An Eatery Overcharged

choi

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az9876, 一件小事说明的大问题. Mitbbs.com, july 29, 2011
http://www.mitbbs.com/article/SanFrancisco/33577841_3.html

----------------------------My reply below:
大问题 indeed!  Others only see pettiness on your part.

(A) I re-read the original posting (by az9876), which does not describe what kind of eatery the noodle shop is. Perhaps it is like fastfood-like* and a tip is unnecessary. In any event, demanding a tip is tactless.

* In other words, a customer take the tray from counter after ordering the food--and empty the empty tray to a trash bin when finished.

(B) However, the fundamental issue is fairness.

(1) Natalie Angier, Thirst for Fairness May Have Helped Us Survive. New York Times, July 5, 2011.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/science/05angier.html
(Humans innately share "the belief in fairness and reciprocity, a capacity for empathy and impulse control, and a willingness to work cooperatively in ways that even our smartest primate kin cannot match. As Michael Tomasello of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology has pointed out, you will never see two chimpanzees carrying a log together.")

Note:
(a) Aché
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ach%C3%A9

My comment: Paragraph 1 about Aché indicates "donation" of the 70-90% of the forage is tax--a high tax rate at that. Despite the social security (when the nonor gets sick), I oppose high tax bracket, having leaned toward Republicans in US.
(b) Bushmen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushmen
(The indigenous people of southern Africa, whose territory spans most areas of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland, Botswana, Namibia, and Angola, are variously referred to as Bushmen, San, Sho, Barwa, Kung, or Khwe)
(c) Kalahari Desert
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalahari
(Derived from the Tswana word Kgala, meaning "the great thirst", or Khalagari, Kgalagadi or Kalagare, meaning "a waterless place", the Kalahari has vast areas covered by red sand without any permanent surface water.)
(d) Hazda people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadza_people
(e) tetchy (adj): "irritably or peevishly sensitive : TOUCHY"
www.m-w.com
(f) veld or veldt (n; Afrikaans veld, from Dutch, field; First Known Use 1835):
"a grassland especially of southern Africa usually with scattered shrubs or trees"   
(g) limbic system
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbic_system

Regarding "cerebral and visceral, cortical and limbic." They are sets of a pair of opposites, similar to saying mind and heart, reasons and emotions/impulses.
(h) ultimatum game
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game

Contrast:
dictator game
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictator_game

My comment: The NYT article stated that 40 percent of the time they [persons offered a 20% split] angrily rejected the deal as unfair." In the ultimatum game, they understand that neither will get anything but reject anyway, feeling that getting nothing is better than unfairly enriching the other.
(i) Greek for "almond" (because it looks like an almond in anatomy), amygdala is part of limbic system. In the Wiki graphic above, amygdala is the red nut with the pink parahyppocampal gyrus on one side which in this graphic APPEARS to (but actually does not) be a hand holding it (amygdala) inside and facing the back of the head.

* hippocampus: Greek for sea horce 海馬 (hippos horse + kampos sea monster)
* gyrus 腦迴
(j) The NYT article also said, "A larger bacterial cell engulfs a smaller bacterial cell to form the first complex eukaryotic cell."

It alluded to the hypothesis that modern days
* mitochondria 粒腺體 in animal cells,
* chloroplasts 葉綠體 in plant cells, and
* plasmids in bacteria
are created this way, because all of them (mitochondria, chloroplasts and plasmids) have theor own DNA (in cytoplasm 細胞質) separate from host chromosome (in nucleus; though bacteria have no nucleus).
(k) lutefish
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutefisk
(a traditional dish of the Nordic countries; Its name literally means "lye fish")


(2) Animal studies are underway to see if beasts play fair or

(a) They know nothing about fairness.
(i) Jensen K et al, Chimpanzees Are Rational Maximizers in an Ultimatum Game. Science, 318: 107-9 (2007).
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17916736
(not sensitive to fairness)
(ii) Silk JB et al, Chimpanzees Are Indifferent to the Welfare of Unrelated Group Members. Nature, 437: 1357-9 (2005)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16251965
(Chimpanzees sometimes reject exchanges in which they receive less valuable rewards than others, which may be one element of a 'sense of fairness')

(b) Richard Grey, Animals Can Tell Right From Wrong. Animals possess a sense of morality that allows them to tell the difference between right and wrong, according to a controversial new book. Telegraph, May 23, 2009
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/5373379/Animals-can-tell-right-from-wrong.html
(Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce, Wild Justice; The moral lives of animals, University of Chicago Press, 2009
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo6407651.html
)

(C) About price transparency.

Press release: China Airlines Fined for Violating DOT Price Advertising Rules. US Department of Transportation, June 21, 2011 (DOT 73-11).
http://www.dot.gov/affairs/2011/dot7311.html

Note: China Airlines is based in Taiwan.

(D) Purusuit of fairness is our aim, though sometimes it is hard to say what fairness is.

Charles C Johnson, The New Chinese Exclusion Act; Self-appointed civil rights defenders support rules that keep Asian kids out of top schools. Wall Street Journal, July 29, 2011.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304803104576428230249769142.html

Quote:

"Yet after Prop. 209 passed [in 1996 which outlaws the use of racial references by the state government, including admission to state colleges], Asian-American enrollment grew. At UC Berkeley, the system's flagship, Asian-American enrollment grew to 43% in 2008 from 37.3% in 1995. At the University of California San Diego, it grew to 50% from 36% in 1995. Asian-Americans now make up a majority in seven of the nine UC campuses.

"Another 2009 study from Mr. Epenshade and Alexandria Walton Radford, in collaboration with Mr. Chung, found that Asian students need a near-perfect SAT score of 1550 to have the same chance of being admitted at a top school as whites and blacks with scores of 1410 and 1100, respectively. Overall, whites had a three-fold, Hispanics a six-fold, and blacks a more than 15-fold chance of being admitted compared to Asian-Americans.

Note:
(a) The author is a young, conservative white male.
(b) Chester A. Arthur was US president from 1981-1985; Republican.
(c) George Frisbie Hoar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Frisbie_Hoar
(1826-1904; He argued in the Senate in favor of Women's suffrage as early as 1886 and opposed the Chinese Exclusion Act, 1882.)

Please remember that Massachusetts, now one of the bluest (Democratic), was Republican a century ago--much like the South, now solidly Republican, was Democratic half a century ago (Nixon's Southern Strategy helped turn it around).

(E) One thing I learn from my experience in US is look past skin, ethnicity, nationality--and sexual preference--among others.

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