Commodities that have no first rate
May. 4th, 2011 11:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
come_to_thinkI was delighted with the news, in a recent posting of Snousle's, that high-class toaster ovens exist. They are expensive, but toaster ovens are not the kind of thing I would need a mortgage on. I will probably look them up when my current Black & Decker expires. It has given me good service for 11 years, but I dare say its days are numbered. I had thought of toaster ovens as belonging to a class of commodities that have no high end, and am glad to find I was mistaken, or at least am mistaken by now.
Similarly, it used to be that there was no such thing as a first-rate T-shirt. In particular, none of them were long enough to allow for shrinkage; they wouldn't stay tucked in after they had been washed a few times. In recent years, however, some of the manufacturers have cottoned to the situation, and some vendors actually offer a choice of lengths for the variety of torso shapes.
It still appears that there are no luxury electric frying pans (or grills, or whatever). A properly designed one would have a finely distributed heating element (not just one loop) to provide spatially uniform heating, and the control would not be a thermostat, but a variable transformer so that I could set a uniform current at any level. That would be expensive, and I suppose the idea is, if you are in the market for an electric frying pan, you don't have much money. (Stovetop cookware, of course, comes in many degrees of fanciness. I once heard of someone who owned a sterling silver omelet pan.)
Having no car, I give my shopping--laundry cart heavy use, and I would be willing to pay a premium for a good one. I managed to extract from the Web one that is much tougher than anything I could find in a store, but I have already had to replace one of the wheels (I saved the wheels from previous carts), and I suppose the welds will come loose in due time. Also, it has no swivels. (I once bought one that had swivels, but it turned out to be too small & to take all my strength to steer it.)
For a while (1964--1972) I did have a car, and I used to wonder why you couldn't buy a muffler & exhaust pipe that were lined with some refractory material & wouldn't rust out. What you got by paying extra for a car was mainly showoff stuff. Perhaps by now there is sufficient prevalence of sense among car buyers to make a market for such a thing; I haven't kept up with the business.
Similarly, it used to be that there was no such thing as a first-rate T-shirt. In particular, none of them were long enough to allow for shrinkage; they wouldn't stay tucked in after they had been washed a few times. In recent years, however, some of the manufacturers have cottoned to the situation, and some vendors actually offer a choice of lengths for the variety of torso shapes.
It still appears that there are no luxury electric frying pans (or grills, or whatever). A properly designed one would have a finely distributed heating element (not just one loop) to provide spatially uniform heating, and the control would not be a thermostat, but a variable transformer so that I could set a uniform current at any level. That would be expensive, and I suppose the idea is, if you are in the market for an electric frying pan, you don't have much money. (Stovetop cookware, of course, comes in many degrees of fanciness. I once heard of someone who owned a sterling silver omelet pan.)
Having no car, I give my shopping--laundry cart heavy use, and I would be willing to pay a premium for a good one. I managed to extract from the Web one that is much tougher than anything I could find in a store, but I have already had to replace one of the wheels (I saved the wheels from previous carts), and I suppose the welds will come loose in due time. Also, it has no swivels. (I once bought one that had swivels, but it turned out to be too small & to take all my strength to steer it.)
For a while (1964--1972) I did have a car, and I used to wonder why you couldn't buy a muffler & exhaust pipe that were lined with some refractory material & wouldn't rust out. What you got by paying extra for a car was mainly showoff stuff. Perhaps by now there is sufficient prevalence of sense among car buyers to make a market for such a thing; I haven't kept up with the business.
