The urban density math of snow plowing

I caught this piece today that said 25% of Detroit's streets were plowed a day after the city's biggest snowfall since 1974. Whether or not that's good or bad here's another way to look at it.

Detroit has 1,884 miles of residential side streets and about 700,000 residents. That means every resident has to pay for about 14 feet of plowing.

New York City has 6,000 miles of streets and 8.4 million people. Even though that measure includes all roads, not just residential side streets, the fact that there are so many more people means big per capita savings. Each New York City resident only has to pay for 4 feet of plowing—over a 70% savings.

It's just a reminder of the uphill battle depopulated cities like Detroit have. The people leave but the streets don't go away.

Detroit can't copy New York's density but they might want to borrow one of its tricks that can create savings. The Big Apple owns very few plow trucks. Instead they just mostly stick plows on garbage trucks, like in the picture above. 

Sharing = creativity

A structural look at innovation. Hat tip to Nicole R.

Aaron Draplin designs a logo in fifteen minutes.

Aaron Draplin Takes On a Logo Design Challenge from lynda.com on Vimeo.

Hat tip to Joseph R.

Recent Reading, Screwed up animal husbandry edition

Imagine it was your job to Frankenstein animals? A horror story about breeding animals that sounds like science fiction except it's done with your tax dollars.

"If, thanks to an experimental inspection program, a meatpacking firm produces as much as two tons a day of pork contaminated by fecal matter, urine, bile, hair, intestinal contents or diseased tissue, should that count as a success?" The kind of problems you get when you let the meat industry regulate itself.

Foie gras is for assholes. Mark Bittman makes the totally valid point that any furor about lifting the California foie gras ban is totally misplaced. Foie gras from force fed ducks is small potatoes. It's the rest of our animal husbandry sytem in America that's cruel, and it's on an epic scale.

Recent reading, chicken edition

 

First the depressing story. A farmer that opened up their farm to reporters and was transparent about how he raises chickens. Now his only customer, Perdue, will probably shut him down for it.

But not all chicken stories end badly.  People complain about pricey food being elitist and out-of-touch. Being a merchant of that kind of food I know that can be the case (hopefully not the case with much of what I sell, since there should be a good reason for the expense). But here's an example of how higher prices have made chickens live better lives—and helped prevent antibiotic resistant organisms from growing. The story is the government asked chicken farmers to go antibiotic free. But because antibiotic-free chicken sales grew 34% last year many did it before the deadline.

Recent Reading on Poverty and Wealth in America

Tipped workers are more than twice as likely to live in poverty. 

Give everyone in America $11,395. A totally radical — yet possible — way to end poverty in America that will never happen.

How do you think wealth is distributed in America? Hint: it's not even close to being as fair as you think it is. (Caveat: the speaker sometimes uses the words "income" and "wealth" interchangeable but they're very different. Income is the money you make. It's a flow. Income comes in this year, and some of it leaves as expenses. Wealth is what you own. You can make a million dollars this year but have zero wealth. Conversely, a good saver — or a person who inherits wealth — can have little income but lots of wealth.)

Who are our oldest food makers?

Sam Edwards' ham house in Virginia peanut country.

I've been working on a spread for next spring's catalog about the oldest companies we work with. Some have been around for decades, some for centuries. We even have one that's a millennium old this year. It's been an interesting experience to think about them more deeply, bringing up lots of questions. Like, why are they still around? More importantly, how are they still around and making great food? How much did they have to change along the way? Who decided what to change and what not to change? How did they transition when their founder left the business? I ran across this article about why there are so many old companies in Japan that explains how traditional firms like Nintendo manage succession (these days it's often done by the owner adopting an adult into the family to run the business—a surprise to me).

Some of our venerable food makers and the year they got in business:

1014 Castello di Cacchiano olive oil in Tuscany

1731 Amarelli licorice in Cosenza

1880 Usinger liverwurst in Milwaukee Wisconsin 

1898 Rizzoli anchovies in Parma Italy

1900 Cope's corn in Rheems Pennsylvania

1900 Roi olive oil and sauces in Badalucco Italy

1903 Raye's mustard in Eastport Maine

1909 Broadbent cured meats in Kuttawa Kentucky

1925 Koeze peanut butter in Grand Rapids Michigan

1926 Martelli pasta in Lari Italy

1926 Edwards cured meats in Surry Virginia

1947 Benton's cured meats in Madisonville, Tennessee