Steven Foster thoughts

October 12, 2006 3:50 AM

Steven Foster is the perfect bartender. He wants to share his ontology, his reflections on what it means to be happy, bird aquariums, how to make margarita mix from scratch, solutions to the world's five most pressing problems [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or just read the summary on every page towards the bottom], and more drink recipes than you can shake a stick at. This man delivers.
posted by trinarian (20 comments total)

Problem 6: His website.
posted by lemonfridge at 5:30 AM on October 12, 2006

Yea, that's pretty much unreadable in firefox.
posted by octothorpe at 5:39 AM on October 12, 2006

works in my Firefox [1.5.07], though the design is pretty weird on purpose. at least i think the strange alignments are on purpose.
posted by trinarian at 5:56 AM on October 12, 2006

not to be confused with Stephen Foster. (doo-da, doo-da...)
posted by ab3 at 5:57 AM on October 12, 2006

just to throw it out there:

this really is best of web to me. there's just something about the quirkiness, thoroughness, and pre-blog homepagedness of the site without even a trace of irony that is extremely appealing. I found it today trying to figure out how to make a margarita in a country without on-the-shelf mix and spent an hour going through it. that said, i could see how it wouldn't appeal to everyone.
posted by trinarian at 6:03 AM on October 12, 2006

I would take issue with his margarita recipe. They key issue is that limes vary so much in sweetness that you should sweeten to taste.
posted by StickyCarpet at 6:09 AM on October 12, 2006

Looking through his recipes I was immediately struck by the obvious - He's never actually tried any of these. The vast majority of them would be absolutely vile. These are drink recipes that appear to have been created by randomly combining ingredients. And many of the ingredients seem to have been made up.
posted by Ragma at 6:17 AM on October 12, 2006

Problem 6: His website.

Nope, if you scroll down on the page, he's already got another problem.

6th Problem - Having to Die is a problem.
Whether something can be done, has degrees of probability. On the probability whether its possible to recreate something that already exists, I would think there is a good probability of that. If we could put all that the brain is into a computer and it into a robotic body, we could live almost forever. Whether when we die, we go to a better place or we just die, each has a degree of probability. For the first time in our history, we can think of overcoming death. What could be more of a goal for the human race.

Which would make his website the seventh problem.
posted by JParker at 6:27 AM on October 12, 2006

5th - A lions delusion,
A lion is at the top of the food chain.
He kills and eats what he wants and
nothing kills him.
Thinking the Jungle must
all have been made for him.

One cannot begin to count the problems with this website.

Great find trinarian.
posted by three blind mice at 7:32 AM on October 12, 2006

Sticky: crap... I was planning on using the margarita recipe for an End of the World party this weekend [with nukes going off next door and all]. Any better suggestions on how to make the mix from scratch?
posted by trinarian at 7:48 AM on October 12, 2006

trinarian: Mix your tequila, triple sec (cointreau), and fresh lime juice. Make a simple syrup with hot water and sugar. In a tasting glass add the syrup to the mixture until it's just a little too sweet, then add a bit less proportionally to the whole batch.
posted by StickyCarpet at 7:59 AM on October 12, 2006

Oh, and add crushed ice instead of water to dilute if desired.
posted by StickyCarpet at 8:01 AM on October 12, 2006

And, finally, proportions of the first 3 ingredients can range from 1:1:1, to 1.5:.5:1, depending on your preference.
posted by StickyCarpet at 8:12 AM on October 12, 2006

Limeade MIX? Blasphemy!

I'm with SC on this. Nothing but fresh squeezed lime juice will work---it's the sourness that cuts and tames the Tequila flavor. Triple sec to sweeten, and a half decent Tequila. 1-1-1. Plenty of ice to dilute, chill, drink. Easy, except for squeezing all the limes. When you buy then, don't concern yourself with the a flawless deep green exterior, instead pick them by weight--heavy means juicy.
posted by tula at 9:38 AM on October 12, 2006

I don't know what's most frightening, the awful site design & English, the recipes, or his 2nd solution: "Wasteful and bad decisions our government makes is a problem. My solution is government financed blackberry phones for every one.
With information sent to phones on decisons that our country
needs to make. Everyone gets a vote on what our country does and is." Yeah, that'll fix everything. Have another margarita.
posted by Tubes at 9:55 AM on October 12, 2006

Direct democracy rocks, margaritas or not. Who needs Congress?

Getting interrupted four times a day by a buzzer in my pocket that asks "Increase welfare funding 10 percent and give the Syrian reconstruction project to Halliburton (Y/N)." would damn-well REDEFINE democracy. Ignore the ones you don't care about. Some people would be keeners. Some slackers. So what.

It's so obviously what democracy should be that grandkids would be goggle-jawed over today's whole nonsense "representative" thing. Senators? Congressmen? To do WHAT? You already know what you want to vote for... those guys did it FOR you?

(N.B.: yeah, I know. Breaking up Diebold may be a pre-requisite to getting the thing to work.)
posted by j-dub at 10:18 AM on October 12, 2006

Yeah, it would be great if we could boil all of society's problems down to 200 character text messages that we could digest on the fly and then vote on. Except that everybody would vote for benefits and social programs and against taxes, and then we would look like Europe it would not take long for us to spend ourselves into oblivion.
posted by JParker at 11:31 AM on October 12, 2006

Ooh, let's do that!
posted by sonofsamiam at 11:40 AM on October 12, 2006

The general public would be WORSE than elected representatives w/r/t fiscal responsibility? You think those clowns read 200 characters of the EXISTING bills they vote on?

Hard to imagine. Now back to drinking...
posted by j-dub at 3:20 PM on October 12, 2006

Except that everybody would vote for benefits and social programs and against taxes, and then we would look like Europe it would not take long for us to spend ourselves into oblivion.

I find this notion that Europe is somehow full of out-of-control spending caused by welfare most amusing. Comparing public debt as a % of GDP,

Germany 	67.30
France 	 	66.20
United States 	64.70
Netherlands 	52.70
Sweden 	 	50.40
United Kingdom 	43.10
Spain 	 	42.90

The major difference being that Europe has free health care, and America enjoys half of the world's military expediture.
posted by MetaMonkey at 12:31 AM on October 13, 2006