This is what’s left of my 3rd attempt at roasting coffee in my new SR500 air roaster that I got from Sweet Maria’s. I had never tried roasting coffee before. Now I have an idea of what roasters mean when they talk about “first crack” and “second crack.”

For my first batch, last Wednesday evening, I followed the manufacturer’s instructions exactly. The beans ended up a bit on the burnt side and oily on the outside. Whoever said you can’t get dark roasts with an air roaster? You can with this one. The instructions said to wait at least 3 hours before grinding and brewing, so I waited about 3 hours and 4 minutes. It was good, but there was a strange, burnt aftertaste that shouldn’t have been there. Surprisingly to me (though perhaps not to anyone else) that batch got better after it aged a day or so. But it’s all gone now.

I shortened the roasting time for the 2nd batch, and it ended up too light and too uneven. It’s drinkable, but not a favorite. Myra asked what the funny taste was. I haven’t offered her a 2nd cup.

She says I got it right on the 3rd batch (above). I got it by increasing fan speed and cutting the roast time not so much as for the previous batch. But as can be seen, it’s not as even a roast as it ought to be. Some beans are too light in color, and some are perhaps too dark.

Tom at Sweet Maria’s suggests that with the SR500 one should roast smaller batches to get more even roasts. Using the manufacturer’s measure, each batch is a litle more than a quarter-pound. If Tom is right that a 90 gram batch is about right, that means I can divide each one-pound bag of green beans into five equal portions.

At one time I wondered if I really wanted a roaster that couldn’t do more than 1/4 pound at a time, but now I’m glad I got the one I did. If I did bigger batches, it would take me too many days to drink them up and I wouldn’t have the fresh roasted beans which are the whole point of roasting one’s own. 90 gram batches ought to be about right for our household.

I got the 8-pound sampler with the roaster. My first experiments have been on the coffee labelled “Rwanda Gkongoro Nyarusiza”. The cup I had this afternoon had a bit of fruity taste to it. I went back to read Tom’s label on the bag: “…restrained acidity, sweet citrus, rose, tea-like flavors, floral brightness, medium body, dried orange peel.” Well, I can’t make all those specific tastes, but it did have a pleasantly surprising fruitiness that I hadn’t noticed on previous cups, or even on any other coffee.

Todd Purdum explains in Vanity Fair that Washington is “broken.” The presidency is under too much pressure. “The modern presidency … has become a job of such gargantuan size, speed, and complexity as to be all but unrecognizable to most of the previous chief executives,” Purdum writes.

…And there’s not enough time in the day for the president. Well, you’ve heard all this before. It’s the too-big-for-one-person excuse first trotted out decades ago to minimize the stumbling and bumbling of Jimmy Carter. It didn’t boost Carter’s approval rating, nor is it likely to jack up Obama’s. But come to think of it, that excuse has the ring of truth. The presidency was a job too big for Carter—and it may be for Obama as well.

Obama may be too inexperienced, and Carter may have been a malicious fool, but George W. Bush wasn’t exactly Mr. Competent, either. And do we really want a president who can master the monster our government has come? Wouldn’t that require someone of Stalinist powers and Clintonian inclinations? No, the presidency ought to be a job that can be handled by any of hundreds of honest and talented persons in the country.

Instead of using the current situation as an excuse to point out the relative incompetence of President Obama, we should instead be using it to point out that Purdum is right. Government is too “gargantuan” and “complex,” and it needs to be scaled back in size and scope so it doesn’t live or die by whoever is at the top. It needs to be able to function when the top office is occupied by those who are not quite the best and brightest among us.

Mitch McConnell: “”This isn’t ‘Saturday Night Live,’ Al,”

URL

Since the author had a chance to talk to this Michael Cohen, I wish she would have asked more questions about this “authority” that he thinks the FDA should have. Who would be compelled to do what? Who is supposed to be responsible to whom for a “plan?” After all, it’s not clear how a “plan” could help with any of the causes that the article lists. There are a whole lot of unanswered questions that need answers before we think about giving the FDA more power; otherwise it’s just another power grab.

Arizona’s new anti-immigration law, which goes into effect on July 29, has been a rallying point for many conservatives. It reinvigorated … (WSJ article by Alex Nowrasteh : “Arizona’s Immigration Surprises.”)

“Imagine what would have happened if we hadn’t taken a look at what happened with Shirley Sherrod and plumbed the depths further and found out that what had been posted on the internet was not in fact reflective of what she said.”

Imagine, he said. But it doesn’t take much imagination at all. There are any number of topics where the MSM have declined to take a close look and “plumb the depths.” That’s how President Obama can get by with some of his wild conspiracy theories, e.g. about how the economic crisis came about.

Think about what might happen if the MSM did investigate ObamaCare or the financial crisis, or the latest bank nationalization act. That’s something that requires a feat of imagination.

But what Ms Obama and the NAACP have failed to do, as far as I know, is praise the non-racist aspects of the tea parties. They wouldn’t have to agree with the political stands, but they should affirm the principle that we used to hear from liberals, e.g. back in John F Kennedy’s day: “We may disagree with what you say, but we will defend to the death your right to say it.”

That would allay any suspicions that it isn’t so much that the NAACP and Michelle Obama want to stop racism, but that they are trying to stifle dissent.

And I remembered one of the previous rounds of hysteria about spontaneous acceleration, back in the late 70s or early 80s. I wondered why they couldn’t come up with something a little more original this time.

Now arrives the vindication. It’s from an article in The Atlantic by Megan McArdle: “NHTSA: No, Toyotas Do Not Suddenly Accelerate Unless You Press the Accelerator“

I did an actual LOL on this paragraph:

Now the NHTSA, which is in charge of investigating this sort of thing, has released its report data on this round of SAIs. And while history may not repeat itself, it seems to stutter like hell:

And this was the best quote from the P.J. O’Rourke article that is reproduced in the article:

This was the most disheartening thing I ever heard in Washington. This was much worse than hearing about government malfeasance, incompetence and corruption. When it’s better for enthusiastic and ambitious professionals to go to work for a country’s government than it is for them to go to work, the country is in trouble . . .

It’s amazing that this article was written without a single reference to the census bureau scandals this year – overcounting the number of jobs created by census bureau hiring, and faking the data by filling out bogus questionnaires. With skills like that, the author is eligible to be a full-fledged journalist. Or she could get a job at the census bureau.

As far as I can tell, there were only two eras in economic history that were widely described as “depressions” at the time: the years of deflation and instability that followed the Panic of 1873 and the years of mass unemployment that followed the financial crisis of 1929-31.

What I question is why he didn’t include the depression of the 1890s in his count.    I don’t know if the word depression was used at the time, but people certainly realized they were in the middle of bad times that had begun with a panic in 1893,  just as a panic had resulted in a depression 20 years earlier. Surely Dr. Krugman has heard of Coxey’s army and the violent strikes of 1894.   The bad times were the subject of political debates at the time.   This depression is now considered the worst one prior to the 1930s.

I have a special interest in the 1890s depression because there is some family history about it.    My grandfather was just a kid then, but he used to tell me how his father, a small-town law enforcement officer, was charged with the duty of keeping hobos out of town.   There were a lot of homeless men riding the rails then, trying to pick up meals, odd jobs, and loose chickens wherever they could.    When I was little I would be surprised at how my grandfather, who I knew could ill afford it, would give away $5 to the traveling vagrant who would come into our yard and merely ask for it.  I remember asking for an explanation for such generosity, and that he had an answer, but I don’t remember what the answer was.  I do remember what he did and the tone of respect for the man who had asked.  Maybe it happened only one time that I knew of, but I got the idea that it would easily happen for any other hobo who asked.   I’ve since wondered if it had anything to do with the men his father, whom he greatly admired and with whom he was in conflict long after he was dead, would chase out of town in the 1890s.)

Come to think of it, I don’t know why Krugman didn’t count the depression of the late 1830s, either.    But if the word depression was only first used in the 1870s,  I don’t know why it wouldn’t have been used in the 1890s, too.

Maybe Krugman has an explanation but didn’t want to get bogged down with it in his article.   I’m just saying I’m not believing his scorekeeping without further evidence.