Weekend Scientist | Mason Jar Observations – Week 3

yes, this little project isn't looking so hot. I think the combination of wax-paper and not tightening the top enough is causing too much of the alcohol to seep out around the lid. So far the only orange color change I've seen has been around the lid, whereas it should be going into the liquid down below the suspended oranges. I think by next week if the situation doesn't improve, I'm going to start a new one with a bit of a change in methodology. We'll see I suppose...

the quantifiable burden of being single

I suppose you can say being single isn't easy. I think from many different aspects it's hard to specify exactly what's so difficult about it...after all it is a person's natural state for most of growing up. But i think a person always wants to have someone else to share in life's joys and struggles. There seems to be a certain burden of being single. But I will be the first to admit...I'm absolutely horrible at talking about the feelings and all that stuff. I'm more of a numbers person, so I like things I can quantify. For the feelings stuff, maybe check out someone else's blog. Instead, we're going to look at singleness from a societal point of view. So today's topic isn't going to be matters of the heart, where feelings and stuff rule. We're going to look at quantifiable aspects, and see where society's bias is pitted against the single person.

Recently I came across an article in the atlantic that detailed the costs of being single in this country. The point of the article was to spell out the bias that is generally given toward married couples. The numbers did not look pretty for a single guy in his latter-twenties. Essentially, the point of the article was to say that society in general is geared in favor of married couples, which I can understand. After all, I believe that God created marriage as something special, and I believe that marriage is sacred and something society should do to protect. I don’t know if I can agree with apportioning societal benefits toward married folks that single people like me are blocked from receiving. We’ll call this the single tax.

The single tax is levied across the board. It’s a well-documented fact that there are certain income tax benefits to being married. A married person filing jointly will pay less than a single person. But it’s not just income tax related. Hotel rooms are cheaper when it’s for couples than for individuals in a single room. Vacation packages are cheaper for two, healthcare is cheaper for dependents, even Costco memberships come in twos (btw they specify that it’s for couples or family). So what’s a single guy to do? We pay more for that vacation, we dole out more for health insurance, and we get that Costco membership for two (even though it’s for one). And of course, we file individually on our tax return and pay more than our married counterparts. Yes, this is the single tax that society levies on regular hardworking single folks like me.

Now, we get to the fun part. I remember blogging about the veil of ignorance a while back. The implication is that we must block out our own socio-economic standing when designing any kind of social structure. Basically, John Rawls says that in order to get social equality, one must don a veil of ignorance. So let’s apply that principle here: imagine you are not yet born – you have no idea whether you will be married, or if you are destined to be single for life – now, design a social structure based on that view.

Now let’s look at it from a different point of view. Let’s look at the downstream impacts of societal benefits given to married individuals. Instead of calling it a single tax, let’s view the societal benefits of marriage as marriage incentives. Should society be in a position to dole out marriage incentives? Marriage should be a sacred thing, one created by God between a man and a woman who love each other. Does incentivizing marriage achieve that? I would think no. I think getting married for the wrong reasons is destructive, and we shouldn’t do anything to encourage marrying for wrong reasons. As a single person, I think I will be ready to marry when the time is right, and there shouldn’t be any outside factors even remotely coming into play. I certainly shouldn’t be penalized for taking longer to marry than another person.

Having societal benefits for married couples and a corresponding penalty for being single can be viewed as downright discriminatory. Granted many people will marry, but they don’t all do it at the same age and some don’t marry at all. Are they destined to pay more for their singleness? I know I may not be persuading many people with this argument, but I leave you with this parting observation. I am 5’10”, and according to studies, the average American male stands at 5’9½”. Suppose we are feeling a bit generous and offer a tax break to all males that are 5’8” and over. You may eventually get to 5’8”, and at that point you will get the tax break. If you never reach 5’8”, well, that sucks i suppose. Doesn't seem fair does it?

I don’t need to be a clothing designer to know this is dumb…

The other day I was at Costco picking up some random stuff, and I walked by the clothing section to check out some of their sock/undershirt selection (the white Kirkland shirts are really comfy). Anyways, I noticed they had these new v-neck 4-packs for a decent price, and since I was in a need of undershirts, I thought I’d give them a shot.

Even though it didn’t say tagless on the packaging, a quick peek through the clear plastic packaging confirmed that the salient details of the shirt (size, material, wash directions) were printed on the inside back of the neck area. Sweet. I picked up one white pack and went on my merry way. Yesterday I decide to give one of the shirts a try. I put it on, and it wasn’t bad…a little thinner than the Kirkland ones, but all in all pretty comfy. I threw on the rest of my clothes and headed out the door, ready to tackle the day.

Around noon, my shoulder felt a little weird. You know that feeling after a haircut when you have all those little hairs from the back of the neck that gets cut and fall down the back of your shirt and just gets kinda irritating? Well, it was that feeling. The odd thing was, this the undershirt was new, so how did little hairs get down to where my shoulders were?? So I step inside the bathroom and had a quick look… and guess what I found?!

Apparently this shirt isn’t tagless!!

it would've been better had the tag carried something useful...
or at least info that wasn't redundant...

As it turns out, even though the care instructions of the shirt were printed on the back of the neck, for some odd reason the manufacturer of this shirt decided to put another tag in, and just for kicks, they put it on the inside seam of the left shoulder. Now, if you will all join me in a collective group building “what the heck?!” In this day and age of tagless shirts and undies, who in their right mind chooses to design a shirt that goes tagless in the back of the neck, only to put another one in at the shoulder??

We can probably add this to the collection of things that make you go “huh?”

Weekend Scientist | Mason Jar Observations – Week 2

This is the week when self-doubt sets in. Did I seal the jar well? Does alcohol seep through waxpaper? is there enough left in the jar to preserve the oranges?? As i looked around the jar, I see a bit of orange oil on the outside of the jar where the cheesecloth peers out...raising my doubt even further. The sign of evaporated alcohol leaking out...is there enough left to make this experiment work? Should I start over?? It needs to be quite high-proof inside the jar for this to succeed. Ohh dear...maybe I'll give it a month before deciding to start over or not. Hopefully by then I'll know if the oranges are still preserved or if they'll start turning green...eek.

50 beans | USE THE FORCE…to brew your moka

Saw this video on another blog…thought it’d be fun to share:



This CoffeeCircle video showcases how vader makes his brew…hario mini-mill and all. Enjoy!

the worst week in davis

The best week in davis was two weeks ago…all the students had cleared out (presumably to terrorize the bay area and parts of socal), some of the locals were on vacation, and Davis was a quiet little ghost town where restaurant lines were manageable and driving through downtown didn’t include much risk of running over pedestrians (stopping for pedestrians is a good thing OF COURSE).

Well…that was two weeks ago. This week, well, it’s the end of everything good in davis. The students return en masse to wreak havoc on the town, flooding downtown davis cafés once again with their rowdy behavior and macbook totin’ presence. Parking at trader joe’s has once again become non-existent. The line at chipotle is now permanently out the door, and good luck trying to get a haircut at supercuts. Oh…did I mention the pool hall closes this week for winter-quarter book sales??

Wooosahhhh…

I suppose there is an unseen side to all of this…more students in town means more sales-tax revenue, which means the city can finally pay the landscaper to trim the grass at the local park so we can play ultimate frisbee and not worry about being tripped up by overgrown grass, which means less $ spent on pain-killers, which means lower profits for the pharmaceutical companies that make painkillers, which means layoffs at said pharm companies, which means the guy who was gonna send his son to Stanford or UOP will now be sending him to a public school like UC Davis, which means…yep you guessed it…more students (I love my logic sometimes…).

Post hoc ergo propter hoc…it’s a vicious cycle.

Weekend Scientist | Mason Jar Observations – Week 1

 I still remember my first encounter with lemoncello – the summer I turned 22, my family decided to do a family reunion in Alaska. One night after dinner, the waitress brought over a neon-yellow drink for us to try. I must admit, I was quite hesitant to try it for the first time. After all, the color looked a little weird – it was like someone stuck a highlighter in a bottle of something for a few months and bottled it. I cautiously took a sip as my cousins looked on. The tangy lemon flavor kind of wakes you up after a meal, and the sweetness of the sugar is a nice surprise. The waitress explained that they made it in-house, and gave us the recipe to try at home.

I had completely forgotten about that drink until my first trip out to Boston a few years later. On one of the slow weekends, a few of us had nothing to do, so we decided to explore the back-streets of the north end (little Italy). My friend Francesca was proudly Italian and would take point in guiding us through little Italy (and also navigating menus at some of the restaurants). On that particular Sunday afternoon, we were on Salem street, when she ducked into a little corner store when we were taking pictures of something. She emerged five minutes later with a bottle in a paper bag (I know…classy). Before she took it out, she explained the drink to us non-italians. The minute she said lemon-zest I had the strongest flashback to that day in Alaska. She pulled the cork off the bottle, poured out a little into a paper cups, and handed it to us. Although it wasn’t as good as the homemade variety, it was quite nice to feel that lemony zing once again.

The other day, I was bumming around on the NYT Times Magazine Blog, and in their food section there was an article about lemoncello. This time, there was something different about the recipe. They called it lemoncello, once removed, and the process is quite odd. Basically, the concept is similar to the extraction of flavors out of spices – the object (it can be fruits or spices) is suspended over some grain alcohol, and the container is sealed. The alcohol somehow manages to extract the flavor through a process the NYT described as D.S.M. (delicious scientific magic) – which I clearly don’t understand. The cool thing about this DSM, is that since the alcohol (at such high proofs) volatizes naturally at room temperatures, it somehow creates an environment within the still that extracts the flavors cleanly. Of course afterwards you'd add water and sugar to get it down to a manageable proof.

Anyways, yesterday I decided to embark on this scientifically-motivated culinary journey to see what all the hubbub was about. Of course, me being me, I had to change it up a little. Since my favorite color/fruit is orange, why not try orangecello? This process works with any citrus fruit, but of course, it's important to note that depending on the size of fruit, you'd have to vary the size of the jar. If you're gonna do pomelocello, you'd have to have a pretty gosh-darn huge jar.

Apparently the entire process takes between 9-12 weeks (depending on how warm the climate is), and requires a lot of patience. Opening the jar would set the process back to square one. I swung by target and bought all the necessary equipment for the homemade still (I know…what must my parents think??) – gallon-sized mason jar, cheesecloth, and grain alcohol (everclear – apparently vodka is too weak to extract anything). Yesterday afternoon, I picked the oranges from the backyard and put the still together very carefully while trying to avoid contact with any open flames (lest it summons the fire dept. to my house once again). The directions say for this to be stored away from sunlight, but in a warmer place for 9 weeks. Since it’s the middle of winter, I figure I’ll play it safe and go 10-12 weeks. In the time leading up to it, I’ll try to do periodic updates (maybe once a week or something); hopefully over the next 10 weeks or so we’ll know if DSM really works.

*sigh* the things I do in the name of scientific endeavors…