g.johnson

Does Not Compute.

See. Academic philosopher talk.

It's philosopher talk. Don't, whatever you do, mention hermeneutics.

Something with walnuts and raisins.

but wilfrid's not suggesting comparing the same meal at different times. he's suggesting 2 people comparing the same meal at the same time. unless you're not referring to my use of "subjective," in which case i'll just shut up. all this talk of diwan, i think i'll go for lunch. I think Jason was suggesting that the different reactions to Diwan were due to different people's subjective preferences. But if Toby and I can have different responses at different times, that seems unlikely.

It's not a question of subjectivity. Toby and I have both posted on things we liked at the banquet but found poor on a second visit. Edit: And I don't want to see any smart arse philosopher question whether I was sure I really liked it on the first visit or whether I was really eating the same stuff.

I don't think it's the tasting menu vs. carte that's the problem. Even things that I'd liked at the banquet -- the beggars purse in particular -- were poor on the second visit.

The latter. Loved the banquet. Found it average on a repeat.

That's the bit without which we can't get much further. Tommy, the knife storage thread looks pretty safe. I was thinking of mentioning the lack of complexity in Korean magnetic holders.

The overall population of Thais doesn't matter if most of them open restaurants.

Victorian Churchmen certainly shared the horror of sex common at the time but they seem to have lived in some splendor -- see Trollope. During the Enlightenment (if that's what you mean by the preceding era) they were positively sybaritic. Read Tristram Shandy. Do you have any evidence that the CoE was ever censorious of the pleasures of the table? Englishmen are horribly inept lovers, of course, but our enormous genitals more than compensate.

I'm out of my historical depth but I don't think the Church of England was a monolithic organization*. There were numerous different factions during and after the Civil War. The site you found makes it clear that the Puritans thought that the hierarchy of the CoE was corrupt. But they lost. You should remember that the most holy sacrament of the CoE is afternoon tea. *It's certainly not the case that the CoE was controlled by Charles II -- his father had tried to do that and lost his head as a consequence.

Is it not true? I'm not sure it is true, though I'm no historian. In attitude and doctrine the Church of England has always been closer to Roman Catholicism than to the grim Calvinism of continental Europe. The Pilgrim Fathers left England after the restoration (initially for Holland, I think) because they disapproved of the licentiousness of the country under Charles II. Though I can think of literary examples of the worldly ecclesiastics (Jonathan Swift, Laurence Sterne, characters in Trollope and Dickens), I can't, off the top of my head, think of any ascetics. Even Casaubon, though a pedant and a boor, keeps a good table.

"Heaven is eating pate de foie gras to the sound of trumpets." The Reverend Sydney Smith 1771-1845

You're new around here, aren't you?

So much for the bloody EU, then.

We had a very good meal in The Hague about 20 years ago in a restaurant called Les Parapluies. And the Indonesian restaurants are good.

Someone has to sweep up all the small furry animals who have sacrificed their lives for science.

If I did that, I'd be out of a job.

1606 WARNER Alb. Eng. cii. 403 Flesh so proudlie stout That but as in a Labyrinth elaboureth about. You expect me to be able to cure cancer and spell? Bloody ingrate.

Can't mashed potatoes be held for a while over a water bath? Wouldn’t that be easier?

Spain's low country possessions split in 1579. The Protestant northern provinces signed the Union of Utrecht, won their independence from Spain and became the Netherlands. The Catholic southern provinces didn't join the Union and remained under Spanish, and later French, rule. Those southern states only became an independent country, Belgium, in 1831.

More whale meat. A former colleague had it somewhere in Scandinavia. He compared it to beef as I recall.

This is a man who sells you raw pea pods. You expect elabouration?

Not if the round sheet was exactly the size of the tea bag. Edit: It's because of ideas like this that scientists are held in awe by ordinary mortals.