I and a number of other small chocolate makers have looked at what cocoa _should_ cost. Cocoa beans IMHO should cost at least double if not three to four times what they currently do.
Now with a Hershey's Bar, a good portion of the bar is sugar and milk. Because of this, there is very little "cocoa" (the real part of chocolate in chocolate) in a Hershey's chocolate bar. This was the big innovation that Milton Hershey made. Chocolate was too expensive and was the domain of the rich and so he in some ways invented the technique of watering it down with immense quantities of sugar and milk. If I remember right, a Hershey's bar is only 15% cocoa (not counting the cocoa butter which is added to reduce the viscosity of the added milk and sugar. I don't know what Hershey's pays for these ingredients but I can get sugar for $0.50-$0.60/lb offsets the price significantly for a bar like Hershey's since there is so much of it. But I'd bet to get the prices right you'd probably be needing to have a Hershey's bar cost at least 2-3 times what they currently do. I'd have to really dig into the numbers closely to really make a more accurate stab at it.
Along the line of your question though, Hershey's buys some of the worst quality cocoa (of which there is a lot of) and pays prices that are close to rock bottom. So they are paying around $1.30/lb right now. There is a 20-25% loss after you remove the shell and moisture evaporation during roasting. I've tasted the grade of cocoa that they buy and it is spitting bad (ie, you'll spit it out almost immediately. Better qualities of cocoa taste significantly better. So I hope this helps a bit.
I'm in the chocolate industry and own a small high end chocolate company in Utah where we make all of our chocolate from scratch (ie beans) and have been at the forefront of the American craft chocolate movement and are a founding member of the Craft Chocolate Makers of America . From what I've seen is that the big issue is that the farmers are not getting paid nearly enough. Cocoa has been a great trade good because if you keep it dry and the bugs out it will last for years. This is great for remote impoverished areas because the farmers can save their cocoa and send it out on the next mule train.
Cocoa is very labor intensive way more than you can reasonably expect and today these remote communities have roads to them. Farmers can now grow bananas, pineapples, passion fruit etc for a lot less labor and have it at port in just a few days. For this reason many cocoa farmers are cutting down their trees and replacing them with crops that are less labor intensive. Additionally the youth are looking to jobs in oil (such as in Trinidad) or in the cities.
What foods are similar to cocoa in terms of labor? Truffles, saffron, vanilla, good cheeses etc. all of which are very expensive comparatively. Nobody faults these for not being $3/lb or less
What's the solution? To pay the farmers more. Right now, Cocoa sells for approx $2800/ton and in my opinion it should be closer to $10,000 - $20,000 / ton. This means that a chocolate bar would sell for $6-10 depending on packaging. (We currently sell chocolate we make from cocoa from Chuao Venezuela where we pay $5.50/lb for the cocoa where the London market was around $1.40/lb so we paid the farmers four times the market rate.)
Don't be wooed by so called "fair trade" certification. When I see that, I know the farmers just got screwed. Why? With Fair trade the farmers get a premium of $150-$200/ton -- a price increase of 5%. On the other hand, the FT organization charges the farmers between $2500 - $10000/year for the certification and in personal experience I've only seen it at $10,000 / year. At the same time they charge $0.10/lb ($220/ton) to whoever imports it for it to maintain its FT certification and another $0.10/lb for thr use of the logos and trademarks. So FT gets $440/ton and the farmers get $200. Not so fair. Plus don't forget the farmers certification and of course the companies need to be certified too. Oh yea. The inspectors are $750/day plus travel.
So what to do? Buy good chocolate. A bar should be anywhere from $5-$15. You can't make really good chocolate without using great cocoa. You can't get great cocoa without paying a significant premium to the farmers -- often 2-4 times the NY or London terminal price. So you know they are paid well. You simply can't have a $1-2 chocolate bar after if has been run though the supply chain (stores, distributors, the factory, various cocoa brokers, etc.) and know the farmers were paid well no matter the certification.
The big assumption is that the gunman is continually firing shots that will allow the system to work. Alternatively, off the shelf wi-fi enabled cameras could be purchased that would provide real-time video feeds throughout the school allowing law enforcement to not only "hear" where the gunman is but to be able to actually see the gunman and potential victims as they move (or hide). Estimated cost: $5,000 - $10,000 depending on how many cameras are installed. (The prices are retail so I bet the schools can get an additional 30% off as they would probably be considered a wholesale customer.)
Sure the technology is cool but it doesn't make it the best choice for taxpayer dollars especially given the relative rarity of school shootings. During the 2009 - 2010 school year there were 98,817 public schools. Let's say they were all equipped with this system at $50,000 / school it would cost $4,940,850,000 to retrofit all the schools. I wonder what else can be done with 5 billion dollars... Perhaps some significant development work in vaccines? Perhaps cancer? Heck, I bet more lives would be saved simply choosing random people that need medical care and making sure they get the very best treatment possible.
There is still a long way to go before we can use it to move a Ferenghi vessel or to fight off the Borg. We ought to make this a national priority. If you think the Ebola thing is scary, the Borg makes viruses look like sheer child's play.
1) The reference to Al Gore is relevant. Al Gore is a primary shareholder in some of the companies that have been formed to trade carbon credits. Needless to say, it creates a conflict of interest which ought to cause people to think a little more carefully about what he has to say.
2) Al Gore after his movie and various environmental statements should be an example of good environmental behavior rather than the opposite -- especially if he truly believes it. Additionally, it is fair to assume he has seen data that most of us have not and would adjust his behavior accordingly.
3) It doesn't matter whether a conservative author said it or whether it was said by Pol Pot. It is true or it is not. Giving credit to the author of a statement is the right thing to do no matter who said it. Ad homonym attacks are just plain dumb.
It is a sure bet that once it gets codified into a standard that we can only communicate with our universe and integrated into a host of products, we will discover that we can in fact communicate with multiple universes. Luckily, there is the likely possibility that there are a host of other universes won't make this mistake.
of each member of my family. That way the various atoms can self report as to the location of their component parts bypassing the quantum mechanical problems of actually looking at electrons (for example) to find out where they are at and by looking changing their orbital pattern.
Facebook: Electron six is coming around the top bend at approximately 186,000mps, whoooeeeeeee!!!!!"
Electrons 5 and 9 narrowly avoided a collision at the bottom half of their orbit, only their charges saved them from a disastrous end.
If this catches on, we will probably start running out of IPv6 addresses sooner than originally thought. Besides, this is far more exciting than watching Facebook to see if your friends are going to the hardware store.
Yes, __ word "The" volunteered to be dismissed. __ word "The" had family problems. __ children were running wild and ___ wife was pissed. As they say, if ___ wife isn't happy then nobody is happy. Unfortunately, on __ way home, "The", was run over by a Prius. ___ police suspect that "The" didn't hear ___ car as it came around a corner and was subsequently into what can only be described as a word pancake.
Please make note of this tragedy, ___ indefinite article will be missed.
Followup: ___ judge who filed ___ dismissal committed suicide. __ suicide note said that ___ thought of writing rulings without ___ word ___ will be a royal pain in __ patootie.
In my mind is for that price, it had better be a direct satellite connection. (In which case it would be worth it -- especially if I could get a cheaper cell connection when I'm not out in the boonies.) Sat connections aren't cheap (usually about $1.00/min for a sat phone connection.) But for a cell connection, this price is outrageous....
OK, perhaps the HP35 didn't have the beveled keys but, the classic HP keys have been beveled almost from the beginning. True, the alphabet isn't a QWERTY keyboard (you switched into Alpha by hitting the "Alpha" key on top). Even so, it would be pretty obvious to arrange them into a QWERTY format for a different application.
For example: http://www.hpmuseum.org/3qs/41...
Yes, if you want to call the 9100 a calculator.;-) Actually, I have one. It was really cool and had ferrid core memory and gold plated PC board. I've also got a few HP35s floating about both with and without the printed keys. Ah, the wonders of growing up in Los Alamos and what was once known as Zia Salvage. (They even had a nuclear rocket engine at one point -- though probably without the core.)
Beveled Keys have been in use since the HP 35 calculator. The HP35 was HP's very first calculator and the first iterations only had printing on a few of the keys -- the rest of the key designations were printed on the board the keys protruded through. The HP41 (early to mid 1980's) had a full alphabet keyboard as well as punctuation and all the keys were beveled. As I understand the patent, it should be thrown out due to prior art or at least obviousness since all the HP keys were beveled.
FYI: The "Mormon Church" as you describe it is actually a team at BYU that specializes in genetic identification of family relationships. One of their geneticists is one of the top in the country and to date, they have identified a number of unknown mummies who have been floating around various museums. They have also built a genetic family tree. There is all sorts of things one can learn about ancient Egypt this way. (For example, just because historical records say that two people are related, it doesn't mean they are genetically.) The BYU team has no interest in it from a religious perspective. King Tut wouldn't provide any additional "religious" information than the other 30+ mummies they have already worked with. They are very interested in it from a scientific perspective which is another way of saying that they are curious as all scientists should be.
Definitly bubble sort. I usually throw in the Matrix trillogy and if I'm not done, I can follow it up with the extended version of Lord of the Rings. The great thing is that if my wife checks in on me, I'm sorting like mad the whole time!
I have always found it interesting that people take a 2,000 page book and insist that they can read how God accomplished just about everything. This is especially the case when it takes isles and isles of documentation to describe just about anything complex. I have a sneaking suspicion that when we die and get to the pearly gates (or not) and find out if there is an afterlife (or not) that we will find out how little we really know and how childish our interpretations really were.
Slashdot Mirror
I and a number of other small chocolate makers have looked at what cocoa _should_ cost. Cocoa beans IMHO should cost at least double if not three to four times what they currently do.
Now with a Hershey's Bar, a good portion of the bar is sugar and milk. Because of this, there is very little "cocoa" (the real part of chocolate in chocolate) in a Hershey's chocolate bar. This was the big innovation that Milton Hershey made. Chocolate was too expensive and was the domain of the rich and so he in some ways invented the technique of watering it down with immense quantities of sugar and milk. If I remember right, a Hershey's bar is only 15% cocoa (not counting the cocoa butter which is added to reduce the viscosity of the added milk and sugar. I don't know what Hershey's pays for these ingredients but I can get sugar for $0.50-$0.60/lb offsets the price significantly for a bar like Hershey's since there is so much of it. But I'd bet to get the prices right you'd probably be needing to have a Hershey's bar cost at least 2-3 times what they currently do. I'd have to really dig into the numbers closely to really make a more accurate stab at it.
Along the line of your question though, Hershey's buys some of the worst quality cocoa (of which there is a lot of) and pays prices that are close to rock bottom. So they are paying around $1.30/lb right now. There is a 20-25% loss after you remove the shell and moisture evaporation during roasting. I've tasted the grade of cocoa that they buy and it is spitting bad (ie, you'll spit it out almost immediately. Better qualities of cocoa taste significantly better. So I hope this helps a bit.
Cocoa is very labor intensive way more than you can reasonably expect and today these remote communities have roads to them. Farmers can now grow bananas, pineapples, passion fruit etc for a lot less labor and have it at port in just a few days. For this reason many cocoa farmers are cutting down their trees and replacing them with crops that are less labor intensive. Additionally the youth are looking to jobs in oil (such as in Trinidad) or in the cities.
What foods are similar to cocoa in terms of labor? Truffles, saffron, vanilla, good cheeses etc. all of which are very expensive comparatively. Nobody faults these for not being $3/lb or less
What's the solution? To pay the farmers more. Right now, Cocoa sells for approx $2800/ton and in my opinion it should be closer to $10,000 - $20,000 / ton. This means that a chocolate bar would sell for $6-10 depending on packaging. (We currently sell chocolate we make from cocoa from Chuao Venezuela where we pay $5.50/lb for the cocoa where the London market was around $1.40/lb so we paid the farmers four times the market rate.)
Don't be wooed by so called "fair trade" certification. When I see that, I know the farmers just got screwed. Why? With Fair trade the farmers get a premium of $150-$200/ton -- a price increase of 5%. On the other hand, the FT organization charges the farmers between $2500 - $10000/year for the certification and in personal experience I've only seen it at $10,000 / year. At the same time they charge $0.10/lb ($220/ton) to whoever imports it for it to maintain its FT certification and another $0.10/lb for thr use of the logos and trademarks. So FT gets $440/ton and the farmers get $200. Not so fair. Plus don't forget the farmers certification and of course the companies need to be certified too. Oh yea. The inspectors are $750/day plus travel.
So what to do? Buy good chocolate. A bar should be anywhere from $5-$15. You can't make really good chocolate without using great cocoa. You can't get great cocoa without paying a significant premium to the farmers -- often 2-4 times the NY or London terminal price. So you know they are paid well. You simply can't have a $1-2 chocolate bar after if has been run though the supply chain (stores, distributors, the factory, various cocoa brokers, etc.) and know the farmers were paid well no matter the certification.
The big assumption is that the gunman is continually firing shots that will allow the system to work. Alternatively, off the shelf wi-fi enabled cameras could be purchased that would provide real-time video feeds throughout the school allowing law enforcement to not only "hear" where the gunman is but to be able to actually see the gunman and potential victims as they move (or hide). Estimated cost: $5,000 - $10,000 depending on how many cameras are installed. (The prices are retail so I bet the schools can get an additional 30% off as they would probably be considered a wholesale customer.)
Sure the technology is cool but it doesn't make it the best choice for taxpayer dollars especially given the relative rarity of school shootings. During the 2009 - 2010 school year there were 98,817 public schools. Let's say they were all equipped with this system at $50,000 / school it would cost $4,940,850,000 to retrofit all the schools. I wonder what else can be done with 5 billion dollars... Perhaps some significant development work in vaccines? Perhaps cancer? Heck, I bet more lives would be saved simply choosing random people that need medical care and making sure they get the very best treatment possible.
What the article doesn't say is the effect is easily counteracted by the patient wearing a tin foil hat.
Don't leave home without it.
There is still a long way to go before we can use it to move a Ferenghi vessel or to fight off the Borg. We ought to make this a national priority. If you think the Ebola thing is scary, the Borg makes viruses look like sheer child's play.
I usually wrap one in a towel and then twist until it pukes all its helium -- kinda like juicing an orange but bigger.
1) The reference to Al Gore is relevant. Al Gore is a primary shareholder in some of the companies that have been formed to trade carbon credits. Needless to say, it creates a conflict of interest which ought to cause people to think a little more carefully about what he has to say.
2) Al Gore after his movie and various environmental statements should be an example of good environmental behavior rather than the opposite -- especially if he truly believes it. Additionally, it is fair to assume he has seen data that most of us have not and would adjust his behavior accordingly.
3) It doesn't matter whether a conservative author said it or whether it was said by Pol Pot. It is true or it is not. Giving credit to the author of a statement is the right thing to do no matter who said it. Ad homonym attacks are just plain dumb.
Let's see.... What you are saying is .... If ducks float and witches float then ....
It is a sure bet that once it gets codified into a standard that we can only communicate with our universe and integrated into a host of products, we will discover that we can in fact communicate with multiple universes. Luckily, there is the likely possibility that there are a host of other universes won't make this mistake.
of each member of my family. That way the various atoms can self report as to the location of their component parts bypassing the quantum mechanical problems of actually looking at electrons (for example) to find out where they are at and by looking changing their orbital pattern.
Facebook: Electron six is coming around the top bend at approximately 186,000mps, whoooeeeeeee!!!!!"
Electrons 5 and 9 narrowly avoided a collision at the bottom half of their orbit, only their charges saved them from a disastrous end.
If this catches on, we will probably start running out of IPv6 addresses sooner than originally thought. Besides, this is far more exciting than watching Facebook to see if your friends are going to the hardware store.
Yes, __ word "The" volunteered to be dismissed. __ word "The" had family problems. __ children were running wild and ___ wife was pissed. As they say, if ___ wife isn't happy then nobody is happy. Unfortunately, on __ way home, "The", was run over by a Prius. ___ police suspect that "The" didn't hear ___ car as it came around a corner and was subsequently into what can only be described as a word pancake.
Please make note of this tragedy, ___ indefinite article will be missed.
Followup: ___ judge who filed ___ dismissal committed suicide. __ suicide note said that ___ thought of writing rulings without ___ word ___ will be a royal pain in __ patootie.
Yea. But I'm sure they are around here .... somewhere.....
You can keep your string. I have two quarks and a muon!
In my mind is for that price, it had better be a direct satellite connection. (In which case it would be worth it -- especially if I could get a cheaper cell connection when I'm not out in the boonies.) Sat connections aren't cheap (usually about $1.00/min for a sat phone connection.) But for a cell connection, this price is outrageous....
We really should take it seriously since it is for the birds...
OK, perhaps the HP35 didn't have the beveled keys but, the classic HP keys have been beveled almost from the beginning. True, the alphabet isn't a QWERTY keyboard (you switched into Alpha by hitting the "Alpha" key on top). Even so, it would be pretty obvious to arrange them into a QWERTY format for a different application. For example: http://www.hpmuseum.org/3qs/41...
Yes, if you want to call the 9100 a calculator. ;-) Actually, I have one. It was really cool and had ferrid core memory and gold plated PC board. I've also got a few HP35s floating about both with and without the printed keys. Ah, the wonders of growing up in Los Alamos and what was once known as Zia Salvage. (They even had a nuclear rocket engine at one point -- though probably without the core.)
Beveled Keys have been in use since the HP 35 calculator. The HP35 was HP's very first calculator and the first iterations only had printing on a few of the keys -- the rest of the key designations were printed on the board the keys protruded through. The HP41 (early to mid 1980's) had a full alphabet keyboard as well as punctuation and all the keys were beveled. As I understand the patent, it should be thrown out due to prior art or at least obviousness since all the HP keys were beveled.
This is great news! The UV flashes naturally warn the reindeer so that they won't land on the power lines.
FYI: The "Mormon Church" as you describe it is actually a team at BYU that specializes in genetic identification of family relationships. One of their geneticists is one of the top in the country and to date, they have identified a number of unknown mummies who have been floating around various museums. They have also built a genetic family tree. There is all sorts of things one can learn about ancient Egypt this way. (For example, just because historical records say that two people are related, it doesn't mean they are genetically.) The BYU team has no interest in it from a religious perspective. King Tut wouldn't provide any additional "religious" information than the other 30+ mummies they have already worked with. They are very interested in it from a scientific perspective which is another way of saying that they are curious as all scientists should be.
Definitly bubble sort. I usually throw in the Matrix trillogy and if I'm not done, I can follow it up with the extended version of Lord of the Rings. The great thing is that if my wife checks in on me, I'm sorting like mad the whole time!
I have always found it interesting that people take a 2,000 page book and insist that they can read how God accomplished just about everything. This is especially the case when it takes isles and isles of documentation to describe just about anything complex. I have a sneaking suspicion that when we die and get to the pearly gates (or not) and find out if there is an afterlife (or not) that we will find out how little we really know and how childish our interpretations really were.
The final version will probably be about the size of a Quidditch.
I was thinking these would be great to use for electrolisis to make hydrogen for my fuel cell. Oh, wait...
Perhaps it is for use by Duke Nukem....