Hm

On a lighter note - this is a refreshing summer drink:

-3ish ounces of dry vermouth

-10ish ounces of club soda or sparkling mineral water

-Fresh squeezed juice of 1 large or 2 small lemons

Probably because it reminds me of another combination I like: campari/orange/club soda

More globalization thoughts. And television.

But you don't even own a TV, would be the first comment. Ah, the wonders of bittorrent. The first focus of this thought is No Reservations: Anthony Bourdain's slightly odd look at food and culture around the world.

Taken individually the episodes are not too far from the beaten path of other travel and food shows. Go to scenic or remote part of the world, come up with a few points of reference that define the area. If you look at say, south India, then coastal China, then New Zealand, they look like 3 very separate cultures. However over the course of the years of production many smaller, less obvious countries have been introduced. Sri Lanka, Fiji, so on.

I don't know if adding these 'missing pieces' was intentional (probably) but it has managed to very effectively show how intertwined and related different cultures/countries are - it's nearly as much of a history lesson as it is a travel show. This doesn't play out in the order of airing... the India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and other South/Southeast Asian shows cross all 6 years. Same thing going around the Mediterranean - Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Greece - they're from all different years of production. It's very non linear.

But watch a geographical region of shows in as the crow flies order, and you get a concise overview of how differently the various cultures interpreted similar geography, food ingredients and changes through history (global trade, imperial/colonial invasions, so on).

This view is not unique in the modern TV world - Michael Palin has a similar approach, though in a far more linear fashion - focusing series on specific regions/routes/lines on the map. Pole to Pole traveled linearly down the globe from north to south along a line of latitude. Pacific Rim, Himalayas, Sahara... all show the gradual variations of culture around the world. Celebrate the differences yet respect the common historical origins. It's humanism, on tv.

Where am I going with this... these observations seem, well, obvious... I think too much on what I see as a conlict in this country/the modern world... caricature versus character. I name the two hosts above as proponents of trying to find the 'real' in the world. It isn't a specific place or brand, but to look at where a thing, where a food, where an idea about life, comes from.

Is it a uniquely American invention to distill certain parts of culture into branded products?

Take the usual fast food hamburger - McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy's - doesn't matter, they're all basically the same - it doesn't taste anything like the result of actually making a hamburger yourself, or the hamburger that you have a person make you if you go to a non-nationalized restaurant. I won't even go into the discussion of whether one can be considered 'better' than the other, or the matter of costs. They're different. But because of the difference is a 'Whopper' branded item actually a hamburger or is it a brand which happens to contain some percentage of hamburger meat and rough appearance of the hamburger sandwich.

What impact does it have on people and culture and how they view the world when the brand has more visibility than the product? This may be too new (late 19th century/early 20th perhaps) a phenomenon to answer that.

Sustainable Optimism?

It's all relative.

There has been lots of qualified good news about the economy lately. Stock markets are at the highest levels (since last fall). Car sales are improving (short term due to the scrappage scheme, for makers of good economy cars, based on one month's improvement). Housing values have statistically stabilized (but many cities still have price to wages affordability ratios higher than historical averages). Average personal savings rates are highest in a decade (still only 5% of expendable income).

This will probably continue and get louder as we transition in to fall, when year over year numbers will be nothing but positive - anything is better than the falling off a cliff last year.

What is the goal of all of the optimistic press? Do optimistic people spend more or loan more? Is that much of the economy based on consumption? Are that many people that irrational with money?

There may be a point to the optimism - unless you're in banking or real estate or construction or automobile production (and probably a host of other industries) things aren't too bad. IT is doing well for instance. There are still new independent restaurants opening in this city. Lots of people out wandering the mall streets in the evenings. There are also still tons of summer tourists doing the usual touristy things in the city here.

I have wondered how much relevance there is between macro level economic data and what I see on the streets (macro level for a city, micro level on every other scale) . Through this economic downturn there hasn't been too much change on the streets of Seattle.

Perhaps it was optimistic thinking that a recession would bring a bit of austerity. That wouldn't be the American way it seems.