Prick With A Fork

Coming soon to a Coke can near you?

So while everyone, yours truly included, has got the howling fantods over New York Nanny-in-Chief Mike Bloomberg’s decision to ban big, sugary drinks — a wonderful illustration of the technocrat’s continuing faith in his own power over human nature, the market and, in this case, what actually causes people to get fat — down in Washington DC (not a city known for the encouragement of enterprise) the power of the free market has already come up with a work-around to a similar local idiocy.

It seems that in America’s capital, officials decided to ban the sale of single beers in shops. And beer sellers have figured out a clever way to avoid the ban. As the DCist reports:

But much like prohibition just pushed drinking underground, the ban on single beers has just led producers to slap two cans together and price them competitively. In Mount Pleasant, four of the five corner stores or bodegas on the main commercial strip sell two-packs. Head up 14th Street into Ward 4, and any number of markets offer twice the amount of alcohol for not twice the price of what single beers used to cost. (At Connecticut Avenue Wine and Liquor in Dupont Circle, which enjoys an exception, a single 24-ounce can of Bud retails for $2.75.)

The widespread availability and low price of the two-packs would seem to undermine the initial intention of the law, which was to cut down on the drinking of single beers and the inherent problems that legislators said came along with it. In fact, you could argue that it’s only made problems twice as bad — someone who might have enjoyed that 24-ounce can before is now likely to drink two of them, and, all other things being equal, get twice as drunk.

The Law of Unintended Consequences: It is to nanny-staters what the Laws of Newton are to Wile E. Coyote. A painful illustration of the consequences of hubris, and vastly entertaining to watch.

I look forward to something similar happening in the old hometown soon.

The Fairfax journalists’ walk-out may be only a day old, but despite assurances that the thing will be over soon there is every chance that the thing may stretch on for weeks or even months, like a less-stinky, more middle-class version of a Neapolitan garbage strike.

Having spent a fair bit of time in newsrooms over the years, I know how these things can go. So here’s your official Prick With a Fork insight in to how the action is likely to play out at Fairfax HQ:

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It’s kind of funny to think about, because it all seems so long ago, but for most of The Prick’s time in Australia, Bondi Junction was home, or actually, a number of homes: There was the run-down terrace owned by a prominent environmental campaigner who himself enjoyed harbour views from a palace in Vaucluse.

There was the tiny semi where the next door neighbours, Wayne, Lorraine and their daughter Charmaine (true story) would sit outside in the back yard from 11 in the morning until well after 11 at night getting drunk, arguing, and playing a CD of novelty songs over the outdoor speakers. I still cannot hear “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” without breaking out in hives.

There was the far (relatively speaking) grander semi that followed and, after various catastrophes and calamities and the receipt of walking papers, the high-rise chicken coop down the street to which The Prick beat a de Gaulle-like strategic retreat. Built by dodgy Russian developers, at least one of the two lifts was guaranteed to be broken at any given time.

And through it all was the Cock & Bull Hotel, which the Daily Telegraph reports is now selling steaks for the grand sum of … $0:

The Cock and Bull Hotel in Bondi Junction is now offering patrons a “$0” steak or schnitzel on Thursday nights, rising to $1 on Fridays.

But as they say there’s no such thing as a free lunch – and there’s no exception here.

To get your free steak you have to buy a drink for a least $4. If you want chips and salad as well you have to scratch around for another $1.70.

And if you want a sauce on top it’s another $1.50.

Yet even with the drink and trimmings, it’s still less money than you need to feed into the parking meter out the front of the pub for a two-hour stay.

 A friend who lived in the area when the Cock opened up tells the story of driving by, thinking, “Hey, I wonder if that’s really an authentic Irish pub?”, and, on cue, seeing the door swing open just as a fist met a chin.

“Yep, real Irish pub alright!”

I went in a few times over the years; it’s patronised almost entirely by homesick Irish backpackers. Once I went in when there was a band playing, and I realised they were singing an IRA anthem. I left before they started passing the hat for the Provos.

Another night a date and I struck up a conversation with the bouncer, a large, affable Islander who said that this was the only bar he’d ever worked where the patrons weren’t always on the make, because they were all too busy getting drunk. (At closing time, the cops rocked up to ensure an orderly departure).

In a state of penury, I think I once had a steak there, but it was, from recollection, shoe leather. How anyone could rate the place is beyond me.

But now, not even a free steak could lure the Prick back to that hole.

Given the title of this blog, you can imagine how squeamish we were when we read this story (which is really not safe for anybody):

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When you look at the post below by itself, you see a headline … but not from the home page. Can any WordPress mavens help a Prick out to fix that?

Via David Thompson, news that scientists have invented a super-slippery bottle coating ideal for ketchup and anything else that gets gluggy. A great idea, but one that may have been too long coming for its own good: When was the last time you bought ketchup in a glass bottle, and not one of those glug-eliminating plastic squeezy numbers? (Don’t get me wrong, I still prefer glass).

Still, cool video.

So I’m over at Kinokuniya browsing the cookbook section at lunch today when I notice a well-dressed young Asian woman flipping through a very large, very expensive volume, Nothing unusual about that, sure, but then this happened:

In case it’s not clear, she whipped her phone out and started shooting the recipes, presumably to take home and try later without having to go to the trouble of buying the book (and in the process contributing a small but fair share to the shop’s upkeep, the publisher’s paper bill, and the author’s mortgage). Amazingly, this was done in full sight of a security guard.

I had thought this was a pretty blatant case of intellectual property theft, but reactions of co-workers were mixed. Some were outraged, but others argued that, well, if she had a photographic memory and memorised the recipes, would that be stealing as well?

I still think it’s theft, and if the essence of a cookbook is its recipes, it’s not much different than her just stuffing the thing in her bag and walking out the door. Even if it’s not theft, it’s in very poor taste.

What do you think?

Slight foray from food to auto-blogging, but I just ran across this story in the Herald and had to run a few numbers:

Nissan has knocked back some customers interested in purchasing its first electric car, the Leaf, because they have been deemed “unsuitable” for ownership.

The plug-in electric vehicle officially hits the market on June 1, but interested customers need to pass a two-stage approval test before being issued with a certificate that will allow them to purchase the $51,500 car from one of Nissan’s special EV dealerships…

For customers who pass the two “toll gates” of the selection process, the car will retail for $51,500 (plus on-road and dealer costs). That includes a recharging cable, but not a wall-mounted recharging station.

A package including the telephone book-sized station adds a minimum of $2700 to the price, or more depending on the logistics involved in its installation.

So let’s get this straight: to buy one of the new all-electric Nissan Leaf automobiles in Australia, not only do you have to stump up over $50,000 (much more than what the same car costs in, say, the US), but you have to fill out a questionnaire about your driving habits (necessary or simply further breaking us to the harness?) and have your home’s electric supply vetted by Origin Energy before you get  a certificate to allow you to purchase one of the new low-range tax-guzzlers.

The question is, why would anyone do such a thing (so far, only 100 have elected to go through the process) when you could spare yourself the questionnaire and save about $30,000 in the process: a petrol-powered Nissan Tiida, which is basically the same car but with a proper engine, can be yours for under $20,000.

Assuming unleaded settles around $1.50 a litre, you can burn through 20,000 litres worth of fuel and still be ahead of the game economically against the Leaf.

At an advertised fuel efficiency of 7.6 liters per 100 km travel, that means for the price of a Leaf you can get a new car and 263,000 km – or 163,000 miles – free driving without a single recharge.

Or you could take the warm glow that comes from filling out a questionnaire.