Comments on: Household Hub

By: pru

pru — Fri, 24 Oct 2003 16:21:55 +0000

Not even sure what a blog is but the 8k fridge is what brought me to this disscussion, I think it’s the cats pajammas. But then I live in a wireless networked house. Can’t get enough gadgets. Looking forward to the day my future shock fridge reminds me the Sell by Date in the salad dressing is about to go off and that it’s pre-ordered the milk. The best

By: irritant

irritant — Thu, 07 Aug 2003 02:27:51 +0000

Adriana: So those who do not describe themselves as Libertarians in your posse, what monikers do they use?

By: Matt Weiner

Matt Weiner — Fri, 11 Jul 2003 21:40:17 +0000

avedon—Funny. I don’t spend nearly as much time in the kitchen as I might because my fridge is very noisy and, when cycling, drowns out the music that I’m constantly playing.* And, back when I had a roommate, urgent notes were always left on the dustcover of the turntable—not only were they bound to be noticed there, but they had to be dealt with before you put a record on. (Hopefully the troll isn’t going to pick on the fact that I still listen to LPs. Buy ‘em at a good used record store and they’re cheaper.) *Currently: veggie, by food.

By: Mary Kay

Mary Kay — Fri, 11 Jul 2003 02:57:21 +0000

We recently moved into a house which has one of those fancy refrigerators whose doors are made to look like the cabinets, i.e. they’re wood. I had quite a collection of refrigerator magnets and cool pictures and cartoons and things on the fridge in our old house. I was disappointed. Not to weep however, the market has solved my problem. You can now buy metal bulletin boards. One of which, designed to use both pins and magnets, now hangs over the hall desk. MKK

By: JP

JP — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 05:20:47 +0000

I think David Brooks discussed the anthropology of refrigerators in Bobos in Paradise. Not necessarily with insight, however.

By: Avedon

Avedon — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 00:05:50 +0000

I just want to announce that I am really annoyed to see that there appears to be no space between the periods and the next sentence in your comments. I believe this should be corrected as soon as possible before the Punctuation Police start taking people away.

By: Avedon

Avedon — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 00:03:54 +0000

All this puts me in mind of old feminist discussions of building a house so that the kitchen is its center – therefore, even if Mom is in the kitchen, she’s still in close contact with whatever is going on in the rest of the house. Of course, this assumes that the rest of the family isn’t hiding in their room, but those were the days when people were mostly clustering around the TV. My mom put a TV on the breakfast bar and brought everyone inside the kitchen with her. In my house, I tried leaving notes on the fridge, but my beloved partner quickly learned to ignore them. Now I put Post-It notes on the TV screen.

By: Jonquil

Jonquil — Wed, 09 Jul 2003 17:17:40 +0000

What was the functional substitute for the fridge in Victorian households?) I know of three: the larder, the root cellar, and the icebox. The larder (British) and the root cellar (American) were special rooms in the basement that were earth-sheltered and thus cooler than the surrounding air. The icebox contained (duh) ice, which was delivered regularly by the iceman. Many New England villages made money in the wintertime by sawing ice out of frozen ponds and rivers, packing it in sawdust, and shipping it to hotter climes. The icebox survived well into the 20th century. My 72-year-old father remembers a square card that you put in the window; the top side indicated whether you needed no ice, 10 pounds, and so on. When you wanted to cool a drink, you chipped ice off the block with an icepick. And, of course, you didn’t store perishables for weeks on end. My mother-in-law lived in an apartment in Paris in the ‘60s that didn’t have any refrigeration at all; it was assumed that you marketed every day. There was one wire cage in the window that you could use to keep eggs and milk cool for a day, two at most.

By: Edward Hugh

Edward Hugh — Wed, 09 Jul 2003 12:52:14 +0000

A lot of the comments are reminscent of anecdotal stuff on the chilled water dispenser in the american enterprise. With one difference: the fridge has now replaced those grotesque holiday snaps. In the 50s they were black and white, sixties slide shows, 80’s videos. Today, perhaps due to time constraints, such narratives are reduced to a collection of magnetised pins stuck on the fridge door. On Aphrael’s point, maybe the dynamic is computer-fridge-computer, a process, I suspect well known to Brad and Daniel too – how to put on weight, effortlessly. Incidentally, maybe the interesting social history would be that of ice. Round here – in Catalonia – many villages had underground vaults where water was frozen in winter and rationed-out in summer. In the city people would go the round of the houses selling ice in summer. And ice had a lot of uses. My wife’s parents were born in the mountains, far from running water and electricity, if anyone had an accident they used ice to staunch the blood flow to give time for the doctor to arrive. Meanwhile I’ve just banged a load of cubes in a mug to make an ice-coffee, it’s stiffling in here.

By: Guessedworker

Guessedworker — Wed, 09 Jul 2003 08:15:24 +0000

At last, Dan, a truly Durkheimian comment.

By: Dan Simon

Dan Simon — Wed, 09 Jul 2003 07:45:23 +0000

Did it ever occur to you how hurtful all this discussion of “moral centers” might be to those of us unfortunate enough to be born without one? Just asking….

By: Tim Lambert

Tim Lambert — Wed, 09 Jul 2003 02:57:31 +0000

Don Norman has written about this in “Turn Signals are the Facial Expressions of Automobiles” http://www.jnd.org/TurnSignals/TS-TOC.html Unfortunately that chapter is not online, but it’s well worth reading. One online essay of his that I enjoyed is here: http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/ToiletPaperAlgorithms.html

By: kate

kate — Wed, 09 Jul 2003 00:54:06 +0000

My fridge sports a glorious collage of cartoons, headlines, photos and such about the illegal reign of George the Inferior. Everybody who comes into the house just loves it. They stand for minutes just reading and laughing. Laughing through their tears for sure, but laughing all the same. I tear it all down every few months and start anew. But then I’m one of those traitorous moderate Democrats who just can’t get over the stolen election, the moronic phoney patriotism of most of so many and of course the illegal attack and occupation of Iraq. Oh and yes, my guests do go to the fridge for food and booze too!

By: Adriana Cronin

Adriana Cronin — Wed, 09 Jul 2003 00:32:41 +0000

The above comment belongs to the post below…

By: Adriana Cronin

Adriana Cronin — Wed, 09 Jul 2003 00:31:42 +0000

We are not all libertarians at Samizdata.net and we are not called Libertarian Samizdata but Samizdata.net.