> PS: instant mash (mashed potato) was portrayed as "the future" > several decades ago. The stuff tasted like shite but started > appearing everywhere ... well, in our school dinners anyway <G> > because "we couldn't tell the difference" (quote attributable to > many). > > The fact was, the early adopters didn't look too hard at the quality, > only the convenience. I simply do not agree with them terrible instant taters. Tonight I delayed dinner so I could smash some spuds rather than use instant. Quite good, with garlic, chives; heavy cream, and a pinch of salt. Smashed is clearly better than instant. If they could have produced these instant food-like alternatives in 1850, we would have had them long before now. Perhaps fresh food would have gone away like film seems to be going these days. Speaking of instant abominations, did any of you ever use the Polavision Instant Movie System? I have a theory. We all know about leather vehicle interiors. Expensive to do; plastics and synthetics are cheaper, so leather is not as widely used these days. We hear old farts talking about how in their day, manufacturers used leather because they knew what quality was. My theory is, if Ford and all the rest had cheap alternatives that looked like leather, they would probably have used those alternatives. The bottom line has always been important. It is not just leather; many things can be substituted and the argument probably holds. We hear about hand made vs. machine made and how hand made was better. Fact is, if the technology (water-jet cutters, NC, and other modern technology) existed, they would have probably used it. It is interesting to note we once installed a very expensive machine built in Germany, by Grohmann Engineering . This vastly expensive machine was developed for us to automate the production of PCMCIA modems, NIC cards, and Ethernet cards. We thought production costs would drop if humans did not touch the product. All that machine produced was rework and a couple of people could produce more products in the same amount of time. Bob
