Comments

There Are 40 Responses So Far. »

1. 1 Comment by Brock H. on 7 August 2008:

   I like decaf coffee, Dr. Wilson! Taking caffeine from coffee does not take away its taste, which can be delicious, provided the coffee is not from a 7-11 convenience store. Plus, you can drink it at night and you won’t be kept up.

2. 2 Comment by Red Phillips on 7 August 2008:

   Is there anyone who liked coffee the first time they drank it? It is an “acquired” taste. Meaning people learn to drank it for the benefit, the caffeine, not because it inherently tastes good. And how many, even with the acquired taste, drink it black? The reason we add cream, sugar, etc. is because it tastes like swill without it.

   So I’m with Dr. Wilson, decaf coffee is an abomination and an affront to all that is good and true.

   My preferred caffeine delivery system is Diet Coke, but drinking decaf coffee is just wrong!

3. 3 Comment by Leo on 7 August 2008:

   A good list….except…hurrah for colorful patriotic balloons!!!Why shouldn’t the American political circus look like a circus?

4. 4 Comment by John Dorman on 7 August 2008:

   Clyde, take a hammer to that recalcitrant medicine bottle, take two tablets and have a good lie down. You will feel better in next to no time.

5. 5 Comment by Fred Fowler on 7 August 2008:

   In Sleep Thieves Stanley Coren says that decaffeinated coffee was accidentally discovered in 1903 by Dr. Ludwig Roselius, who headed a large European business that marketed coffee. A ship load of coffee consigned to him was soaked in sea water during a storm, and “Roselius turned it over to a group of chemists in Montreal to see if anything could be salvaged. When the chemists examined the coffee, they found that most of the caffeine had been leached out of the beans by the immersion in the sea water. With appropriate washing, the salts could be removed, leaving a coffee that tasted much like the original but had up to 97 percent of the caffeine removed, leaving less than 3 milligrams per 8-ounce serving. Roselius named the new product Sanka, which is simply a contraction of the French phrase sans caffeine, meaning ‘without caffeine’.”

   Not every modern invention that some might consider bad came out of the U.S.A.

6. 6 Comment by Tim on 7 August 2008:

   Unsweetened tea.
   airplane pretzels.
   Splenda.
   direct mail marketing.
   conservative Republicans.
   “ethnic” food.
   property taxes.
   The info-mercial.
   dang, it’s hard to beat “Patriotic balloons”. Please take note, Americans for Prosperity: http://www.americansforprosperity.org/index.php?id=5955. Yeah, really bold and controversial, there. sheesh…

7. 7 Comment by Eagle on 7 August 2008:

   Let’s not forget some of my ‘favorite’ footwear: adult ‘Crocs’ and ‘Flip Flops’.

8. 8 Comment by Frank on 7 August 2008:

   @Tim

   What’s wrong with unsweetened tea? And isn’t it drunken in China that way?

   I actually prefer my tea unsweetened, and I drink a lot of it, hot and cold – white, green, oolong, and black (which is grown in SC btw).

9. 9 Comment by Frank on 7 August 2008:

   There’s a tea tradition in Russia, I forget its name, of drinking tea through sugar. Heh, that’s just wrong.

   Whatever the cultural implications, tea is healthier and better tasting without sugar.

   Mint and unsugared flavorings can improve it.

10. 10 Comment by Grumpy Old Man on 7 August 2008:

    How could I have forgotten? The “prosperity gospel.”

11. 11 Comment by polemicscat on 7 August 2008:

    Re: caffeine.
    Some of us suffer from atrial fibrillation when we consume caffeine. Having your heart beat like a four cylinder engine with three of the spark plug wires removed is not a very pleasant experience.

    As for the taste of coffee, no two people in the world brew coffee that tastes alike. Sometimes the fault is in the history of the beans it is made of. But usually it’s the kind of water used and how it is perked. We prefer what we get used to.

    Caffeine is put into most soft drinks in the hopes that customers will become addicted to them. Tea has a lot of caffeine too–at least as much as coffee has. But my bride makes a drink with decaf tea, limes, and mint —to die for. Of course, as one of the Roman authors said, “There’s no accounting for taste and no point in quarreling about it—” or words to that effect.

    Picking a drink according to your own taste is one of the few freedoms we still have. Enjoy!

12. 12 Comment by Red Phillips on 7 August 2008:

    “Caffeine is put into most soft drinks in the hopes that customers will become addicted to them.”

    It worked.

13. 13 Comment by Allen Wilson on 7 August 2008:

    Actually, I hate decaf tea.

    Did anyone notice when tea started tasting nasty about five years ago? I used to be able to brew tea that would taste gourmet, but during the summer of 2002 I noticed a huge drop in the quality and taste of all major brands of tea. Nowadays, instant tea actually tastes better than brewed tea.

    The same has happened to coffee as of this year. I heard that this was because increased worldwide demand has led coffee growers to pick the beans earlier, before they fully ripen. Coffee that used to smell so good when brewing now has the stench of an old trash can or a filthy bathroom.

    Coke and other soft drinks haven’t tasted as good as they use to since they started replacing cane sugar with corn syrup about thirty years ago, and now, they seem to be using less of that, so most soft drinks dont even taste as good as they did just several years ago.

    This goes along with all the rest of many complaints that could be made about the steady decline in the quality of food in this country. Processed food never was all that good on average, but some of it used to be fairly good, some even real good. Now none of it is worth the money or the disappointment of eating it. Nowadays, every time I see a TV dinner, I wonder how in the world anyone could live on that junk and survive. I refuse to live like that.

14. 14 Comment by Allen Wilson on 7 August 2008:

    Near Beer. As Dr Wilson said about decaffeinated coffee, what’s the point?

15. 15 Comment by R. Cort Kirkwood on 7 August 2008:

    @Allen Wilson (13)

    It might not be when they’re picking the beans, but the beans themselves. Many of the major brands, as I understand it, are now El Cheapo Arabica (which tastes weak and smells funny), versus full-bodied Colombian.

16. 16 Comment by pablo H on 7 August 2008:

    Well Red, how many people like whiskey or even beer the first time they taste it? First time, I thought whiskey tasted like medicine and beer was bitter.

    And I make my own coffee and it tastes great. I don’t really drink it for the caffeine. Not that it hurts. Good Green tea or English Tea doesn’t need milk or sugar. No one in China puts either in their tea.

17. 17 Comment by Christopher Sean on 7 August 2008:

    I prefer Blue Mountain coffee. I went to the plantation while visiting Sandals, and I found out as well saw again on TV that they test the beans by placing them in a vat of water. Scrap off the floaters and you there have BM coffee beans. The sinkers (which they consider crap) go to Star Bucks.

18. 18 Comment by Frank on 7 August 2008:

    Re: Allen Wilson

    I recently ordered some white tea from teavana that is very good (according to the site, white tea has 1% the caffeine of coffee too). It’s difficult to measure accurately, too fluffy, and is fairly expensive ($9 an ounce for silver needle). It’s very good, but some might prefer a flavored white tea. I prefer this though.

    The Plantation Peach and Governor Gray from Charleston Tea Plantation is excellent. I made some this 4th of July for my relatives and won them over with it. Impressing Southerners with unsweetened iced tea is an accomplishment, heh.

19. 19 Comment by Chris on 8 August 2008:

    Yes, de-caffeinated coffee does seem pointless but for those of us who love the taste of coffee (and probably the aroma more so) but are sensitive to caffeine it does have some value.

20. 20 Comment by ural haines on 8 August 2008:

    “Unguarded borders to replace the population of an advanced country with a new and different population.”

    Because America’s public schools aren’t dumbing Americans down fast enough, it is essential that we import 3rd World simpletons to accelerate the process, Prof. Wilson.

21. 21 Comment by Brock H. on 8 August 2008:

    Looks like Dr. Wilson got tired of bringing up political discussions on “the way we are now” and this time decided to get us into a debate on coffee. I’m game! After all, there’s only so long a list of crimes we Yankees have committed against America, specifically against the South, that the good Professor can remind us of. It is a long list, though.

    Red Phillips @2, good point. Coffee in its pure and unadulterated form is bitter and its only purpose is to give us energy. It is the typical American desire for personal gratification that gave us the concept of sugar, cream, aspartame, and Splenda to put in it to make it taste good. Not to forget the concept of taking it w/caffeine or w/o. But I do still like it just fine.

22. 22 Comment by Rob on 8 August 2008:

    I don’t know if we invented the celebrity “a meritless and insignificant person famous for being famous.” I only say that since I’ve been spending a bunch of time in the 1820s lately on the Continent and everybody seems utterly obsessed with that worthless bum Kapser Hauser. I will say we have perfected the thing.

23. 23 Comment by Scott Palmer on 8 August 2008:

    I always enjoy these lists, but this time I disagree on one point. Rap music has been around for at least 70 years (probably longer), and it wasn’t originated by the creatures who currently chant it on television.

    Mainstream singers such as Phil Harris did “rap” songs at least as far back as the 1940s. The lyrics weren’t idiotic, homicidal, or misogynistic, and the drumbeats weren’t sufficiently loud to be heard in Nairobi, but the songs were definitely “rap,” even if the word hadn’t been invented.

24. 24 Comment by robert m. peters on 8 August 2008:

    Before I came to know that I was diabetic, I drank my coffee sweet and blond; now I drink it black and bitter – but it is either Louisiana’s Community Coffee or Seaport if I can find it. My great aunts, into the 1960’s, used to buy the beans green, roast them and grind them to taste. My paternal grandmother filtered her coffee through a white cotton sock. Coffee does not keep me awake. I often have a demitasse before retiring – drinking from a demitasse is a habit I acquired as a child. Before the demitasse, it was the baby bottle. While I was still a bottle-fed infant, being of that first generation to be industrially bottle fed, my mother went to a conference, leaving me with my father. Apparently, I would not take the bottle for him; so he put some coffee into the bottle. I have been drinking coffee ever since.

    Great Inventions?

    Air Conditioning which changed the way we build houses and took the real front porch off Southern house and people off the porch, bringing to an end a locus of communion – having tea and coffee upon a spontaneous visit – among kith and kin.

    The freezer which usurped canning, with the virtue of the latter over the former being that one did not lose the pantry when the electricity went off. Also, generally freezing food at home is a job for the autonomous individual; canning was a familial, even a community, affair.

    Television replaced the hearth as a gathering place for the family, with the latter being a locus and focus of communion and the former being an agent of disunion and passivity.

    Automatic washing machines and the drier. My grandmother had an old wringer washer, itself an innovation in its day. Saturday was wash day. My cousins and I were always mobilized to help with the wash. The machine itself was engaged with an throttle, which I quickly learned could become the throttle of a powerful locomotive in my imagination. I always demanded to handle the throttle. Two number-three washtubs were used: one for the hot rinse water and one for the cold water. They both set on a bench which was also where we kids ate at family gatherings in times where adults were served first and kids did not dominate the communion but were over the years acculturated to it. One was becoming of age when one was ultimately invited to sit at the adult table. When my older cousin got to leave the bench, the rest of us were envious and sad at the same time. It was like she had moved off and gotten married. Back to the wash. Out of the tumbler of the wringer machine, the clothes went through the wringer into the hot water to be rinsed. Whites, particularly sheets, were washed first. Once rinsed in hot water, the whites went into the cold water, again through the wringer. However, and this is a big however, first one had to put the bluing into the cold water. It came in a little bottle with a girl on it. My cousins and I fought over who would get to put the bluing in. Out of the cold water with bluing, the whites, and later the other clothes, went once more through the wringer and into the basket to be hung on the line in the sun. After the clothes were hung, the entire family was mobilized to watch for clouds as if their coming would be the same as a wave of Japanese fighters. There were often false alarms, and clothes were prematurely gathered in. At other times, it was run and grab to beat the rain. Once, while my cousins and I were helping my grandmother wash, the fire horn in Natchitoches, Louisiana, went off. We listened for the fire trucks and determined that they were coming close, so we abandoned our posts at the wash and rushed to the end of the unpaved dirt street. As we reached the corner, the firetrucks roared into our street. We all ran back to granny’s. It was a false alarm. The firemen thought that we had pulled the alarm box, which we had not. My grandmother attested that we were indeed at the wash when the alarm had sounded.

    The modern deer standing – prefabricated, with a chair, sometimes a heater, etc. – has changed the way deer are hunted. Actually, they are not hunted; they are enticed and harvested. Many of my students “hunt” out of these stands, with firing lanes and planted winter wheat and corn to draw the deer. However, few to none of them have any woods skills. They have not been on the great dog hunts, communing with nature and learning through modeling to become men as they watch fathers, uncles and other men of the hunt interact. They have not stalked a deer for miles. They have not sat under a huckleberry bush for hours in the rain and cold. They cannot read the signs. They all seem to wear camouflage and hunter’s orange – why? (I know that the orange is the law in most states, which is another topic.)

    Modernity is indeed wonderful!

25. 25 Comment by C Bowen on 8 August 2008:

    Decaffeinated coffee. (What’s the point?)

    Decaf is for mixing with Irish Whiskey after a late dinner.

26. 26 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 8 August 2008:

    Mr. Peters, you must write a book of your North Loosiana reminiscences. Your occasional comments are about the best thing to appear on this website.

27. 27 Comment by Mickey Droney on 8 August 2008:

    Dr. Wilson and Mr. Peters,

    I would certainly buy that book…

28. 28 Comment by Brock H. on 8 August 2008:

    Mr. Peters @23:

    You are making this disillusioned California Yankee fall in love with ol’ Dixie without ever having been there.

    Maybe now I could regale this group with my memories of life here in 21st-century Sacramento, CA?

29. 29 Comment by Brock H. on 8 August 2008:

    Don’t worry, that was a joke, a bad one, maybe, but a joke nonetheless.

30. 30 Comment by james on 8 August 2008:

    Euphemisms for war was actually a British concept. Even during the civil war British forces were stationed nearby poised to intervene if commanded.

    Multiculturalism

    Washington lobbyists

    The ADL, SPLC

31. 31 Comment by George on 8 August 2008:

    @Brock H

    “After all, there’s only so long a list of crimes we Yankees have committed against America, specifically against the South, that the good Professor can remind us of. It is a long list, though.”

    And it ain’t nearly done yet!

32. 32 Comment by Bob on 8 August 2008:

    Mormonism.

33. 33 Comment by robert m. peters on 8 August 2008:

    For the first nineteen years of my life, I had three loci of being: the place which I have now come to call the Polity of Pollock, Natchitoches – the city and parish, and Bienville Parish, particularly around Fryburg and the old Madden homestead and cemetery.

    At nineteen, I got on my first airplane, flew to New York and ate my first Chinese food; from there, I flew on to England and crossed the Channel and ate my first soft-boiled egg in Amsterdam – served to my mind on a golf tee, drank my first beer in Königswinter, Germany, where I also got locked in the hotel bathroom for a night, and then finally ended up in Vienna, where I was awed by the smallest and the greatest of things and events.

    Although I visited home throughout the ensuing years and even lived back in Louisiana for short times, I did not really return until 1999.

    During the years in which I was away – in Austria, Germany and France and California, the last being in many ways the most alien- I was surprised to learn that people were very interested in the daily things which I had done and taken quite for granted during those ‘nineteen” years with the same pastor, the same barber, the same school, the same parents and the same kinsmen.

    Upon my “real” return in 1999, about thirty years later, I began to see those three loci with a special eye and came to understand that they – they being the people thereof with their customs and traditions – had contributed the most to that which was the best in me. There are scores to be cited, but one suffices: Miss Leamon (first name, which linked with “Miss,” catches just the right balance of respect and intimacy.) She was one of three teachers in our school who had remained unmarried in order to dedicate themselves to teaching. My own mother had been one of those; she had begun teaching at twenty and did not marry until she was thirty-two, having spent seven years living in the same boarding-house room and dining at the same table with the same people – themselves teachers. Miss Leamon, a close friend of my mother, lived in a tiny house and drank not coffee but tea – with creme, both of which were quite “unorthodox” for me. (This keeps me on thread, I hope, mentioning tea and coffee!) When I was really young, upon a visit at her house, I would ask for tea because she was the only person whom I knew with a whistling teapot. She was one of the teachers who, on the one hand, had that “teacher look” that could wither a fig tree at a thousand paces but who, on the other, could send a signal that she loved you and cared for you – that temperance one finds in a truly virtuous person. To the short of it, Miss Leamon died about six years ago, having married only after she had retired and having outlived her husband. I was unable to attend the funeral; however, a classmate of mine, from high school, called to share that a relative of Miss Leamon had told her that Miss Leamon had kept a list of students whom she thought needed her constant prayers. My name, I learned, had been on that list. The turns which my life took or did not take because of those prayers, I, of course, do not know; I do know that I am indebted to her and the many others of the three loci of my first nineteen years. It is for them that I from time to time tell a story when the opportunity presents itself.

34. 34 Comment by Grumpy Old Man on 8 August 2008:

    Mr. Peters,

    Write the book.

35. 35 Comment by MAP on 9 August 2008:

    Mr. Roberts, you’ve led an exciting life. I don’t know that I could have spent that long out of the South. I live where my people have been since the 1840’s and in the section where they’ve been since 1684. I don’t think I could live elsewhere. I spent a couple of years in Arizona before scurrying back. I felt like I had moved to a foreign country.
    Really enjoy your posts.

36. 36 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 10 August 2008:

    Although English is not my first language, I managed to find some rather odd applications which are contradicting themselves in and of, themselves. Outside of the equally idiotic:
    a) “pro-choice” and
    b) “pro-life” –

    Who can ever be against choice, or against life?

    It takes a master planner and a considerable marketing machine to come up with:

    Military aggressions named:
    a) Just cause
    b) Operation Allied Force (attack on Serbia)
    c) Enduring freedom
    d) Desert calm (Iraq)
    e) Desert shield (Iraq)
    f) Operation clean slate
    g) Operation blue light (Iran)
    h) Operation Continue Hope (Ethiopia)

    However the abuse of the United States Constitution takes the cake: Under “Freedom of religion” we are bound to tolerate any cult (like Islam) irrespective how sharply it remains opposed to all things American.

37. 37 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 15 August 2008:

    I found a way to top myself and everybody else.

    The one American invention that has been accepted world-wide is:

    THE MANUFACTURED TRUTH

    Condi Rice informed us yesterday that she gave strict instructions to Saakashvili to “provoke” the Russians or engage in any military confrontation, yet half an hour after the conflict there were Hercules C-130 landing in Georgia with blankets and other type of “aid”. Naturally there were other “official” sources which claimed that even if “inprovoked” the Russians would attack and “we have the answer”. That way, we can pick any truth we like (fresh off the shelf).

38. 38 Comment by Andrew G. Van Sant on 16 August 2008:

    Great thread with interesting posts. I could comment on a lot of this material, but I’ll just add a few comments.

    “Decaffeinated coffee. (What’s the point?)”

    Couldn’t agree with you more, Dr. Wilson. I can drink it anytime without it keeping me awake. I’m an old “tin can” sailor and learned to sleep anytime, anywhere, through any conditions. I could sleep through the General Quarters alarm and even firing of the 5-inch guns, which were about 25 feet forward of my bunk. (I had to have someone check on me if the GQ alarm sounded.)

    “Is there anyone who liked coffee the first time they drank it? . . . . And how many, even with the acquired taste, drink it black?”

    I liked coffee the first time I tried it. I always drink it black. Unfortunately, I liked cigarettes the first time I tried them, too. Smoked a full pack the first day and I didn’t have my first one until 6:00 PM. I’m paying the price now. Although I quit about 20 years ago, after 20 years of more than three packs a day, I’ve got COPD, which will probably, eventually, kill me. If Americans invented the cigarette, it should be on Dr. Wilson’s list. If I had stuck to pipe smoking, I’d still be enjoying good tobacco today. I still have my old calabash. Cigarettes make it too easy to abuse tobacco.

    “Well Red, how many people like whiskey or even beer the first time they taste it? First time, I thought whiskey tasted like medicine and beer was bitter. ”

    Although I was born in “beer city” (Milwaukee) and was raised in Wisconsin (Kenosha), I’ve never liked beer. I wasn’t impressed with the taste of Scotch (my father’s drink) the first time I tried it, but I’ll drink it straight or on the rocks now. I really prefer bourbon.

    “Many of the major brands, as I understand it, are now El Cheapo Arabica (which tastes weak and smells funny), versus full-bodied Colombian.”

    I may be wrong, but I thought that there were two types of coffee, Arabica and Robusta. I think Columbian is a variety of Aribica. Robusta is an inferior bean that is used to make decaf. I drink Gevalia — pricey, but it makes a good cup in a Milita drip-through coffee maker. (Gevalia sells a large variety of coffees and teas, some better than others.) If you are interested in iced coffee, try a Toddy cold-brew system, which you can probably get at a Seattle’s Best coffee shop at your nearest Borders bookstore.

    (By the way, Mr. Kirkwood, I’m surprised that you didn’t comment on “Mothers in combat.” You may remember that we served briefly at the same time on the staff of the Presidential Commission on Women in the Armed Forces. You were just joining as I was leaving. The director of research eased me out because I wouldn’t spend $40,000 of the taxpayers’ money to purchase books for the Commission’s library. I knew that no one would ever read those books. Instead, I recommended that the commission research staff write short reviews of relevant books for the commissioners and only buy a book if a commissioner requested it. Did you see that Gen. Harries, a VP at USAA and head of that commission, recently died? Dr. Moskos, the so-called “father” of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” who also recently died, was also a member of that commission.)

    “My grandmother had an old wringer washer, itself an innovation in its day.”

    My mother used one of these when I was growing up. I can’t remember how old I was when we got our first automatic washer. She didn’t get a drier until after I went to college. We always hung the wash out in the back yard or in the basement in the winter. Our furnace was an old coal burner that was converted to oil. I don’t remember when it burned coal, so I must have been quite young when it was converted. It’s possible that it never burned coal. The furnace may have been converted before we moved in. (The house was new construction on the edge of the city when my parents bought it. Nothing but farms to our south at the time. Growing up, my friends and I would play in the new construction houses that were pushing the farms, where we stole tomatoes, further south.)

    “The modern deer standing – prefabricated, with a chair, sometimes a heater, etc. – has changed the way deer are hunted. Actually, they are not hunted; they are enticed and harvested.”

    I have a climbing stand hanging in my basement. I bought it a number of years ago to hunt on the military base where I work. Use of a deerstand on the base is mandatory for safety reasons. I started hunting about ten years ago to protest the anti-hunters. The president of the local humane society announced a protest of a meeting of hunters in the state called by the Department of Natural Resources. Only the president showed up. He subsequently (and falsely) claimed that he was assaulted by some of the hunters, who showed up by the hundreds.

    I go out in the woods a few days each season. I do what is called “still hunting” on the ground. I’m not a very good hunter, though. I hunt on public land and like to explore, so I tend to move around too fast and too much. I’ve never shot a deer. I came close a few years ago when I set up where I had scouted deer sign. Sure enough, a small herd came up over a rise where I was waiting, but as I waited for the deer to move so I had a safe background behind them, two hunters on an adjacent rise shot at the deer and scared them off. (The other hunters both missed their shots.) That’s a problem with hunting on public land. You’re not alone. I really like being out in the woods during the season. (I once spent an afternoon watching a beaver build a dam across a creek. I didn’t need to shoot a deer to consider that day a success.)

    We probably need hunters to cull the deer. Actually, we probably need to reintroduce some carefully controlled market hunting to reduce the herds more than hunters are able to.

    I’d better stop here.

39. 39 Pingback by Saakashvili’s Fatal Gamble « Typicon Man’s blog on 17 August 2008:

    [...] In the end, the biggest looser was the civilian population of South Ossetia. This war was completely unnecessary; yet 2,000 – 3,000 civilians were killed and countless others displaced.  I wonder if, as they were trained by American military consultants, Georgian forces learned, among other things, the term “collateral damage”. One of the great inventions of US English. [...]

40. 40 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 18 August 2008:

    Actually, cigarettes are already on one of my future scribblings.