Tag Archives: food

The Markel Opening Day Foodstravaganza

The Cards blew it on Opening Day, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t have a great time, and I think we’ve just established a new tradition here at the Markel household. There’s no possible way I was going to be able to get tickets for all six of us to go, so we had to be creative and figure out a way to have some fun while staying home during the game.

The first step is to act like a real St. Louisan and immerse yourself in the game and the festivities which surround it as early in the day as possible. This means turning on the news, because every TV stations’ news crews here were all down at the ballpark where they belong. If you want to do something heinous in St. Louis and escape media attention, Opening Day is a pretty good choice in terms of timing. A good high speed chase or even a political scandal would be a good choice.

The next step is to make sure you have access to watching the game. Thanks to a fluke of the Internet and my subscription to MLB.tv, this is not a problem, blackout restrictions or no. We were unable to verify this until just before the game was to start. Needless to say, I was holding my breath, but I would have listened to it on the radio, even if I would have had to withstand the incomparable verbal diarrhea of Mike Shannon.

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Who Owns the Korean Taco? (via Freakonomics)

From a copyright perspective, cuisine is a lot like fashion. Recipes are unprotected by copyright, and so anyone can copy another’s recipe. Actual dishes—the “built food” you order in a restaurant—can also be copied freely. And as anyone who has eaten a molten chocolate cake or miso-glazed black cod knows, popular and innovative dishes do seem to migrate from restaurant to restaurant. The bottom line is that almost anything creative a chef does—short of writing the menu, which is protected by law—can be copied by another chef.

As readers of our past posts know, the conventional wisdom says that in a system like this no one should innovate. Copyright’s raison d’etre is to promote creativity by protecting creators from pirates. But in the food world, pirates are everywhere. By this logic, we ought to be consigned to uninspired and traditional food choices. In short, the Korean taco should not exist.

But the real world does not follow this logic. In fact, we live in a golden age of cuisine.

The article is a good read. Apparently, not having copyright can encourage continual innovation. Who knew? :)

(via Who Owns the Korean Taco? – Freakonomics Blog – NYTimes.com.)