141–150 of 263 posts
Yet another lovely thing I'm sure I ingested when I grew up drinking tap water in New Orleans what with the Ohio being the biggest tributary to the Mississippi.
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Ford Motor Company Management 101
Actually, if we go by recent claims, GM is the winner (loser) here
Horrible. This is what's so scary about the free market and our current chemical regulations of innocent until proved guilty. People cover up, even the biggest most "professional" here (DuPont), and the public gets decades of abuse. Why is it that medication requires FDA approval with lots of animal/human tests before you can sell it, but chemicals do not? Here the tests internally done showed prove of issue year aft…
Free markets when supported by strong property rights can have strong protections to prevent harm or pollution. Non free markets, although regulated, don't necessarily perform better and can even perform worse in this regard. The FDA is a great example of an agency which often can be seen to work harder to protect the industry than the individual. For example, look up the story of Vioxx. A drug which killed 50k peopl…
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> Free markets when supported by strong property rights can have strong protections to prevent harm or pollution. Can someone explain how this is supposed to work? I don't mean to sound rude/biased but this sounds like one of those cases where the theory is sound but when it meets with reality we get unpredictable(and sometimes disastrous) results.
In Economics, the Coase Theorem[1] predicts close to this outcome, although it speaks to efficient outcomes and not necessarily harm reducing outcomes. When strong property rights exist (and it is feasible for all parties to negotiate), then parties may reach an efficient allocation of resources regardless of how the resources were initially allocated. To use a typical example, imagine a train track runs through a fa…
To modify the analogy to fit the real-world situation, it would be more like if there were a million train tracks going all over the place, and the sparks from each train falls on millions of wheat fields, such that everyone lives in a diffuse cloud of sparks, and no single fire can be blamed on any individual train, and the harm from any single train is relatively small, even though the collective effect is extremely damaging.
The Coase Theorem assumes that transaction costs are negligible. In a many-to-many situation like real-world pollution, transaction costs necessarily become prohibitively large, because you basically have a quadratic explosion of connections between polluters and victims (many of whom are also polluters!).
Take the number of vehicles in the field, (A), and multiply it by the probable rate of failure, (B), then multiply the result by the average out-of- court settlement, (C). A times B times C equals X...If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one. What applies to the Car Industry (via Dialogue from Fight Club) applies to the Chemical Industry in Spades. DuPont Knew (or strongly suspected) that C8 & (Teflon)…
But your point is correct - it's a cost of doing business. You put the cost of the cleanup and being sued against the cost of not polluting in the first place. Sadly this algebra is useful in externalizing hidden costs of pollution.
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Except doing that on a large scale would be super expensive.
Why? Typically, whenever you do something in the large scale, you can amortize the capital cost of the equipment to zero (economy of scale) and if the product is popular, inventors will come up with cheaper ways to run the manufacturing facility. That said, lasers do use lots of power so it will probably be marginally more expensive.
Maybe some day, but then "there is no need for potentially dangerous Teflon coating in 10-15 years" would be more appropriate.
Teflon has been known to be toxic for years. I'm not sure why "default trust" is a good position when dealing with companies like DuPont and Monsanto that have been caught lying to the public before. "Default suspicion" seems like the more cautious and logical approach here. It's been more than a decade since I cooked with Teflon. I use glass, stainless steel, cast iron, or ceramic/enamel (love that old original Corn…
I don't doubt all your other points, but why did you include this one?
Are you claiming that teflon-coated surfaces somehow add a taste, or demonstrably change the texture of the food cooked on it?
I've never understood the gravity of Teflon pans. I can never seem to keep them non-stick, whether it be because of using too high of heat or somehow scratch the damn thing. So, I got cast irons. It's trivial to keep them seasoned and thus non-stick, and they can take the beating of very high heat -- searing meats -- and any metal utensils or rough substances.
When you want something even more practical and nicer, step up to a Matfer or De Buyer carbon steel pan.
I've never understood the gravity of Teflon pans. I can never seem to keep them non-stick, whether it be because of using too high of heat or somehow scratch the damn thing. So, I got cast irons. It's trivial to keep them seasoned and thus non-stick, and they can take the beating of very high heat -- searing meats -- and any metal utensils or rough substances.
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How do you keep them seasoned? I tried a couple of times, but couldn't get it right. Could you give me some tips?
Serious Eats has a very comprehensive guide [1]. The short version is rub lightly with canola oil, put in hot oven for about 30 minutes. Take it out and oil again. Repeat 3-5 times. The only thing you need to avoid while cooking is overly acidic foods. If you try to make a tomato sauce in it you will see the seasoning flake off. That's not good, but is very easily fixed by repeating the above steps. To clean it, scou…