How to Create Velvety CappuccinosWritten by Jason (The Snob)
Most places that serve cappuccinos in United States have not trained their baristas in art of properly frothing milk. The foam that they create is usually a dry, tasteless, large celled collection of bubbles that sit on top of espresso like a meringue. With a little care, you can create steamed milk that is velvety smooth like texture of wet shaving cream. The bubbles will be so small that you can barely see them! This is way it’s supposed to be, because this way, it will blend with espresso, creating a harmony of flavors instead of a dry, tasteless cap floating on top. Let’s Begin.First off, it’s important to start with cold milk that’s just out of fridge. Pour milk into steaming pitcher until it is just about 1/3 of way full. Milk will double to triple in volume after frothing process. A stainless steel pitcher works best. It will dissipate some of heat, allowing more time to infuse air into milk before milk gets too hot. Also use a thermometer to get milk to correct temperature of 145 degrees. There are many thermometers made for this purpose that will clip onto side of pitcher for convenience. The Technique: Purge steam wand onto a damp towel by releasing valve for a few seconds. Be very careful not to burn yourself, steam will be extremely hot. This purging will get all of water out so you don’t get it in your milk. Next, submerge wand into milk and quickly turn steam on full power. Avoid letting tip of wand come out of milk. This will cause splattering and create large, tasteless bubbles. Adjust wand so that it is pointing off center in order to get milk to flowing in a rapid, circular motion. Maintaining this fast, circulating vortex is vital.
| | globlizationWritten by fahad sattar
Covering a wide range of distinct political, economic, and cultural trends, term "globalization" has quickly become one of most fashionable buzzwords of contemporary political and academic debate. In popular discourse, globalization often functions as little more than a synonym for one or more of following phenomena: pursuit of classical liberal or "free market" policies in world economy ("economic liberalization"), growing dominance of western (or even American) forms of political, economic, and cultural life ("westernization" or "Americanization"), proliferation of new information technologies (the "Internet Revolution"), as well as notion that humanity stands at threshold of realizing one single unified community in which major sources of social conflict have vanished ("global integration"). Fortunately, recent social theory has formulated a more precise concept of globalization than those typically offered by pundits. Although sharp differences continue to separate participants in ongoing debate, most contemporary social theorists endorse view that globalization refers to fundamental changes in spatial and temporal contours of social existence, according to which significance of space or territory undergoes shifts in face of a no less dramatic acceleration in temporal structure of crucial forms of human activity. Geographical distance is typically measured in time. As time necessary to connect distinct geographical locations is reduced, distance or space undergoes compression or "annihilation." The human experience of space is intimately connected to temporal structure of those activities by means of which we experience space. Changes in temporality of human activity inevitably generate altered experiences of space or territory. Theorists of globalization disagree about precise sources of recent shifts in spatial and temporal contours of human life. Nonetheless, they generally agree that alterations in humanity's experiences of space and time are working to undermine importance of local and even national boundaries in many arenas of human endeavor. Since globalization contains far-reaching implications for virtually every facet of human life, it necessarily suggests need to rethink key questions of normative political theory.For rich and multi-faceted interaction with events once distant from purview of most individuals, abolition of distance tended to generate a "uniform distances" in which fundamentally distinct objects became part of a bland homogeneous experiential mass (Headgear, 1971 [1950]: 166). The loss of any meaningful distinction between "nearness" and "distance" contributed to a leveling down of human experience, which in turn spawned indifference that rendered human experience monotonous and one-dimensional.
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