't get enough speed to really damage each other. Let us also consider, as I was told today, that for every two people in Beirut there is one car. If everyone is trying their best to get where they are going at the expense of those around them what happens, Beirut traffic happens. It's like everyone in a very crowded room running for a fire exit and all trying smash their way out at the same time. What ends up happening is that no one gets out quickly and we all sit around jockeying for position to no real avail because it's just a huge press of people and only 3 or 4 are getting through those doors at a time. Traffic here could be much smoother, if everyone worked together that is, which as we all know the Lebanese seem to have a difficult history of doing.
*we've met a few older people who claimed to be french tutors who never once spoke to us in french even when they were floundering for words in their limited English
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Barefoot is the new shoe
It is argued that running shoes are necessary for the health of the human foot if an individual is doing a great deal of running, yet at the same time history tells us a different story. There is now a growing tide of evidence that suggest that the modern running shoe may in fact be the “Achilles heel” of most active runners.
The available literature on the benefits of cushion soled running shoes in decreasing the instances of injury in active runners is scant to say the least. In fact one study (Richards, Craig E. Parker, Magin. Robin, Callister.) from 2008 showed that there is no original research that shows that use of modern running shoes for health reasons is evidence based. The closest I could find was an article (Hirschmüller A, et al.) discussing the use of custom insert orthotics to aid people with running injuries. But what the study did not cover was the origin of the injuries, merely the treatment.
There are however studies starting to come out that point in the direction that perhaps running shoes are to blame for the majority of overuse injuries sustained by runners. One example is a study (Kerrigan DC, et al.)that showed that the amount of torque placed on all 3 of the lower major joints (ankle, knee, hip) was significantly greater while running in modern running shoes. While they make concessions that perhaps some other style of running shoe may give differing results, I think it’s safe to say that as long as the shoe abides by the thick heel over cushioned style it will (to a greater or lesser degree) cause the sort of force loads and shocks to the body that were evident in the research.
Though it is clear that based on the number of studies done on custom orthotic inserts that there is some value in them in terms of offering pain relief for injured runners, they fail to address the issue at hand: what is causing the pain. This issue was clearly addressed in the second paper I mentioned ( Kerrigan DC, et all). The study clearly shows that running shoes and the heel to toe running style exerts significantly greater pressure on the lower body. This kind of repeated stress can most certainly give rise to the multitude of injuries suffered by (depending on who one reads) anywhere from 45%-70% of active runners over the course of a year. The prevailing wisdom of course being that if one suffers pain while running the best solution is 1; stop running, or 2; get custom orthotics. As the study shows, orthotics are effective ways to relieve pain for a temporary time, but that then begs the question; what is it that the shoes are failing to do that gives rise to injuries that necessitate more padding inside the shoe. These shoes are already padded to the extreme so it should stand to reason that adding more padding might not fix the problem. As it turns out we evolved to use our feet as our primary source of information gathering for our body while attempting to balance ourselves (go figure). In fact one study (Robbins, S. E, Waked) found that the softer the landing surface the harder humans land on it. They theorized that the reason behind this is that when landing the human foot is looking for a solid surface on which to find purchase and thus gain balance. The softer the surface, the harder people hit in an unconscious attempt to compress the soft material into something firm that could be used by the foot to secure balance. So keeping this in mind we turn once again to the orthotic study, and one can’t help but think “is more padding what needs to be going on here?” This question is answered pretty clearly by Kerrigan, running in thick cushioned shoes causes the individual to land with much greater impact, which in turn causes significantly more stress for the rest of the body. So where does this leave us? Are people simply not meant to run long distances? One anthropology research paper says that this is not the case (Lieberman, Daniel. et all). In the paper a pretty convincing case is made for the idea that humans are evolutionarily designed for long distance running. Our ancestors would likely not have survived long had they been subject to the injury rate of modern runners. So it would seem that modern running shoes are the root of the problems facing (almost all) modern runners.
There is a growing community of individuals who advocate barefoot, or minimalist running. While these communities are claiming that there is less injury and less stress placed on the body utilizing these methods of running, the movement seems to be having a hard time gaining ground due primarily to the ingrained belief that running shoes are a necessary item for safety purposes. But a cursory examination (or an in depth one: Richards, Craig E. Parker, J, Magin. Robin, Callister.) shows that there is no evidence for this belief. So what is a runner to do if the fear of injury is present but they are unwilling to run without their beloved shoes? I think the answer is to be found in looking at form.
When an individual runs in modern cushioned heel shoes one is almost forced into the heel to toe running style that causes such stress to the body. While running barefoot (or in minimalist shoes) allows the foot to land on the edge of the forefoot slowly dropping the heel rolling across the ball and then springing off of the toes. This style of running is bio-mechanically what we evolved to do. As a result it is the least damaging way for us to run. People’s fear of broken glass and nails, the hard surface of the sidewalk, there are a multitude of reasons to look askance at running in either bare feet or in minimalist shoes. So you don’t want to get rid of your shoes? That’s fine. The knowledge gained by reading these studies can still be applied to how you run now. Adapt your style, don’t heel strike. Sure it will be harder to run in this manner when your shoes are designed to make you run in the exact opposite way you should. But there are ultra marathoners (Scott Jurek comes to mind) who run in racing flats, which while better than normal running shoes are a far cry from minimalist or bare feet. But a good portion of them remain injury free. The secret? they run in the same way someone who is running unshod would run ( see the book “Born to Run“ by Christopher McDougall.)
Injuries are almost guaranteed to occur in active runners, and orthotics seem to help reduce the pain of these injuries. But running in shoes with cushioned soles and heels seem most likely the cause of the injuries in the first place. If we take all the information available we can draw this conclusion; an awareness of style, and adaptation of form can take one significantly closer to running in a manner that will scientifically and significantly reduce the likelihood of injury.
Works cited:
Richards, Craig E. Parker, J, Magin. Robin, Callister. Is your Prescription of Distance Running Shoes Evidence Based? British journal of sports medicine April 18 2008
Hirschmüller A, Baur H, Müller S, Helwig P, Dickhuth HH, Mayer F. Clinical Effectiveness of Customised Sport Shoe Orthoses for Overuse Injuries in Runners- a Randomised Controlled Study. British journal of sports medicine Nov, 1, 2009
Kerrigan DC, Franz JR, Keenan GS, Dicharry J, Della Croce U, Wilder RP. The Effect of Running Shoes on Lower Extremity Joint Torques. PM&R: The Journal of Injury, Function , and Rehabilitation. Dec, 2009
S.Robbins, E.Waked. Balance and Vertical Impact in Sports: Role of Shoe Sole Materials*1 Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Volume 78, Issue 5, Pages 463-467
Lieberman, Daniel. Dennis, M. Bramble. David ,A. Raichlen. John, J. Shea. The First Humans-Origin and Evolution of the Genus Homo. Chapter 8; Brains Brawns and the Evolution of Human Endurance Running Capabilities.
The available literature on the benefits of cushion soled running shoes in decreasing the instances of injury in active runners is scant to say the least. In fact one study (Richards, Craig E. Parker, Magin. Robin, Callister.) from 2008 showed that there is no original research that shows that use of modern running shoes for health reasons is evidence based. The closest I could find was an article (Hirschmüller A, et al.) discussing the use of custom insert orthotics to aid people with running injuries. But what the study did not cover was the origin of the injuries, merely the treatment.
There are however studies starting to come out that point in the direction that perhaps running shoes are to blame for the majority of overuse injuries sustained by runners. One example is a study (Kerrigan DC, et al.)that showed that the amount of torque placed on all 3 of the lower major joints (ankle, knee, hip) was significantly greater while running in modern running shoes. While they make concessions that perhaps some other style of running shoe may give differing results, I think it’s safe to say that as long as the shoe abides by the thick heel over cushioned style it will (to a greater or lesser degree) cause the sort of force loads and shocks to the body that were evident in the research.
Though it is clear that based on the number of studies done on custom orthotic inserts that there is some value in them in terms of offering pain relief for injured runners, they fail to address the issue at hand: what is causing the pain. This issue was clearly addressed in the second paper I mentioned ( Kerrigan DC, et all). The study clearly shows that running shoes and the heel to toe running style exerts significantly greater pressure on the lower body. This kind of repeated stress can most certainly give rise to the multitude of injuries suffered by (depending on who one reads) anywhere from 45%-70% of active runners over the course of a year. The prevailing wisdom of course being that if one suffers pain while running the best solution is 1; stop running, or 2; get custom orthotics. As the study shows, orthotics are effective ways to relieve pain for a temporary time, but that then begs the question; what is it that the shoes are failing to do that gives rise to injuries that necessitate more padding inside the shoe. These shoes are already padded to the extreme so it should stand to reason that adding more padding might not fix the problem. As it turns out we evolved to use our feet as our primary source of information gathering for our body while attempting to balance ourselves (go figure). In fact one study (Robbins, S. E, Waked) found that the softer the landing surface the harder humans land on it. They theorized that the reason behind this is that when landing the human foot is looking for a solid surface on which to find purchase and thus gain balance. The softer the surface, the harder people hit in an unconscious attempt to compress the soft material into something firm that could be used by the foot to secure balance. So keeping this in mind we turn once again to the orthotic study, and one can’t help but think “is more padding what needs to be going on here?” This question is answered pretty clearly by Kerrigan, running in thick cushioned shoes causes the individual to land with much greater impact, which in turn causes significantly more stress for the rest of the body. So where does this leave us? Are people simply not meant to run long distances? One anthropology research paper says that this is not the case (Lieberman, Daniel. et all). In the paper a pretty convincing case is made for the idea that humans are evolutionarily designed for long distance running. Our ancestors would likely not have survived long had they been subject to the injury rate of modern runners. So it would seem that modern running shoes are the root of the problems facing (almost all) modern runners.
There is a growing community of individuals who advocate barefoot, or minimalist running. While these communities are claiming that there is less injury and less stress placed on the body utilizing these methods of running, the movement seems to be having a hard time gaining ground due primarily to the ingrained belief that running shoes are a necessary item for safety purposes. But a cursory examination (or an in depth one: Richards, Craig E. Parker, J, Magin. Robin, Callister.) shows that there is no evidence for this belief. So what is a runner to do if the fear of injury is present but they are unwilling to run without their beloved shoes? I think the answer is to be found in looking at form.
When an individual runs in modern cushioned heel shoes one is almost forced into the heel to toe running style that causes such stress to the body. While running barefoot (or in minimalist shoes) allows the foot to land on the edge of the forefoot slowly dropping the heel rolling across the ball and then springing off of the toes. This style of running is bio-mechanically what we evolved to do. As a result it is the least damaging way for us to run. People’s fear of broken glass and nails, the hard surface of the sidewalk, there are a multitude of reasons to look askance at running in either bare feet or in minimalist shoes. So you don’t want to get rid of your shoes? That’s fine. The knowledge gained by reading these studies can still be applied to how you run now. Adapt your style, don’t heel strike. Sure it will be harder to run in this manner when your shoes are designed to make you run in the exact opposite way you should. But there are ultra marathoners (Scott Jurek comes to mind) who run in racing flats, which while better than normal running shoes are a far cry from minimalist or bare feet. But a good portion of them remain injury free. The secret? they run in the same way someone who is running unshod would run ( see the book “Born to Run“ by Christopher McDougall.)
Injuries are almost guaranteed to occur in active runners, and orthotics seem to help reduce the pain of these injuries. But running in shoes with cushioned soles and heels seem most likely the cause of the injuries in the first place. If we take all the information available we can draw this conclusion; an awareness of style, and adaptation of form can take one significantly closer to running in a manner that will scientifically and significantly reduce the likelihood of injury.
Works cited:
Richards, Craig E. Parker, J, Magin. Robin, Callister. Is your Prescription of Distance Running Shoes Evidence Based? British journal of sports medicine April 18 2008
Hirschmüller A, Baur H, Müller S, Helwig P, Dickhuth HH, Mayer F. Clinical Effectiveness of Customised Sport Shoe Orthoses for Overuse Injuries in Runners- a Randomised Controlled Study. British journal of sports medicine Nov, 1, 2009
Kerrigan DC, Franz JR, Keenan GS, Dicharry J, Della Croce U, Wilder RP. The Effect of Running Shoes on Lower Extremity Joint Torques. PM&R: The Journal of Injury, Function , and Rehabilitation. Dec, 2009
S.Robbins, E.Waked. Balance and Vertical Impact in Sports: Role of Shoe Sole Materials*1 Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Volume 78, Issue 5, Pages 463-467
Lieberman, Daniel. Dennis, M. Bramble. David ,A. Raichlen. John, J. Shea. The First Humans-Origin and Evolution of the Genus Homo. Chapter 8; Brains Brawns and the Evolution of Human Endurance Running Capabilities.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Line cook: fire and pain at 9.50 an hour
As I step out the back door at 9:45 and sit down on an old milk crate I light a cigarette and slowly come back into my body. My leg itches, I have to pee, there is a burn on my arm I don’t remember getting. Slowly physical sensations come to the forefront of my mind and I become aware of my body once again. I become aware of the cool air that now surrounds me the fact that it’s dark outside now, and the fact that I am very tired.
It’s 3:00 and I’ve just clocked in. I go to my station and look over my “mis en place” and see what I need to start prepping for the dinner shift. I talk to the chef about what specials we will be running this evening, seeing what extra I need to do to prepare for those. At approximately 4:00 the wait staff starts showing up. I chat idly with a couple of them about service the night before and what’s expected for tonight, how many reservations etc. During this time I am making sauces, pounding out carpaccio, cutting apples, haricot vert, squash, blanching broccolini, scoring duck breast. A seemingly unending list of tasks to complete in the two hours before service lest I find myself trying to make something during the rush, one needs to prep enough to get through service, but not so much that there will be leftover product to go bad. It’s a race to get through the list and a pause at 4:45 to go outback and have a cigarette before shift and talk to the other cooks on the line, mentally going over mis, going over potential problems, talking about possible assists that may take place during service.
It’s now 5:00 and we are officially open for business. What begins as a trickle of orders slowly and steadily turns into a raging torrent. “Walking in second course two new yorks mid, mid well going with a fish special” expo yells over the clatter of pans, the tickets with the waiter’s orders spit from the machine in a near constant stream. The ovens are at 500 degrees the burners are all on full blast, the grill and the salamanders are cranked to the max. I take a moment to look down the line and see the air rippling in front of me, the meat thermometer held in the arm pocket of my chef coat is reading 120 degrees, and I immediately turn my attention back to the sauté pans cooking in front of me. The grill guy yells at me “how long on 43?” I respond “what’s on 43?” The expo yells back “I’m looking for 2 duck, house, 1 tuna going mid well” “3 minutes” I yell back over the washed out noise coming from the fryer. “You’ve got 1 and a half” expo yells at me.
I’m sitting at Denny’s having a milkshake, it’s 12:00 am. I left work at about 11:45. As I sit and enjoy the mediocre milkshake I get a surge of adrenaline and the feeling “MOVE NOW.” I have to keep reminding myself that the noise I keep hearing is the ticket machine for Denny’s, I don’t have to cook those orders, I don’t work here. But like Pavlov’s dog I jump in my seat a little every time I hear the distinct chatter of a ticket machine. I’ve gotten better over time but the instinctual reaction is still there. Every time I see a pan I treat it like a firearm, just as a “gun is always loaded” “a pan is always hot.” I know almost a dozen ways to cut a carrot. I can accurately temp almost any protein. When I eat, when I go out to eat, what I experience is vastly different from what I experienced before I started cooking for a living.
The requirements of a good line cook are roughly as follows; consistency, speed, endurance, accuracy. As a line cook one needs to perform a task (cooking dish X) quickly, correctly, exactly the same way every single time, and multiple times a night. As Anthony Bourdain said (paraphrased) in his book Kitchen Confidential: I don’t want an artist, someone who will sit and play around with my plating all night, I want a craftsman, someone capable of doing something the same way a million times. It’s this repetition and need to perform the task very quickly that causes a certain mentality shift in a person. Or it may further refine said mentality in someone already in possession of it. Cooking requires long hours in small cramped hot dangerous environments with the pressure of time working against every action you take in that environment. To do well in this environment a person needs to be organized both mentally and physically. One’s station must be immaculate in terms of the positioning and the preparation of all items on it so that during the heat of a rush one need not think or look to find where something is. Instead one just knows where something is because you always put it in the same place. One needs to be mentally organized because one needs to keep track of multiple items on multiple tickets, items that may have different cooking times. Keeping this causes a streamlining of thought and of action. There is no time for extraneous motion or thought during the middle of a rush. If I have to think about where I put something I may forget the temperatures of the five steaks I have on the grill, which means that I then have to look at the tickets or harass expo for those temps when I could have spent that time doing something else that needed doing 3 minutes ago.
Cooks look at food in a fundamentally different way. Where the average person will look at plate and see a steak and potatoes, with some sort of vegetable and a sauce, the cook will look at it and immediately know the processes that had to happen for the items on that plate to get there and knowing those processes a cook will judge the plate on the quality of the execution of said processes. In addition to judging the quality of the ingredients these factors will inform the reasoning behind whether the cook enjoys the meal or not. I personally also think about how I would go about setting up the prep for an item, if I receive an appetizer I think about what in this dish could have been par-cooked? What can be kept together in a container and what has to be added at the last second? How have they arranged the elements of the dish on the plate? Would I classify this as simply a messy presentation or are they attempting to be “rustic”. The texture of the sauce, the “mouthfeel” of the soup, the uniformity of the cuts of vegetables, there are a million things to pay attention to when cooking and just because I might not have cooked something doesn’t mean that I’m not thinking about them when I’m eating it.
Cooking has made me more direct, more efficient, and more than anything, more aware of what I’m eating. I’m focusing on the flavor of what I’m eating from the moment it touches my tongue till the moment after I swallow. I observe how the flavor profile changes over the course of chewing and swallowing. I try to identify what exactly makes up the flavors I’m tasting, “is that a hint of clove at the end? Did they use a blond or a brown roux in this?” This awareness has changed the process of eating for me into not only a necessity, but something that from time to time can truly be enjoyed. But not in the passive enjoyment that anyone might receive from a good tasting meal. But an enjoyment that extends to the recognition of the skill and the care that went into a dish. I can tell when a dish would be a pain in the ass to make, and I can tell when the cook that made it considers it a challenge to overcome, and when he sees it as a hassle he has to deal with. Emotion shows through in food as clearly as anything else. I don’t believe that one can enjoy food in this way until one has immersed oneself in the finer points of cooking and learned to truly appreciate food.
It’s 3:00 and I’ve just clocked in. I go to my station and look over my “mis en place” and see what I need to start prepping for the dinner shift. I talk to the chef about what specials we will be running this evening, seeing what extra I need to do to prepare for those. At approximately 4:00 the wait staff starts showing up. I chat idly with a couple of them about service the night before and what’s expected for tonight, how many reservations etc. During this time I am making sauces, pounding out carpaccio, cutting apples, haricot vert, squash, blanching broccolini, scoring duck breast. A seemingly unending list of tasks to complete in the two hours before service lest I find myself trying to make something during the rush, one needs to prep enough to get through service, but not so much that there will be leftover product to go bad. It’s a race to get through the list and a pause at 4:45 to go outback and have a cigarette before shift and talk to the other cooks on the line, mentally going over mis, going over potential problems, talking about possible assists that may take place during service.
It’s now 5:00 and we are officially open for business. What begins as a trickle of orders slowly and steadily turns into a raging torrent. “Walking in second course two new yorks mid, mid well going with a fish special” expo yells over the clatter of pans, the tickets with the waiter’s orders spit from the machine in a near constant stream. The ovens are at 500 degrees the burners are all on full blast, the grill and the salamanders are cranked to the max. I take a moment to look down the line and see the air rippling in front of me, the meat thermometer held in the arm pocket of my chef coat is reading 120 degrees, and I immediately turn my attention back to the sauté pans cooking in front of me. The grill guy yells at me “how long on 43?” I respond “what’s on 43?” The expo yells back “I’m looking for 2 duck, house, 1 tuna going mid well” “3 minutes” I yell back over the washed out noise coming from the fryer. “You’ve got 1 and a half” expo yells at me.
I’m sitting at Denny’s having a milkshake, it’s 12:00 am. I left work at about 11:45. As I sit and enjoy the mediocre milkshake I get a surge of adrenaline and the feeling “MOVE NOW.” I have to keep reminding myself that the noise I keep hearing is the ticket machine for Denny’s, I don’t have to cook those orders, I don’t work here. But like Pavlov’s dog I jump in my seat a little every time I hear the distinct chatter of a ticket machine. I’ve gotten better over time but the instinctual reaction is still there. Every time I see a pan I treat it like a firearm, just as a “gun is always loaded” “a pan is always hot.” I know almost a dozen ways to cut a carrot. I can accurately temp almost any protein. When I eat, when I go out to eat, what I experience is vastly different from what I experienced before I started cooking for a living.
The requirements of a good line cook are roughly as follows; consistency, speed, endurance, accuracy. As a line cook one needs to perform a task (cooking dish X) quickly, correctly, exactly the same way every single time, and multiple times a night. As Anthony Bourdain said (paraphrased) in his book Kitchen Confidential: I don’t want an artist, someone who will sit and play around with my plating all night, I want a craftsman, someone capable of doing something the same way a million times. It’s this repetition and need to perform the task very quickly that causes a certain mentality shift in a person. Or it may further refine said mentality in someone already in possession of it. Cooking requires long hours in small cramped hot dangerous environments with the pressure of time working against every action you take in that environment. To do well in this environment a person needs to be organized both mentally and physically. One’s station must be immaculate in terms of the positioning and the preparation of all items on it so that during the heat of a rush one need not think or look to find where something is. Instead one just knows where something is because you always put it in the same place. One needs to be mentally organized because one needs to keep track of multiple items on multiple tickets, items that may have different cooking times. Keeping this causes a streamlining of thought and of action. There is no time for extraneous motion or thought during the middle of a rush. If I have to think about where I put something I may forget the temperatures of the five steaks I have on the grill, which means that I then have to look at the tickets or harass expo for those temps when I could have spent that time doing something else that needed doing 3 minutes ago.
Cooks look at food in a fundamentally different way. Where the average person will look at plate and see a steak and potatoes, with some sort of vegetable and a sauce, the cook will look at it and immediately know the processes that had to happen for the items on that plate to get there and knowing those processes a cook will judge the plate on the quality of the execution of said processes. In addition to judging the quality of the ingredients these factors will inform the reasoning behind whether the cook enjoys the meal or not. I personally also think about how I would go about setting up the prep for an item, if I receive an appetizer I think about what in this dish could have been par-cooked? What can be kept together in a container and what has to be added at the last second? How have they arranged the elements of the dish on the plate? Would I classify this as simply a messy presentation or are they attempting to be “rustic”. The texture of the sauce, the “mouthfeel” of the soup, the uniformity of the cuts of vegetables, there are a million things to pay attention to when cooking and just because I might not have cooked something doesn’t mean that I’m not thinking about them when I’m eating it.
Cooking has made me more direct, more efficient, and more than anything, more aware of what I’m eating. I’m focusing on the flavor of what I’m eating from the moment it touches my tongue till the moment after I swallow. I observe how the flavor profile changes over the course of chewing and swallowing. I try to identify what exactly makes up the flavors I’m tasting, “is that a hint of clove at the end? Did they use a blond or a brown roux in this?” This awareness has changed the process of eating for me into not only a necessity, but something that from time to time can truly be enjoyed. But not in the passive enjoyment that anyone might receive from a good tasting meal. But an enjoyment that extends to the recognition of the skill and the care that went into a dish. I can tell when a dish would be a pain in the ass to make, and I can tell when the cook that made it considers it a challenge to overcome, and when he sees it as a hassle he has to deal with. Emotion shows through in food as clearly as anything else. I don’t believe that one can enjoy food in this way until one has immersed oneself in the finer points of cooking and learned to truly appreciate food.
Friday, February 26, 2010
University athletics; playing on your dime
It is my contention that university athletics in general and at UNM in specific are a drain on the university and do not provide a worthwhile return on the investment the school makes in them. My modest proposal then is not the abolition of the sports programs at UNM, but to relegate them to the level of clubs. Vast sums of money are poured into the university athletics program. The usual justification for this is that having a successful sports team aids in national recognition and that aids in recruitment, arguably for the university itself, but the primary benefit for this probably falls to the sports program itself. Athletics are often cited as a way of maintaining alumni interest in the university and thus increasing alumni funding but a study by the NCAA found that this is not in fact the case. The relative success or failure of the sports programs at a university shows no apparent statistical relevance to alumni donations. Furthermore the study also showed that an increase in funding for athletics shows no statistical correlation between either team success or revenue from ticket sales. College athletics represent black holes for funding. That is money can be poured into the programs but there is no reason so suspect any return on that investment.
UNM’s athletic department runs on a $27,551,570 budget for the 09-10 fiscal year according to their SFRB application for a further $1,525,842(2). This is an immense amount of money to be pouring into these programs given the general state of the New Mexican economy and the economy of the school in particular. According to a 2002 article at the time, both Stanford and the University of Michigan, significantly better funded schools, spend in the area of 33 million a year to run their athletics programs(link). This should raise some serious questions as to the amount of funding being put towards the athletics programs at UNM. How is it that a school whose overall economic profile could never compete with either of those schools pays the kind of money towards sports as those two institutions. Furthermore I perhaps falsely assumed that the point of a university is to educate people, and to provide them with the best education that the institution can afford. To that end the university is paying somewhere in the neighborhood of $750,000 a year to Locksley plus benefits and Alford negotiated a $975,000 compensation. This while multiple departments are losing faculty due to individuals retiring and there is a freeze on new faculty. The average salary for a UNM professor is around $108,859 (link). I leave you to do the math as to how many professors we could manage off the salary of one head coach, much less the small army of support staff that make up the athletics department. The fact is that the amount of money we spend is disproportionate given the size and fiscal capability of the university.
To add insult to injury the student athletes are afforded a great many amenities that the average student does not have access to. Granted these “student” athletes probably do need more outside support to assist them in passing their classes since they miss so much class that any “mere” student would long have been dropped for a similar amount of absences. Health insurance, tutors, psychological assistance, the list of assistance options to student athletes is a long list of programs designed to assist the student athlete pursue their college degree. What I find strange however is the wording specifically used in the SFRB request. There seem to be a proliferation of programs that are designed to almost force the student athlete to study and work on school related material. This is of course because as the athletics department states in the SFRB request “student athletes are held to "strict academic requirements for competition as dictated by the NCAA and the mountain west conference, these standards are in most cases more stringent than those required of the general student population." I did a little research and found that the NCAA requirements are in fact simply a percentage of the school’s minimum GPA requirement. Of course the required percentage of the minimum GPA required by the school goes up for each year attended, the benchmark is still the minimum. That benchmark is the same one that all students are subject to. I fail to see how more is required (academically) of student athletes than other students.
University athletics provides nothing economically to the university. For a school the size of UNM having an athletics department the size of the one we have can only be detrimental to the overall quality of the education at the university. So much money is sunk into athletics programs with the only beneficial result being perhaps a heightened sense of community and moral. But my suggestion of maintaining sports at a club level would still allow for these benefits while allowing the university to compete academically with other universities due to the flood of funding that could be diverted from athletics. Furthermore student athletes who are serious about receiving an education would be able to receive a better education and not endure such demands on their time as are currently required by their participation in a sports programs. The relegation of sports to the club level seems the only responsible solution to the situation facing the University it would provide the athletic outlet for those who both enjoy sports and those who enjoy watching them. But at the same time it would allow the massive amounts of funding that are currently spent on sports to be diverted towards other, dare I suggest academic, programs. While some may say that the loss of division 1 sports will cause immense financial repercussions for the school I ask how could saving almost 30 million a year hurt the school financially? That money certainly isn’t made back in tickets. That is money that disappears every year and does nothing to further the quality of the education of the average student. If the school truly cared about giving a competitive education and doing first class research and turning the university from a no name backwater state school into a first class institution the solution is relatively simple. Abolish sports teams, relegate them to the level of clubs and let them lobby for funding like everyone else on campus who has a non academic interest but would like to pursue it while attending the university. I fully believe in the role of clubs and special interest groups that are funded in part by UNM. I don’t know why it is that one particular group should receive such a disproportionate amount of money while the fundamental elements of the university are left to suffer.
UNM’s athletic department runs on a $27,551,570 budget for the 09-10 fiscal year according to their SFRB application for a further $1,525,842(2). This is an immense amount of money to be pouring into these programs given the general state of the New Mexican economy and the economy of the school in particular. According to a 2002 article at the time, both Stanford and the University of Michigan, significantly better funded schools, spend in the area of 33 million a year to run their athletics programs(link). This should raise some serious questions as to the amount of funding being put towards the athletics programs at UNM. How is it that a school whose overall economic profile could never compete with either of those schools pays the kind of money towards sports as those two institutions. Furthermore I perhaps falsely assumed that the point of a university is to educate people, and to provide them with the best education that the institution can afford. To that end the university is paying somewhere in the neighborhood of $750,000 a year to Locksley plus benefits and Alford negotiated a $975,000 compensation. This while multiple departments are losing faculty due to individuals retiring and there is a freeze on new faculty. The average salary for a UNM professor is around $108,859 (link). I leave you to do the math as to how many professors we could manage off the salary of one head coach, much less the small army of support staff that make up the athletics department. The fact is that the amount of money we spend is disproportionate given the size and fiscal capability of the university.
To add insult to injury the student athletes are afforded a great many amenities that the average student does not have access to. Granted these “student” athletes probably do need more outside support to assist them in passing their classes since they miss so much class that any “mere” student would long have been dropped for a similar amount of absences. Health insurance, tutors, psychological assistance, the list of assistance options to student athletes is a long list of programs designed to assist the student athlete pursue their college degree. What I find strange however is the wording specifically used in the SFRB request. There seem to be a proliferation of programs that are designed to almost force the student athlete to study and work on school related material. This is of course because as the athletics department states in the SFRB request “student athletes are held to "strict academic requirements for competition as dictated by the NCAA and the mountain west conference, these standards are in most cases more stringent than those required of the general student population." I did a little research and found that the NCAA requirements are in fact simply a percentage of the school’s minimum GPA requirement. Of course the required percentage of the minimum GPA required by the school goes up for each year attended, the benchmark is still the minimum. That benchmark is the same one that all students are subject to. I fail to see how more is required (academically) of student athletes than other students.
University athletics provides nothing economically to the university. For a school the size of UNM having an athletics department the size of the one we have can only be detrimental to the overall quality of the education at the university. So much money is sunk into athletics programs with the only beneficial result being perhaps a heightened sense of community and moral. But my suggestion of maintaining sports at a club level would still allow for these benefits while allowing the university to compete academically with other universities due to the flood of funding that could be diverted from athletics. Furthermore student athletes who are serious about receiving an education would be able to receive a better education and not endure such demands on their time as are currently required by their participation in a sports programs. The relegation of sports to the club level seems the only responsible solution to the situation facing the University it would provide the athletic outlet for those who both enjoy sports and those who enjoy watching them. But at the same time it would allow the massive amounts of funding that are currently spent on sports to be diverted towards other, dare I suggest academic, programs. While some may say that the loss of division 1 sports will cause immense financial repercussions for the school I ask how could saving almost 30 million a year hurt the school financially? That money certainly isn’t made back in tickets. That is money that disappears every year and does nothing to further the quality of the education of the average student. If the school truly cared about giving a competitive education and doing first class research and turning the university from a no name backwater state school into a first class institution the solution is relatively simple. Abolish sports teams, relegate them to the level of clubs and let them lobby for funding like everyone else on campus who has a non academic interest but would like to pursue it while attending the university. I fully believe in the role of clubs and special interest groups that are funded in part by UNM. I don’t know why it is that one particular group should receive such a disproportionate amount of money while the fundamental elements of the university are left to suffer.
Please Don’t Spin Me a Yarn: I Live With a Knitter
When I sit down to watch a movie with my girlfriend, we’re always joined by someone else. As it happens this other person is the knitting project she’s currently working on. Admittedly i don’t pay as much attention as perhaps would be appropriate to what it is she’s knitting. But to be honest she usually whips the knitting out anytime her hands have some downtime and as a result I’m inured to the presence of the project. I suppose it’s at this point that I should wax poetic about the clicking of the needles and how it comforts me or some such nonsense but I intend to do no such thing. The thing is, that while I may not do any knitting myself I’m still rather involved in the whole process. I’m like a field engineer for the army, I don’t do any actual fighting but I install the bridges and remove the landmines before the troops with the guns roll in get the bloody mess over with. This usually involves sitting around looking at seemingly countless variations on a “slouchy beret,” or gloves, or mittens, or fingerless gloves, or mittens that are fingerless gloves. She’ll show me the ones she’s thinking about starting and a few other designs that caught her eye and I’ll give her my opinion, as that is what she called me over for, and she will proceed to ignore me and proceed with her own choice. I often wonder if I’m merely a check she makes before she starts; “I’m thinking I’ll make pattern X, hey Trace, which one do you like?” “Hmm…I like Y.” “Ok.” At which point pattern X has just been made a sure thing in her mind.
My other primary task as far as her knitting is concerned is the de-tangling of her balls of yarn. This, much like socks missing from the dryer is one of gods secrets that I fear man shall never truly explain. I’ve watched as ordered yarn has come to the house in boxes, my girlfriend will lift it from the box making permutations of pleasure noises as she looks over the yarn. The yarn is carefully spun into big soft coils which are delicately wrapped around each other in a manner that is utterly useless to a knitter as the yarn will need to be wound into balls anyway. The carefully (untangled) yarn is placed into a basket or a drawer and left unmolested till the project that calls for it is started. It doesn’t matter how much time has elapsed since the yarn was placed in the container till she starts using it. In that time the yarn will twist in on itself with such vigor and determination that one can only assume a small singularity momentarily opened up in the basket the yarn was in. The yarn twists and warps around this singularity but before it can be consumed by the black hole in minature, the singularity disappears causing the yarn that was in hyper dimensional space to collapse back into our reality into whatever postion it happens to be in in relation to the rest of the yarn. Needless to say this is usually in the position of “quite tangled.” It then, by some other miraculous process that I have yet to understand, becomes my responsibility to untangle said mess.
My girlfriend started knitting when she was in 8th grade. A couple failed attempts at learning with her grandma led her to learning from a family friend. She says that she was a “crafty kid” and liked to make things with her hands and as a result she took to knitting with vigor. Her enjoyment of knitting stemmed from the creation of something that she could use. “I guess, ultimately it’s a creative outlet, something functional, I like creating things that are functional and have a purpose.”
Initially her knitting was met with some mocking calls of “grandma” and people asking her why she was knitting. But times and people change and she now finds people asking her what she’s knitting instead of why. She informs me that knitting is becoming rather vogue, particularly with the DIY (do it yourself) crowd. In fact it’s becoming such a movement that there is now an appreciable sized group of male knitters in what was once a female dominated activity. “Actually there are a lot of really good knitting designers that are male.”
Though this popularity is not without it‘s downsides, as is the case when someone’s personal passion gains a wider audience. “Now it’s really, really popular, it’s a trend, which is kind of frustrating for me because I’ve been doing it for years. I’ve put in the time and effort developing my skills and when I meet someone who says “oh I knit!” and they just make shitty scarves with shitty acrylic yarn it upsets me.” I play devils advocate and try to rationalize that a lot of these people are just starting out, perhaps one should cut them some slack. But I recognize what she’s complaining about. “Knitting is a lifestyle choice for me, it’s not a hobby.” An influx of people into any group can cause feelings of resentment amongst those who’ve been there longer and feel like they put in their time and earned the right to define themselves as members of that group. But I understand her gripes and commiserate with her. It’s one thing to take up a Curling have done it once or twice and call yourself a curler, but it’s something else entirely to have put in years of effort into curling and call yourself a curler. It’s not the skill level achieved, it’s not the number of things one has knit. It’s having spent enough time at it that one develops an intrinsic understanding of the activity. This understanding may not translate into appreciable skill, but it allows one to nod knowingly when others speak on the topic. When I watch my girlfriend knit I see the body language of someone rather practiced at the craft. Her fingers are locked into postion and move with a precision and speed that can only come from countless hours of practice. I often find myself watching entranced at the way her hands are seemingly bent into specific repeated angles. Arthritic looking angles and strange positions so as to maintain the yarn in a specific arrangement that is the flurry of her silent needles. There is an unconscious understanding in her motions, her body knows what it is doing. One can see the same thing in anyone who is passionate and practiced at their art. The pianist whose fingers glide across the piano without effort, the sprinter whose every movement is set towards one purpose. It is an efficiency of motion that defines this level of understanding.
“Why knit?” I ask her, “is knitting important?” I get a look that says she could ask the same thing about some of the things I do. I make an attempt to elucidate what exactly I meant by my question which after some back and forth we come to an agreement about what exactly I meant by important. “Fine socially, is it important socially?” “I think it’s important socially. Being able to create something with your own hands and be proud of your work is very important. That’s a valuable skill to teach kids. There’s not a lot of art education anymore so giving kids chance to make something and be proud of it is important.”
Since she doesn’t interact with children currently I can only assume that she intends to teach our potential future kids how to knit. While I am not a child care expert by any stretch of the imagination I can’t help but think of the material instability field naturally emitted by children. What happens when one puts a small basket of yarn singularities next to a child emitting a strong “accident causal field” and asks them to do something with it…All I can be certain of is that I’m sure it will become my responsibility to fix it when it happens…
My other primary task as far as her knitting is concerned is the de-tangling of her balls of yarn. This, much like socks missing from the dryer is one of gods secrets that I fear man shall never truly explain. I’ve watched as ordered yarn has come to the house in boxes, my girlfriend will lift it from the box making permutations of pleasure noises as she looks over the yarn. The yarn is carefully spun into big soft coils which are delicately wrapped around each other in a manner that is utterly useless to a knitter as the yarn will need to be wound into balls anyway. The carefully (untangled) yarn is placed into a basket or a drawer and left unmolested till the project that calls for it is started. It doesn’t matter how much time has elapsed since the yarn was placed in the container till she starts using it. In that time the yarn will twist in on itself with such vigor and determination that one can only assume a small singularity momentarily opened up in the basket the yarn was in. The yarn twists and warps around this singularity but before it can be consumed by the black hole in minature, the singularity disappears causing the yarn that was in hyper dimensional space to collapse back into our reality into whatever postion it happens to be in in relation to the rest of the yarn. Needless to say this is usually in the position of “quite tangled.” It then, by some other miraculous process that I have yet to understand, becomes my responsibility to untangle said mess.
My girlfriend started knitting when she was in 8th grade. A couple failed attempts at learning with her grandma led her to learning from a family friend. She says that she was a “crafty kid” and liked to make things with her hands and as a result she took to knitting with vigor. Her enjoyment of knitting stemmed from the creation of something that she could use. “I guess, ultimately it’s a creative outlet, something functional, I like creating things that are functional and have a purpose.”
Initially her knitting was met with some mocking calls of “grandma” and people asking her why she was knitting. But times and people change and she now finds people asking her what she’s knitting instead of why. She informs me that knitting is becoming rather vogue, particularly with the DIY (do it yourself) crowd. In fact it’s becoming such a movement that there is now an appreciable sized group of male knitters in what was once a female dominated activity. “Actually there are a lot of really good knitting designers that are male.”
Though this popularity is not without it‘s downsides, as is the case when someone’s personal passion gains a wider audience. “Now it’s really, really popular, it’s a trend, which is kind of frustrating for me because I’ve been doing it for years. I’ve put in the time and effort developing my skills and when I meet someone who says “oh I knit!” and they just make shitty scarves with shitty acrylic yarn it upsets me.” I play devils advocate and try to rationalize that a lot of these people are just starting out, perhaps one should cut them some slack. But I recognize what she’s complaining about. “Knitting is a lifestyle choice for me, it’s not a hobby.” An influx of people into any group can cause feelings of resentment amongst those who’ve been there longer and feel like they put in their time and earned the right to define themselves as members of that group. But I understand her gripes and commiserate with her. It’s one thing to take up a Curling have done it once or twice and call yourself a curler, but it’s something else entirely to have put in years of effort into curling and call yourself a curler. It’s not the skill level achieved, it’s not the number of things one has knit. It’s having spent enough time at it that one develops an intrinsic understanding of the activity. This understanding may not translate into appreciable skill, but it allows one to nod knowingly when others speak on the topic. When I watch my girlfriend knit I see the body language of someone rather practiced at the craft. Her fingers are locked into postion and move with a precision and speed that can only come from countless hours of practice. I often find myself watching entranced at the way her hands are seemingly bent into specific repeated angles. Arthritic looking angles and strange positions so as to maintain the yarn in a specific arrangement that is the flurry of her silent needles. There is an unconscious understanding in her motions, her body knows what it is doing. One can see the same thing in anyone who is passionate and practiced at their art. The pianist whose fingers glide across the piano without effort, the sprinter whose every movement is set towards one purpose. It is an efficiency of motion that defines this level of understanding.
“Why knit?” I ask her, “is knitting important?” I get a look that says she could ask the same thing about some of the things I do. I make an attempt to elucidate what exactly I meant by my question which after some back and forth we come to an agreement about what exactly I meant by important. “Fine socially, is it important socially?” “I think it’s important socially. Being able to create something with your own hands and be proud of your work is very important. That’s a valuable skill to teach kids. There’s not a lot of art education anymore so giving kids chance to make something and be proud of it is important.”
Since she doesn’t interact with children currently I can only assume that she intends to teach our potential future kids how to knit. While I am not a child care expert by any stretch of the imagination I can’t help but think of the material instability field naturally emitted by children. What happens when one puts a small basket of yarn singularities next to a child emitting a strong “accident causal field” and asks them to do something with it…All I can be certain of is that I’m sure it will become my responsibility to fix it when it happens…
running
It's kind of embarrassing to realize how out of shape one is.. It's not something one is generally aware of till one goes out and actually exercises. I'm strong enough to do what I need to do and more. But I am far from actually being fit. So to that end I've started running and I've been monitoring my "progress?" on google maps:
View running map in a larger map
furthermore i've been running in a pair of these:
I've been researching body weight exercises that I will begin to work on in the coming weeks, I don't feel like going into the diet aspect of the whole shebang because I have neither the time nor the inclination presently to write about that however suffice it to say that I am following a relatively "paleo" diet, however since cheese is one of the greatest triumphs of man I am still eating that, in addition to drinking milk and still having sugars from time to time, I still don't eat enough fruit, but I have a shit ton of meat and veggies and I'm working on (and doing better at) drinking more water, also for those of you that knew of my habit before, I have cut down on the amount of soda's I've been drinking by an almost unbelievable amount. ( i used to probably average 3-4 on my days off work and well...one gets unlimited soda working in restaurants I really have no idea how much I drank...) furthermore serious efforts to not eat any high fructose corn syrup or is derivatives. 5 days in and I'm still waiting for all the supposed benefits (better sleep, more energy, etc...) to kick in, but that's just my modern mindset getting in the way of realizing some things take time (often more time than we'd like). But time wise I'm using only about an hour a day to get in this exercise and while i could spend that time doing homework that needs doing or cleaning some dishes that need doing, I know that if I wasn't running I'd probably be sitting around wasting time on the internet....like I am now...
View running map in a larger map
furthermore i've been running in a pair of these:
I've been researching body weight exercises that I will begin to work on in the coming weeks, I don't feel like going into the diet aspect of the whole shebang because I have neither the time nor the inclination presently to write about that however suffice it to say that I am following a relatively "paleo" diet, however since cheese is one of the greatest triumphs of man I am still eating that, in addition to drinking milk and still having sugars from time to time, I still don't eat enough fruit, but I have a shit ton of meat and veggies and I'm working on (and doing better at) drinking more water, also for those of you that knew of my habit before, I have cut down on the amount of soda's I've been drinking by an almost unbelievable amount. ( i used to probably average 3-4 on my days off work and well...one gets unlimited soda working in restaurants I really have no idea how much I drank...) furthermore serious efforts to not eat any high fructose corn syrup or is derivatives. 5 days in and I'm still waiting for all the supposed benefits (better sleep, more energy, etc...) to kick in, but that's just my modern mindset getting in the way of realizing some things take time (often more time than we'd like). But time wise I'm using only about an hour a day to get in this exercise and while i could spend that time doing homework that needs doing or cleaning some dishes that need doing, I know that if I wasn't running I'd probably be sitting around wasting time on the internet....like I am now...
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