Seth's Blog

At the Fancy Food Show, Kriss Harvey, a pastry chef and frozen dessert solutions specialist, served me a spoonful of powdered chocolate ice cream, his invention. It looked like chocolate ice cream but it tasted unlike any ice cream (or any food) I’ve ever had. It was there and not there. It was in my mouth and then it was gone. It was the most ethereal food I’ve ever had.

We had been talking about El Bulli, the Spanish restaurant of experimental food. Two friends of Mr. Harvey’s had worked there one summer and had come back complaining about the food (rabbit ears) and the workload. Just because people will pay a lot for your unusual food doesn’t mean you are advancing things, said Mr. Harvey. Maybe your food doesn’t taste very good. He pointed to a certain now-forgotten fad among New York dessert chefs a few years ago. That’s fashion, I said; it has a perfectly good purpose (to support experimentation). Then Mr. Harvey served me his powdered ice cream. Which was more memorable and impressive than anything I had at Alinea, an American version of El Bulli.

By this: Did he tell good stories? Did he tell stories that actually supported his points? This is hard to fake. It was easy for Dr. Eileen Consorti to tell me that studies existed to support her surgery recommendation but — the hard part — she never supplied those studies, probably because they don’t exist. Pronouncements are easy, stories hard. It’s easy to say X and Y (“we will . . . this is a time of  . . . “) but if X and Y are just wishful thinking it won’t be easy to come up with a decent story — or any story — that supports them. If Obama understands how the world works, he should be able to tell stories that support his views.

Lyndon Johnson was a great politician and an excellent storyteller. Presidents since Johnson have been worse politicians and worse storytellers. Obama’s current popularity may reflect something in us rather than something in him. Right after 9/11 George W. Bush enjoyed enormous popularity. His speeches at that time, at least those I heard, contained no stories, which I think revealed that he understood little or nothing about the situation. (I would have told stories about overreaction.) The dismal outcome was foreshadowed. His popularity at the time was due to something in us, not something in him.

More The speech contained about one-quarter of a story. My expectations are hereby lowered.

Lack of stories at a high school graduation.

Today, at the Fancy Food Show in San Francisco, I learned about Golden Star White Jasmine Sparkling Tea, the most new interesting product at the show (out of thousands). I asked the CEO, Edward Carden, how it came to be. He said he was helping his parents move several years ago when he thought: Why isn’t there a sophisticated non-alcoholic beverage? Like wine, but non-alcoholic. Starting with the best ingredients, what could they come up with? They could make stuff that tasted great, but there was an arbitrariness to it. Making a tea allowed them to connect with that heritage. Wine has a heritage, beer has a heritage, cheese has a heritage. They start by infusing tea leaves, then add sugar and microorganisms and ferment for a short time to develop complexity of flavor. The fermentation produces a small alcohol content. Call it a microwine. It was delicious.

Jane Jacobs said that one measure of a healthy economy is the choice it provides. A healthy economy provides abundantly at affordable prices; an unhealthy economy does not. Another sign of economic health, she said, is innovation: A healthy economy includes a constant stream of new products — nothing lasts forever. People in Norway are far richer than people in China right now, but what will Norwegians do when the oil runs out?

In contrast, my Beijing shopping revealed that Chinese entrepreneurs have been able to develop products that the rest of the world will want to buy.

1. Electric bikes. They’re everywhere in Beijing. They cost $200-$400 and a few cents per mile, far cheaper than gas. I would have brought one back to Berkeley but inability to fix it stopped me.

2. Keyboard covers for laptops. Transparent silicone plastic. Easy to clean. How did I live without one? These are a new product in Beijing, actually, but they are very cheap, about $1. I can find them for sale on the internet for about $15.

3. Cordless floor sweepers. They use a rotating brush to clean the floor instead of a air pump, as a vacuum cleaner does. That they are cordless makes them very easy to use. In Beijing they are obvious and attractive; I bought two and brought one back to Berkeley. In America I’d never seen them for sale but after I knew they existed I managed to find an unattractive one in Berkeley hidden deep in a hardware store. The price (about $50) was roughly the same in Beijing and Berkeley, except the Beijing models are much nicer.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that all three products are “environmental” broadly conceived. Beijing air is dirtier than Berkeley air; my keyboard cover and my floors get dirty a lot faster in Beijing than in Berkeley. I think they are a sign of hugely-important things to come — China inventing and selling the products we need for a cleaner world. It’s been called the next industrial revolution; a better name would be the second half of the industrial revolution in which we clean up the mess left by the first half. As Jane Jacobs often said, the problem is not too many people, the problem is the undone work.

• self-experiment about sleeping much less
• economics of yoga
• Guess the CME (Continuing Medical Education) Sponsor (psychiatry)