Month: December 2019

It is quite striking that among the 1st group that I mentioned above, only Bradbury’s existed when I reviewed cappuccinos in 2008.  However this second group will contain more repeats.  I have reason to believe that many of these shops have upped their game in the past decade.

• Mother Fools (they made the 2nd best cappuccino after Bradbury’s in my previous reviews.)
• Indie Coffee
• Michelangelo’s Coffee House (on State)
• Espresso Royal (the one closest to campus on State)
• Starbucks on the square (It will be an instructive comparison…)

And then there are some newer places that will also certainly be on my list:

• Cafe Domestique (this is a relatively new shop on Willy St.)
• Colectivo on State
• Cargo Coffee (I have never actually been here)

I’ve come across the criteria I used back in the day to review cappuccinos.  These will have to be revised a bit.

2008: Smoothness, Presentation, Strength, Complexity, Foam

I think I will use the following criteria in my new reviews, though these might eventually change.

2019: Art & milk surface, Espresso flavor & complexity, Espresso – milk integration, Texture

There are currently 1,213 comments waiting in my cue for the various posts in this blog.  I probably need to install some sort of spam-blocking system….

I have noticed a couple of things about this spam over the past few years.  Most importantly, they have gotten significantly better.  A couple years ago when I would get spam comments they would basically consist in nonsense.  However, now they are more varied and elaborate, with attached names and email addresses that would look roughly legitimate to any sort of spam blocker.  They have also become more frequent.  Several years ago I would get only several spam messages a month, but  now I get several in a day.  And it isn’t as if this blog has gained any more exposure.  One still must essentially google me to find it.

All this is unfortunate and sometimes prevents me from noticing comments that are from real people.  Because I usually get no real comments but many spam ones in a day, I tend to ignore or forget about comments entirely.  This is a symptom of the broader problem of the pollution of the internet.  There are far more people with unscrupulous motives, along with their bots, prowling the internet.

Certainly the internet used to be far more wild in other respects.  As the internet has become more exposed to the public there is less expectation of anonymity.  Many people (myself included) used to have entirely public blogs and internet sites in which we disclosed much and did little to hide our identities.  However, those sites were largely hidden from the wider world; they were hard to find and only strangers and our friends (when told about them) ever stumbled upon them.  It was difficult to connect the internet site to a particular person in the real world even when there might be personal details in the writing.  And there was less risk of an employer looking a person up on the internet and being able to find all kinds of private musings.  Now most people are much more careful.

The privacy of the old wild internet has been replaced by something a bit trashier and nefarious.  Though 15 years ago the internet was far less controlled by corporations and governments than it is today this has not prevented criminals and others who wish to do us harm from moving in.  Something has certainly been lost.

I’m surprised at how many unpublished posts I have hidden away in the dark reaches of this blog.  Most are half (or 1/10th!) written — more basic ideas than anything else.  However, often I have a problem of not possessing the energy to fill in the details of my thoughts.  This is in part a personal failure.  Some people are able to bash out sensical thoughts of depth and truth with one pass.  I don’t work that way.  I have to go over a piece of writing several times before I think the ideas are correct and correctly expressed (and I’m not even talking about whether it is good writing!)

Over the next few weeks I’m going to try to finish a few of these incomplete posts.  Here at least are a couple of titles:

“Don’t forget that Socialism actually sucks”

“Justifying the college lending system…and why it is so messed up”

Last night I ordered all of the parts to create a new, and very fast, desktop computer.  My current machine is about 8 years old, though it still plays many games just fine.  Certainly it does most computing tasks with ease.  Although it was a pretty fast machine when I built, it is remarkable that the vast majority of things people use a computer for have not changed much in the past 8 years.  In fact, I am going to move my existing computer into a new and smaller case so that I can use it for office-type tasks.  I might still get another 5 years out of it.

This experience differs substantially from the life of a laptop computer.  All kinds of compromises must be made when constructing a very small computer that runs on a battery and fits on one’s lap.  Desktop computers, on the other hand, are cheap and fast.  Additionally, they aren’t susceptible to being “totaled” due to wear and mishap.  For instance keyboard problems often mean the end of life for a laptop but only a $15 replacement for a desktop.  If you can’t afford a new fancy laptop, you should probably consider a cheapo desktop; it will be just as fast as some shiny macbook pro and last about three times as long.

One purpose of doing cappuccino reviews is to get out in the world and try some cappuccinos you might not otherwise encounter.  To that end, I’ll have to search out some places I haven’t been before (or were at long ago).  I’ll do that soon, but first I wanted to list the coffee shops that I already know about and will likely be top contenders.

• Bradbury’s (the first place in Madison to serve a proper cappuccino and still one of the best)
• Johnson Public House (#1 or #2 in my mind, depending upon the visit)
• Grace on State (brand new and a bit odd, in the old hat shop, but seemed legitimate when I was there. Also has the honor of illegally painting one of the remaining brick store-fronts on State…)
• Ledger Coffee (in Garver, the old beet factory)

It has been argued by quite a few authors (Gordon in The Rise and Fall of American Growth for one) that we have recently seen few of the profound technological change the characterized life at the beginning of the 20th century.  For instance, between 1900 and 1950 just about every aspect of peoples’ lives in the rich world was transformed by technological, economic, and cultural change.  And most of this was progress. On the other hand, between 1970 and today (50 years!) we have seen dramatic changes in only a few areas of life.

Of course, things have gotten quite a bit better; there has been gradual change in most areas of life, and some areas (like Information Technology) has seen transformative change.  But life itself has not transformed in the way that it did between 1900 and 1950.  I was reminded of this fact while I drove back to Madison from northern WI yesterday.  It is possible that AI will soon transform transportation as we know it, but that is not especially likely.  It is turning out to be much more difficult to create self-driving cars than originally thought.  In fact, the experience of someone traveling down the highway is not tremendously different than it was in 1970.  They are a bit safer, but driving is still the relatively dangerous.  Drivers still face the basic problem of steering a large metal object down a road of questionable quality, while fighting weather, fatigue, distractions, and boredom.  Unlike in 1950, the elderly today have not experienced anything close to transformation in transportation.

Starting with the coming Solstice, I will review ever coffee shop in the Madison area that offers a traditional (6 oz or similar) cappuccino.  When I did my first round of coffee reviews around 2008, that would have included probably two or three shops.  Things have certainly improved.  I’m guessing that there are at least a dozen shops that qualify now (maybe many more).  I’ll compile a list in the coming weeks!

Anyone who complains about how a robust third party would make the American electoral system better need only look to the UK for a quick refutation. First-past-the-post systems (in which the person in each district with the highest vote-total wins that district) do not mix well with coalition-style governments with several major parties. The Conservatives won only 43% of the vote in the UK nationally on Thursday, whereas the three more liberal parties (Labour, SNP, and Liberal Dems) won about 47%. However, the Conservatives won about 58% of the seats. This is because they were the largest party in a large number of district, with the liberal vote in those districts split between the more liberal parties.

Part of the problem in the case of the UK is that Labour has become so radical as to render it incompatible with Liberal Dems (who are most definitely not socialists). District-based first-past-the-post systems naturally tend to two parties, because any parties that can combine will have a significant advantage over those that cannot. Of course, this might be reason to favor proportional systems, where seats are awarded to parties as a function of the overall popular vote, over district-based systems. However, if you are in a first-past-the-post system, then you should embrace a system of large moderate parties. If you don’t, then eventually the other side will…

It is quite stunning sometimes how easily we are drawn into a partisan perspective, and how most of our media sources help us down that trap. The standard liberal message from the FBI Inspector General’s report was that the FBI was largely cleared of wrongdoing. However, the report also revealed some stunning sloppiness, casualness and incompetence in how citizens are legally surveilled. Even if Trump is a dangerous crook (he is), Republicans are right to complain about how the investigation into him was conducted by the rank and file at the bureau.

Such violations by law enforcement would normally be pounced on by civil libertarians, who have also typically dominated the more activist part of the Democratic party. However, rather little concern has been heard from that part of the left. It is to the credit of the New York Times that the problems in the FBI were a front page story today. It is a very strange world indeed when we have to rely upon Republicans to criticize law enforcement (and of course they do so for ALL of the wrong reasons).