1. The Footnotes of Mad Men (via Kottke).
2. Corona saves a man’s life by being gross (via @BoingBoing).
3. Kenji Lopez-Alt reverse-engineers an In-n-Out burger. He also recreated Mickey D’s fries a while back.
4. Bill Murray gets interviewed.

More potentially-related posts:

1. Linkwad (updated).
2. Linkwad.
3. Linkwad.

Not like this.

And here’s You Are Not So Smart, a blog about… well, being wrong.

And here’s TV on the Radio’s “The Wrong Way,” because it’s a great song!

More potentially-related posts:

1. (Late) Five for Friday, May 22 2010.
2. Wired up.
3. Five for Friday, April 30, 2010.

Here’s a cell phone photo of The National playing “Lemonworld” at the Electric Factory:

I’d also recommend National Mechanics in Philly. Nice space, good bar food, and a respectable selection of beer.

More potentially-related posts:

1. Linkwad.
2. Standing in the sea.
3. Interlude Inter…food?

1. Maryland cops are still arresting people for recording them, even though it’s legal.
2. In Ohio, cops can now give you a ticket based on their guess of your speed. Unfortunately, Youtube has no clips of Chief Wiggum saying “That’s some nice work there, boys.” (HT: Radley Balko)
3. Ezra Klein’s guest-blogger Mike Konczal on the “romance of the public domain.”
4. Want to learn how to make gyros? You should, because it’s delicious.
5. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 made orbit, becoming the first commercial spacecraft¹ to do so.
6. Going to see the National in Philly tomorrow, so here’s “Bloodbuzz, Ohio,” from High Violet.
   

More potentially-related posts:

1. Linkwad and an update.
2. (Late) Five for Friday, May 22 2010.
3. I always wanted FigPlanet.com

It’s not that healthier ingredients are absent or too expensive — even lower-priced supermarkets have plenty of fresh produce available — it’s that preparing those meals requires more time and energy than is available to most lower-income people. Cooking takes time, and after a long day of hard work in low-wage employment, parents want to relax, and the incredible ease of fast and processed food is a powerful lure. Indeed, if there’s any advantage to lower-income grocery stores Kroger or Wal-Mart, it’s that calorie dense foods — cookies, frozen pizza, Easy Mac — are cheap and readily available.

That said, if there’s anything I’ve learned from watching my friends attempt to navigate the kitchen, it’s that cooking isn’t obvious. Unless you’re familiar with the basics of preparation and cooking, the act of taking a few ingredients — some cornmeal, a bushel of greens, an egg — and making a meal is mystifying. Poor people are simply less likely to have access to that kind of knowledge. Moreover, eating habits are generational, and if you grew up in a home where food was prepared from fresh ingredients you’re far more likely to know what to do in a kitchen. By contrast, if you grew up eating processed and prepackaged food, then those are the first things you’ll reach for when you’re on your own.

I don’t think it’s really that difficult to learn to cook, but habits are hard to break, especially since people are horrible at judging their calorie intakes¹, and nutrition information can be wildly inaccurate. Also, I don’t mind an hour or two in the kitchen, but I don’t have a physically strenuous job, kids or a dog that need attention when I get home.

However, this seems a problem tailor-made for home economics classes–or at least, the way Judd Apatow and I envision home ec, since it was gone by the time I made it to junior high and high school.

Tangentially, it seems like there’s some sort of official “blogger vacation week” happening now. I’m entirely fine with it, though, since several of my normal reads were guest bloggers somewhere or other.

More potentially-related posts:

1. Simple ingredients, naturally prepared.
2. Interlude Inter…food?
3. Weighing in.

Having dedicated the better part of 2009 to understanding the threat posed by Ug99, a fungus that threatens to decimate much of the Eastern Hemisphere’s wheat crop, our ears always prick up when we hear of looming agricultural catastrophes.

Climactic conditions are currently ideal for a widespread epidemic, which could take out much of the Middle East’s wheat in just two weeks.

And no, I wasn’t using the majestic plural, as Koerner is wont to do. However, as long as that doesn’t bother you too much, MicroKhan is a font of weird knowledge.

More potentially-related posts:

1. Read the fine print.
2. MicroKhan on the Supreme Leader.
3. Beloit College: Making Yr Ass Feel Old Since 1846.

A meal at Next will represent a great value. Depending on the menu AND what day and time you are dining, food will be $40 to $75 for the entire prix fixe menu. Wine and beverage pairings will begin at a $25 supplement. Next’s goal is to serve 4-star food at 3-star prices.

Tickets?

Yes. Instead of reservations our bookings will be made more like a theater or a sporting event. Your tickets will be fully inclusive of all charges, including service. Ticket price will depend on which seating you buy – Saturday at 8 PM will be more expensive than Wednesday at 9:30 PM. This will allow us to offer an amazing experience at a very reasonable price. We will also offer an annual subscription to all four menus at a discount with preferred seating.

If they keep to their Fall 2010 opening date, I know what I’ll be going during my annual Chicago trip.

HT: Kottke via @MattYglesias

More potentially-related posts:

1. Captain James Restaurant Runs Aground
2. Is “whoring for a good cause” ok?
3. Simple ingredients, naturally prepared.

More potentially-related posts:

1. Five for Friday, April 16, 2010.
2. Five for Friday, April 23, 2010.
3. (Late) Five for Friday, May 22 2010.

SMOKING: One reason for America’s expanding waistline has to be our extraordinary success in getting fewer people to smoke. Certainly I gained about 25 pounds in the three years after I quit smoking, a process I’m currently making progress on reversing by drawing on the kind of resources that, as Ambinder observes, working class and poor Americans generally don’t have access to. Smoking is an appetite suppressant. It’s also a substitute for snacking just in terms of having something to do. I found looking into it that nearly any realistic combination of mealtime options would be consistent with me losing at least some weight, but that the problem was snacking between meals (which would be easier to avoid if I just smoked a cigarette every time I thought I wanted to mucn) and then our second factor. Public health professionals don’t like to emphasize this point because they want to encourage people to quit smoking. But to an extent making progress on one public health problem has contributed to a second, albeit less serious, one.

He also mentions the declining relative costs of alcohol as a possible factor, though a commenter points out alcohol consumption in the country hasn’t changed much. I can’t remember where I read it, but a while back I read that the caloric content of fast food had spiked significantly in the last few decades–if anyone remembers that article, send it my way.

Quick smoking tangent: there are plenty of kids alive in the US o’ A today who will never get to enjoy a cigarette with their midnight diner coffee, at a concert (in practice, this still obviously happens a lot), or while knocking a few back at a corner bar. Of course, this also means they get to do that on burn-free seats and come home without smelling like an ashtray, something I appreciate much more now. Nostalgia is only worth so much.

More potentially-related posts:

1. What consequences?
2. Weighing in.
3. Five for Friday, March 26.