the bakers pin is not tapered on the ends.

Sox, why are handles annoying?

I've never had a non-handled pin.

I usually use the one with handles--I don't see much of a downside. What's baker's style?

I think the silicone is great, but I think if I were to get a different baking pin I'd be more concerned with something I could keep cold.

We have both - and I thought handled would be easier bc/I'm carpal prone.

But my hands are small, and it turns out it's easier to use the pin to roll, than the handles - I know that sounds strange, but there's more control and less tight grip required. so usually, I roll without the handles... but that's just the way I roll...

DH? he likes handles.

...

ok. that sounds wrong. to both of us.

what? he bakes. Pies.

damn.

what?

I think if I were to get a different baking pin I'd be more concerned with something I could keep cold.

coffee:

there used to be one you could fill w/ water & freeze.

I like being able to keep my hand position constant in relationship to the pin, which is why I prefer the handles.

here is me, watching TV w/ DH, trying to convince him that this conversation will not veer towards porn.

trying to convince him that this conversation will not veer towards porn.

Do you win a pony? Because otherwise I'm not seeing the upside.

I mean...kitchen implements...conversation is begging to be entendred en double.

I've got a marble rolling pin which I like the weight of. I think it's supposed to be good for staying cold, but I never make anything temperature sensitive, so I don't know if it really makes a difference.

Do you win a pony?

not that kind of porn...

Because otherwise I'm not seeing the upside.

true. kitchens are fun.

Excellent essay on what's gone wrong with the news media these days:

One of the things I got them to do was to go back through the annual reports of every Fleet Street company going back to 1985. 1985 is an important year because in January 1986 Rupert Murdoch moved his newspapers into Wapping and broke the print unions. He broke the resistance, such resistance as there was in Fleet Street, to the logic of commercialism, to what those big corporations which had taken all those newspapers over wanted to do.

The academics did two things. Year by year they looked at what happened to the editorial staffing levels of those Fleet Street papers over the next 20 years. The second thing they did was they measured the space which those editorial staff were filling, how many column inches of news. You crunch all those numbers for all these companies and you come up with something that is really important – essentially, your average Fleet Street reporter now is filling three times as much space as he or she was 20 years ago. Turn that round, look at it from the reporter’s point of view: we only have one third of the time to do our job. That’s terribly important.

If you take time away from some processes, like if you’re manufacturing cars and you take time out so you do it quicker you can argue that this improves the process, it makes it cheaper so you can sell more and put more money back into production. But if you take time away from reporters you take away our most important working asset. We cannot do our jobs properly if they won’t give us the time to do it. It’s as simple as that. We’ve been caught in this pincer movement where our staffing levels have been cut, our output has been increased – all the newspapers have extra supplements, you have 24-hour broadcasting – the whole nature of being a reporter and the back-up journalists involved has changed: instead of being active news gatherers we’ve become passive processors. Most reporters nowadays don’t have contacts, we don’t go out and find stories, we don’t check facts.

...

Whereas you should have a system where journalists, working honestly and independently, make what used to be called news judgments and say this story is important, this angle needs to be expressed, this research needs to be done, instead now we sit there passively and those decisions are made by Alastair Campbell and the whole magic world of PR and the public and private and the charity sector and the terrorist groups. They write the press releases and we bung ‘em in.

And it isn’t just about press releases. It’s about deeply manipulative behaviour. So for example, PR companies work very assiduously to set up front groups. These are phony grass-roots groups. There are so many phony grass-roots groups in the US that they have a nice little term for them, they call them Astroturf, because their not real grass.

[link]