Here's my criteria for determining whether a city or town is a worthwhile culinary destination.
Indigenous food
Is there something unique to the city? Does the city have a dish that originated there that the city is famous for? For example, you have the Cheesesteak in Philadelphia, Chicago Red Hot, Buffalo Wings, etc. Or, is there a notable food that is grown or harvested in the region that the city is located? Food like cheese in Wisconsin, hard shell crabs in Maryland, or wine in Northern California. Maybe it's a kind of style or way of preparing well known dishes, like pizza in New York City, barbecue in Eastern North Carolina, or clam chowder in New England.
Ethnic populations
Does the city have a relatively high population of certain ethnic groups? Ethnic demographics affects a city's food scene in the following ways. First it will determine in part a restaurant's clientele. A Korean restaurant in a town with few Koreans will have mostly non-Koreans as customers. Likewise, the same restaurant in a city with a large Korean population will likely have mostly Koreans as customers. This in turn affects demand and supply. A predominantly Korean customer base will be more sensitive to price and quality, and will thus force a Korean restaurant to be "honest." A predominantly non-Korean customer base will be less sensitive to price and quality. So, a Korean restaurant with a predominantly non-Korean customer base can overcharge for mediocre food. If this is true, then a city with large ethnic group populations will have better ethnic food.
Cheap food
Cheap food includes street food, homestyle cooking methods like soul food and southern food, fast food, bar food, post-bar food, and pretty much anything else that you can usually get for around $10 or less. When I evaluate a city based on this criterion, I look for cheap eating establishments that are not chains. I look for food trucks or pop ups. This category is also tied up with ethnic cuisine, since a lot of great ethnic food will also be cheap.
Haute cuisine
This includes the fancy pants food in a city. This is basically any kind of dining experience that'll cost you at least $100 per person. Here it's usually about the chefs. Does the city have notable chefs doing all kinds of awesome things with food?
In my mind, only two cities in the United States score well in all four categories: New York City and Chicago. Most other cities don't really have anything that's uniquely indigenous to it, like Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, Dallas, Phoenix, or Denver. Some cities are lacking in ethnic diversity, like San Antonio, Detroit, Minneapolis, or Boston (where are the Asians?). I might be wrong, though. Of course these measures are all relative. These cities will of course have a higher ethnic group population than small towns scattered across the US. Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Atlanta might contend for cities that score highly in all four categories.
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Sunday, January 12, 2014
The Great Existential Question
I recently finished reading Why Does the World Exist? by Jim Holt. It was enjoyable read. It's a book that I would give to anyone who wanted to know what metaphysics was and what kind of research I do in philosophy.
The book addresses the following question: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" This question is about as fundamental as you can get. The book is basically an exploration of the nature of existence itself. What explains the fact that anything exists at all? Why isn't there just absolutely nothing?
My own take on this issue is that the concept of absolute nothingness is incoherent. Holt talks about the concept of nothingness in chapter 3, but I find his discussion unsatisfying.
My opinion is that nothingness in everyday talk is a local concept. When talk about nothing, we talk about it relative to some context, like a region of space. We might say that there nothing in the refrigerator, or that there's nothing to do in Syracuse. In this respect, the concept of nothingness is similar to the concept of a hole. A hole is a local phenomenon. We use the term to refer to particular regions of space.
Is absolute nothingness conceivable? What is absolute nothingness? When most people imagine absolute nothingness, they imagine empty space. But is that really nothing? Couldn't empty space itself be something? In fact this is a view that's argued for in metaphysics. It's called "substantivalism." Suppose that empty space itself is something. Then can imagine a reality without empty space? What it be like? Seems inconceivable to me.
It's kind of like trying to imagine a reality with no color. People say that black is the absence of color. This never made sense to me. If black is the absence of color, then what color is a piece of glass? It's not black. Since it's not black, is it therefore colored? That seems absurd. I hold, therefore, that black is indeed a color, and to be colorless is to be completely transparent, like a piece of glass. Suppose, then, that the universe was completely colorless, i.e. completely transparent. Is this imaginable? It wouldn't be black, it wouldn't be white, just transparent. Seems inconceivable to me. I think that absolute nothingness is like complete transparency.
The book addresses the following question: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" This question is about as fundamental as you can get. The book is basically an exploration of the nature of existence itself. What explains the fact that anything exists at all? Why isn't there just absolutely nothing?
My own take on this issue is that the concept of absolute nothingness is incoherent. Holt talks about the concept of nothingness in chapter 3, but I find his discussion unsatisfying.
My opinion is that nothingness in everyday talk is a local concept. When talk about nothing, we talk about it relative to some context, like a region of space. We might say that there nothing in the refrigerator, or that there's nothing to do in Syracuse. In this respect, the concept of nothingness is similar to the concept of a hole. A hole is a local phenomenon. We use the term to refer to particular regions of space.
Is absolute nothingness conceivable? What is absolute nothingness? When most people imagine absolute nothingness, they imagine empty space. But is that really nothing? Couldn't empty space itself be something? In fact this is a view that's argued for in metaphysics. It's called "substantivalism." Suppose that empty space itself is something. Then can imagine a reality without empty space? What it be like? Seems inconceivable to me.
It's kind of like trying to imagine a reality with no color. People say that black is the absence of color. This never made sense to me. If black is the absence of color, then what color is a piece of glass? It's not black. Since it's not black, is it therefore colored? That seems absurd. I hold, therefore, that black is indeed a color, and to be colorless is to be completely transparent, like a piece of glass. Suppose, then, that the universe was completely colorless, i.e. completely transparent. Is this imaginable? It wouldn't be black, it wouldn't be white, just transparent. Seems inconceivable to me. I think that absolute nothingness is like complete transparency.
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
Numbers in Korean
In the Hindu-Arabic numeral system, large numbers are grouped into digits of three. For instance, one million is expressed as 1,000,000. It's not a surprise, then, that in English, you names of numbers that have groups of three digits. For instance, you have thousand for 1,000, million for 1,000,000, billion for 1,000,000,000, and so on.
Koreans use the Hindu-Arabic numeral system. They have a name for ten ("ship" in Korean), a name for hundred (bhek), and a name for thousand (chun). So far, so good. Here's where I get fucked up. Koreans have a name for ten thousand (mahn). From there, the give names to large numbers in a manner similar to English. Hundred thousand is "ship mahn" (ten + ten thousand). Million is "bhek mahn" (hundred + ten thousand). Ten million is "chun mahn" (thousand + ten thousand). From here Koreans introduce a new word for hundred million: "uhk." Then they do the same for numbers that are larger by orders of ten (ship uhk, bhek uhk, and so forth). You see now how this shit can get confusing when you're trying to translate quickly from English to Korean. That extra zero messes everything up.
So why do Koreans have a name for ten thousand? Did they use a different numeral system when they made these names?
Koreans use the Hindu-Arabic numeral system. They have a name for ten ("ship" in Korean), a name for hundred (bhek), and a name for thousand (chun). So far, so good. Here's where I get fucked up. Koreans have a name for ten thousand (mahn). From there, the give names to large numbers in a manner similar to English. Hundred thousand is "ship mahn" (ten + ten thousand). Million is "bhek mahn" (hundred + ten thousand). Ten million is "chun mahn" (thousand + ten thousand). From here Koreans introduce a new word for hundred million: "uhk." Then they do the same for numbers that are larger by orders of ten (ship uhk, bhek uhk, and so forth). You see now how this shit can get confusing when you're trying to translate quickly from English to Korean. That extra zero messes everything up.
So why do Koreans have a name for ten thousand? Did they use a different numeral system when they made these names?