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The Masters pimento cheese sandwich scandal

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21–30 of 98 posts

Re: The Masters pimento cheese sandwich scandal

#21

If you actually get invited to join, Augusta is also materially less expensive than most ultra exclusive golf clubs. https://www.liveabout.com/augusta-national-membership-156354...

> If you actually get invited to join

being the key part. Augusta has 300 members. Rest assured you won't be one of them even if you manage to scrape together the initiation fee.

Re: The Masters pimento cheese sandwich scandal

#22

What we do have, however, is a lifelong Masters patron and Augusta food blogger who wasn’t above reverse-engineering the ingredients list from the back of the wrapper in 2016. It’s an imitation of an imitation of an approximation... That's such a delightful description. When a new building is constructed, he says, it simply appears the day of the tournament’s opening, already inexplicably covered in vines. (Insert jo…

> tossing a rock across the river

Rivers can be miles wide. That's actually the norm in a lot of people's experiences.

Where I am from, "tossing a rock across the river" would be taken to mean something that's impossible.

Re: The Masters pimento cheese sandwich scandal

#23

I was lucky enough to go to the Masters in 1999, and 2014 and the change was remarkable. The 1999 course was very quaint and secluded, with the facilities mostly temporary structures. You parked in peoples front yards for $25 a day, and yes the food was great, yet cheap. Fast forward to 2014 and it's like the place had become a major sports park. Suddenly the houses are gone and you're parking in a huge field, going…

It's sad, because it doesn't have to be commercialized. That same event from 1999 is still entirely doable, but someone decided that profits must be made, as opposed to hosting a challenging competition of the sport's top players.

"That same event from 1999 is still entirely doable"

For better or worse, no it's not. If you tried to have the same event today, it would be flooded with far more people than were there in 1999. Demand has gone up. Some of the mentioned changes are just to accommodate that; for instance, as more people show up, you're going to need more security because the odds of someone needing to be removed go steadily up.

Re: The Masters pimento cheese sandwich scandal

#24
post #22

What we do have, however, is a lifelong Masters patron and Augusta food blogger who wasn’t above reverse-engineering the ingredients list from the back of the wrapper in 2016. It’s an imitation of an imitation of an approximation... That's such a delightful description. When a new building is constructed, he says, it simply appears the day of the tournament’s opening, already inexplicably covered in vines. (Insert jo…

> tossing a rock across the river Rivers can be miles wide. That's actually the norm in a lot of people's experiences. Where I am from, "tossing a rock across the river" would be taken to mean something that's impossible.

OP used his own version of a stone’s throw away. It’s farther away than a Hop, Skip, and, a Jump but not as close as spitting distance.

Still not sure if a Hop, Skip, and a Jump is closer or father away than something you wouldn’t touch with a 10 foot pole.

Re: The Masters pimento cheese sandwich scandal

#25
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the lesson for HN readers is that if you're going to fire your best talent, make sure they document everything well ahead of time.

It's more like source code, but anyway the vendor was presumably under contract which did not include divulging the recipe. I wonder if they could have sued to recover the recipe as a "work for hire", where typically the employer is the owner of the work product. The law covers "instructional text" which sounds like a recipe to me. https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf It depends on the nature of the original ag…

In the case of the original sandwich maker, Rangos, clearly not. He was making his pimento cheese and selling it in his store before the Masters ever hired him.

In the case of the second sandwich maker, Godfrey, who replaced Rangos and developed his pimento cheese recipe for the Masters, probably not.

First of all, work for hire concerns who owns the copyright to something and recipes are not subject to copyright.

It is possible, though, that there is some expression in the way that he wrote the recipe that could be copyrighted, so let's say the Masters wants to make a work for hire argument that they own the copyright of that.

To be a work for hire, something must either be (1) made by an employee within the scope of their employment, or (2) fall into one of several categories and be declared a work for hire by the parties in a written instrument signed by them.

It doesn't sound like the pimento cheese provider is an employee of the Masters. He sounds more like a contractor. That would take out #1 of the two ways something could be a work for hire.

As far as #2 goes, first they have to explicitly have said in their signed written contract that the expression of the recipe will be a work for hire. That seems unlikely.

But let us say they did, and let us assume that the particular expression of the recipe counts as an instructional text. Let's say that means that the Masters owns the copyright on that particular expression of the underlying, uncopyrighted, recipe.

So what?

That just means they get to stop people from making and distributing copies of that text. It doesn't give them any power to compel someone who has a copy to turn it (or a copy of it) over to them.

Re: The Masters pimento cheese sandwich scandal

#26
post #12

I was lucky enough to go to the Masters in 1999, and 2014 and the change was remarkable. The 1999 course was very quaint and secluded, with the facilities mostly temporary structures. You parked in peoples front yards for $25 a day, and yes the food was great, yet cheap. Fast forward to 2014 and it's like the place had become a major sports park. Suddenly the houses are gone and you're parking in a huge field, going…

It's happened to greater or lesser degrees with a lot of events. The Head of the Charles (big rowing event in Cambridge MA) is still fairly casual with people watching from bridges and along the rivers. But it's commercialized a lot in the past 20 or 25 years. There are now a ton of sponsor booths on the Cambridge side of the river. And rather than groups from colleges setting up wherever, they're now in a big roped…

Is it perhaps just the natural lifecycle of events? An evolution from a joke to quaint to corporate to decline

Re: The Masters pimento cheese sandwich scandal

#27
post #22

What we do have, however, is a lifelong Masters patron and Augusta food blogger who wasn’t above reverse-engineering the ingredients list from the back of the wrapper in 2016. It’s an imitation of an imitation of an approximation... That's such a delightful description. When a new building is constructed, he says, it simply appears the day of the tournament’s opening, already inexplicably covered in vines. (Insert jo…

> tossing a rock across the river Rivers can be miles wide. That's actually the norm in a lot of people's experiences. Where I am from, "tossing a rock across the river" would be taken to mean something that's impossible.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/201...

https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/34400/how-... -- Potentially 60 miles, if you consider The Florida Everglades to be a slow moving river.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Average-water-depth-m-an... This site lists 30m as "average" for river width. No clue what rivers they were measuring.

https://opb.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/buac35-sci-riverwi...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River

It seems there is no readily available canned answer for average river width and I've already grown bored with this rabbit hole. Note to self: Vernacular measures unwelcome on HN.

Re: The Masters pimento cheese sandwich scandal

#28
So was the secret ingredient... the tiny amount of finely minced fresh onion?

Looking at the final recipe they came up with, that's the only one that seems like you might not guess.

Garlic powder is the only other non-standard ingredient, but I feel like whenever you're looking for the "missing secret ingredient" in a savory dish, garlic powder, onion powder and mustard powder are the first things you'd think of, along with MSG and very occasionally nutmeg or pickles/pickle juice. (While paprika can only be secret in darkly colored dishes, otherwise you can see its specks.)

Re: The Masters pimento cheese sandwich scandal

#29
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's happened to greater or lesser degrees with a lot of events. The Head of the Charles (big rowing event in Cambridge MA) is still fairly casual with people watching from bridges and along the rivers. But it's commercialized a lot in the past 20 or 25 years. There are now a ton of sponsor booths on the Cambridge side of the river. And rather than groups from colleges setting up wherever, they're now in a big roped…

Is it perhaps just the natural lifecycle of events? An evolution from a joke to quaint to corporate to decline

Lifecycles vary but that's probably a reasonable description for a lot of events. Certainly, once an event is very corporate there are a lot of forces acting to keep it going long past its sell-by date.

That said, long-lived events can stay volunteer efforts.

Re: The Masters pimento cheese sandwich scandal

#30

So was the secret ingredient... the tiny amount of finely minced fresh onion? Looking at the final recipe they came up with, that's the only one that seems like you might not guess. Garlic powder is the only other non-standard ingredient, but I feel like whenever you're looking for the "missing secret ingredient" in a savory dish, garlic powder, onion powder and mustard powder are the first things you'd think of, alo…

freshly minced onion does wonders in more than a few recipes, it certainly can add that final kick to tartar sauce if not any recipe with a good creamy base. you don't even need to add much.
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