FOODHYPE: One Espresso, Please

I don't consume a large amount of coffee, but occasionally I enjoy an espresso after a meal or on its own. For those of you stuck in an office, popping out for a quick one can be a good way to avoid the daily 1430 (2:30pm to those of you still using 12-hour time) food coma.

The "green" movement has led to a lot of good things, but in my opinion one thing that shouldn't be messed with is the proper presentation of food or drink. In most of Europe (and in the olden days here, I assume), the only place one will get served coffee in a recycled paper cup is Starbucks. In San Francisco, which admittedly is one of the epicenters of the green movement, there are coffee shops all over the place. In some cases - like the financial district - one can find 3 or even 4 within a single block. As you can imagine, they're all using paper cups.

Walking into a Tully's the other day, I was struck by how I had to ask specifically for my espresso to be served in a real cup... otherwise, I always got what you see in the following picture:

This is the result of walking up to the register and saying these exact words: "one espresso, please" - one shot of espresso dumped into a paper cup (hey, it's recycled) and slapped on the counter. Sugar, milk, and the obligatory-in-San-Francisco vegan organic rice/soy/almond/whatever milk are to be found on a messy common area, along with some wood sticks for stirring the coffee. Total cost: USD 1.65 (a tip of 0.35 would be customary for a total of $2.00).

The other day I had the opportunity to stop by the Café Gourmet at the Hotel Schweizerhof in Zürich, Switzerland. Now, I realize that the dime-a-dozen coffee shops in San Francisco's financial district shouldn't be held to the same standard as the café of one of the best hotels on the Zürich Bahnhofstrasse in Switzerland, but we are discussing the difference in experience. And, fundamentally, these two places are in the same line of business and provide at least one exactly similar product (espresso).

Here is the result of the exact same request (delivered in German it's "ein espresso, bitte", but the English translation would have the same effect), when put to the staff at the Schweizerhof:

These two experiences are so different it's difficult to write about them in the same paragraph. For CHF 5.20 (no tip is necessary or expected), or about USD 5.00, I get a sterling silver tray with paper doilies, the cup, saucer and cream pitcher in china, a real spoon (also sterling silver), a sweet (coconut macaroons were on offer this day), and a small glass of water. Each table in the café is already set with its own tray containing milk and sugar.

Is it just me, or is it worth trying to do more than the minimum? I don't know, but I'll not be ordering any more espresso at Tully's.

Coming soon, or more realistically, whenever I get around to it: the results of the above test applied to one of the 4-star hotels in San Francisco. In the meantime, check out Coffee Ratings (San Francisco Espresso: A Pocket Guide), a great website containing a database of quantitative evaluations of San Francisco espresso.

SPORTSHYPE: Ski-Gliding The Eiger

From the "don't try this at home" department...

Ski-gliding is the newest extreme sport to grab my attention. It makes perfect sense: think paragliding combined with kite surfing. Sounds pretty interesting, no?

Someone apparently got it into his or her head to try this on the Eiger, which is one of the most dangerous mountains in the Swiss Alps (if not the world). This video shows what their ride down the 13,000 foot/3,970 meter mountain was like.

The video grabs your attention when it starts off, but doesn't get really hairy until the part where the skiier goes flying off the ridge - right into 6,000 feet of thin air (one minute in). Props!


There is more tomfoolery to be seen below - a bunch of stoners jumping off various mountains and cliffs in the Alps, including the Eiger, while wearing wing suits. Kind of like the Wile E. Coyote cartoon.

POLITICSHYPE: No Black Sheep Is No Big Deal

Previously we brought you news of Switzerland's No Black Sheep campaign, which was criticized by many as racist, insensitive, demeaning, etc. Let's ignore for the moment the fact that there is an increasing problem with immigrant crime in Switzerland. One way or another, the Ausschaffung campaign appears to be accomplishing its mission, which is probably less about kicking out immigrant criminals than it is about generating coverage for the Swiss People's Party in the media, thereby increasing the chances that their boys and girls get elected (imagine, them doing that on purpose right before an election).

Well, it seems like everybody has to get into the act. The United Nations' anti-racism czar, Doudou Diène, put in his two cents. European political scientists have also been looking at this issue closely, and a leading Swiss observer in the UK has rebutted claims by at least one British paper that Switzerland is Europe's new "Heart of Darkness". The horror!

Wait a minute, if they were the heart of Darkness, wouldn't they be kicking out the white sheep?

Swissinfo has more (this is only an excerpt, here's the full story):

British Analyst Assesses "Black Sheep" Row
Copyright 2007 Swissinfo

Foreign coverage of the rightwing Swiss People's Party's provocative campaign and immigration plans is unlikely to dent Switzerland's reputation, says an expert.

Clive Church, a leading writer on Swiss affairs, said recent articles in the British press failed to give a full picture of national political debate in which differing views are in "increasingly militant collision".

Switzerland's biggest political party has come under fire both at home and abroad for a controversial election campaign, which has been accused of being racist. Posters show three white sheep kicking a black sheep over the Swiss border with the caption "Create security".

The black sheep posters underpin a People's Party initiative to expel foreign criminals, which was launched on August 1 – Swiss National Day – three months ahead of October's parliamentary elections.

On Friday the United Nations' special rapporteur on racism, Doudou Diène, called on the People's Party to withdraw the controversial election poster.

He warned that the poster would only provoke racial and religious hatred. The Swiss authorities say it is up to the courts to decide.

swissinfo: Is Switzerland really Europe's "Heart of Darkness", as one British newspaper claimed on its front page?

Clive Church: I think that's rather exaggerated and overlooks the electoral statistics. The implication is that the whole nation is gripped by these views, but the reality is you have a very divided country and a furious battle, with a minority – a very big one in Swiss terms – fighting to establish itself ahead of the [October] elections.

Rather than seeing Switzerland as a country that has already succumbed to racism, you have to see it as a country engaged in a very bitter political battle fought out in a style which 20 years ago would have been unthinkable in Switzerland.

The problem for other parties is that the People's Party has changed its political style and become much more aggressive; it has shown itself much more adept in the media age.

swissinfo: Do the actions of the People's Party - dubbed "racist" by the Swiss president, a member of the centre-left Social Democratic Party - have the potential to damage Switzerland's reputation abroad?

C.C.: It's clearly not very helpful. If the Swiss are being accused of being racist, it clashes with the view of them as being highly moral.

But I'm not certain it will have a great impact. There is very little press coverage of Switzerland in Britain, so I doubt there will be much follow-up.

FINANCEHYPE: Little Old Ladies Making The Pros Look Like Fools

Back in the old days, before financial information was available to the mass market, there was no such thing as retail foreign exchange investing. Unless working on the front lines of the financial wars (i.e., the markets), the only exposure the vast majority of people had to Forex was figuring out how to pay for stuff in the local currency when on holiday abroad. Use cash, and one had to pay a hefty transaction cost (poor rates plus fees) at the change booth. Use plastic, and one got shafted by his bank 6 ways from Sunday (side note: if you used a Visa, MasterCard, or Diners Club for a foreign transaction between 1996 and 2008, you got screwed - follow that link).

Thankfully, a confluence of several factors has brought about significant changes to the Forex markets, to which your not-so-friendly local foreign currency booth and/or bank are closely linked. In my opinion, this is A Good Thing (see Euromoney's theory on why this is happening).

Recently, Japanese housewives - who, on aggregate, have significant investable assets thanks to their disciplined savings habits - have begun to get in on the action. The funny part is that they're confounding predictions made by the so-called experts at firms like UBS and Deutsche Bank, without question two of the largest and most sophisticated investment banks/financial institutions in the world.

The main tactic these retail Forex investors are using is the carry trade. It's fairly simple in principle, but if you have no idea what this is, here's a basic explanation and a detailed trading strategy. Don't you wish you paid closer attention in economics class now? Or better yet, took a few finance electives?

Bloomberg has more on this example of how new technology has helped empower individuals. And by the way, nothing is keeping you from getting into the game either - although if you live in Switzerland, you already know that your bank will happily sell you whatever currency you want at great rates with no fees... we should all be so lucky. Walk into nearly any retail bank branch in the States, even if you're a customer, and ask them for Euros (or Swiss Francs, or Japanese Yen, or British Pounds, or ...) and see what happens. Most likely you'll only get a blank expression from the teller.

POLITICSHYPE: Remove The Black Sheep - And Their Families Too!

The increasing amount of crime committed by immigrants to Switzerland has been well documented. According to the Swiss federal crime statistics for 2005, 52.8% of all crimes were committed by foreigners. It's a common Swiss stereotype that Africans in particular sell hard drugs, although other high-profile incidents include the video-recorded gang-rape of a 13 year-old Swiss schoolgirl by 12 youths and one adult (a majority of whom were foreigners) in Zurich in November 2006.

Recently the largest political party in Switzerland has been promoting the "Ausschaffung" (approximately, "sheep removal") campaign to crack down on immigrant crime. Whether or not one agrees with their goals, one would probably question the manner in which they're trying to accomplish them and/or the rhetoric they're using in pursuit thereof. It sure didn't take long for opponents to whip out the reductio ad Hitlerum argument!

To wit, the poster shown here at right (and don't discount the shit-eating grin on the face of Ueli Maurer, the head of the Swiss People's Party, who seems happy to call a spade a spade).

The slogan "Sicherheit schaffen" approximately translates into English as "work for security." It may also be a pun on the image, however - the German word for sheep is "Schaf."

AP has more on this story:

Swiss Expulsion Proposal Draws Criticism
(Copyright AP, 2007-09-01)

The campaign poster was blatant in its xenophobic symbolism: Three white sheep kicking out a black sheep over a caption that read "for more security." The message was not from a fringe force in Switzerland's political scene but from its largest party.

The nationalist Swiss People's Party is proposing a deportation policy that anti-racism campaigners say evokes Nazi-era practices. Under the plan, entire families would be expelled if their children are convicted of a violent crime, drug offenses or benefits fraud.

The party is trying to collect the 100,000 signatures needed to force a referendum on the issue. If approved in a referendum, the law would be the only one of its kind in Europe.

"We believe that parents are responsible for bringing up their children. If they can't do it properly, they will have to bear the consequences," Ueli Maurer, president of the People's Party, told The Associated Press.

Ronnie Bernheim of the Swiss Foundation against Racism and Anti-Semitism said the proposal was similar to the Nazi practice of "Sippenhaft" — or kin liability — whereby relatives of criminals were held responsible for his or her crimes and punished equally.

Similar practices occurred during Stalin's purges in the early days of the Soviet Union and the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution in China, when millions were persecuted for their alleged ideological failings.

"As soon as the first 10 families and their children have been expelled from the country, then things will get better at a stroke," said Maurer, whose party controls the Justice Ministry and shares power in an unwieldy coalition that includes all major parties.

He explained that his party has long campaigned to make deportation compulsory for convicted immigrants rather than an optional and rarely applied punishment.

The party claims foreigners — who make up about 20 percent of the population — are four times more likely to commit crimes than Swiss nationals.

Bernheim said the vast majority of Switzerland's immigrants are law-abiding and warned against generalizations.

"If you don't treat a complicated issue with the necessary nuance and care, then you won't do it justice," he said.

Commentators have expressed horror over the symbolism used by the People's Party to make its point.

"This way of thinking shows an obvious blood-and-soil mentality," read one editorial in the Zurich daily Tages-Anzeiger, calling for a broader public reaction against the campaign.

So far, however, there has been little popular backlash against the posters.

"We haven't had any complaints," said Maurer.

The city of Geneva — home to Switzerland's humanitarian traditions as well as the European headquarters of the United Nations and the U.N. Refugee Agency, or UNHCR — said the campaign was likely to stir up intolerance.

The UNHCR said the law would run contrary to the U.N. refugee convention, of which Switzerland is a signatory.

But observers say the People's Party's hardline stance on immigration could help it in the Oct. 21 national elections. In 2004, the party successfully campaigned for tighter immigration laws using the image of black hands reaching into a pot filled with Swiss passports.

"It's certainly no coincidence that the People's Party launched this initiative before the elections," said Oliver Geden, a political scientist at the Berlin Institute for International and Security Affairs.

He said provocative campaigns such as this had worked well for the party in the past.

"The symbol of the black sheep was clearly intended to have a double meaning. On the one hand there's the familiar idea of the black sheep, but a lot of voters are also going to associate it with the notion of dark-skinned drug dealers," said Geden.

The party also has put forward a proposal to ban the building of minaret towers alongside mosques. And one of its leading figures, Justice Minister Christoph Blocher, said he wants to soften anti-racism laws because they prevent freedom of speech.

Imagine if something like this was tried in the USA... Al Sharpton would be salivating like a rabid dog at the chance to get his mug plastered all over TV (and perhaps justifiably so)!