4 ms·

A certain level of boilerplate and redundancy is humorous. I'm wondering if all of their food specifications contains that "All ingredients shall be clean, soun

by senki 16y ago

A certain level of boilerplate and redundancy is humorous. I'm wondering if all of their food specifications contains that "All ingredients shall be clean, sound, wholesome, and free from foreign material, evidence of rodent or insect infestation, extraneous material, off-odors, off-flavors, and off-colors." (quote from the linked pdf), or just this one. Maybe they should define some general rules, after that a brownie recipe is really only one page.

mturmon 16y ago
The reason that's there is historical instances of profiteers selling substandard food to the military.
- senki 16y ago
  Obviously the quality should be fine, that should be the default, no need to repeat it in each and every recipe.
  - Dove 16y ago
    Clearly you've not spent any time in the world of defense contracting. The default is to put absolutely every last thing in the contract. If your contract doesn't say, "You can't put sawdust in the brownies," there will be a contractor who says, "What? You didn't say I couldn't." You might laugh. You might suppose there's some common understanding of quality that everyone can deal with. Especially when it comes to brownies. To some degree, I'd agree: it's a defensive attempt to avoid problems encountered in the past, and maybe an overreaction. The thing is, though, with weapons systems, the equivalent of putting sawdust in brownies happens all the time. The contractor doesn't live in Alaska, or on a carrier deck, where the thing will be deployed, and if the contract doesn't specifically mention cold or fungus or salt corrosion, it'll get overlooked. Worse, the contractor really has no experience in a combat zone, and has no idea what sort of abuse their equipment will undergo. The contract has to say. The defensiveness comes partly from the fact that these systems get a single iteration. There's some back and forth during testing and verification, and there are always contracts for upgrades and improvements. But by and large, you really need things to work right the first time. Hence the heavy reliance on contracts and standards. They're like an API telling the civilian contractor what's required in a battlefield environment. He really doesn't know things that soldiers consider obvious.
    - senki 16y ago
      I meant that they should write down these trivial things once in a standard, and later just refer to it in every recipe in two words. This spec already contains references to several federal and military standards, but clearly not enough. Thats why it's such a bloated piece of sh... paper.
      - Dove 16y ago
        Ah. Well, in this case, they kind of did that: 3.2 Ingredients. All ingredients shall be clean, sound, wholesome, and free from foreign material, evidence of rodent or insect infestation, extraneous material, off-odors, off-flavors, and off-colors. 3.2.1 Sugar. Sugar shall be white, refined, granulated, cane or beet sugar. Powdered sugar of equivalent quality may be substituted for part of the granulated sugar in the brownie formula to control spread. 3.2.2 Oatmeal. Oatmeal shall be the commercial product known as quick cooking oatmeal. It shall have natural rolled oat flavor and odor and shall be clean and free from burned particles, rancid, musty, sour, or other undesirable flavors and odors. . . . They factored out the "all ingredients" part of the standard. You know, I'm sorry to admit, but I've written these things before. There's a real tradeoff to make there. On the one hand, there's a virtuous impulse to do as much factoring as you can so you don't have to write things twice--or heaven forbid, update them multiple times when they change. On the other hand, you then find yourself calling for MIL-STD-340985 sugar and MIL-STD-320598 flour and MIL-STD-24098 molasses with deviations allowed to items 4, 5, and 9 of paragraph 6 when using process B of MIL-STD-32409 Baking Instructions. And there's sort of a desire by users of the document not to need to have twenty books open at once just to figure out if they can use this flour or not. Writing this sort of thing well is a lot harder than you would think. Edit: Upon reflection, there's a real parallel between that and walking the fine line between copypasta code and spaghetti abstraction.
  - gte910h 16y ago
    The point of the language it to make it grounds for cancelling the contract. With the language there, the cancellation is a sure thing if they find those issues. If the language is not there, there can be a dispute.
  - anigbrowl 16y ago
    Such logic rests on the assumption that other people are at least as honest and intelligent as oneself. Regrettably, this often turns out not to be the case.
JimmyL 16y ago
If they didn't put that in, what would stop a less-than-honorable supplier from low-balling the contract, using rodent-infested wheat, and then suing the DoD when they get their contract canceled because someone finds rat feces in their brownie? Or more broadly, what would allow the DoD to cancel that contract in the first place in that example, if the specs didn't say they had to be free of the stuff?

by senki 16y ago

mturmon 16y ago

The reason that's there is historical instances of profiteers selling substandard food to the military.

senki 16y ago
Obviously the quality should be fine, that should be the default, no need to repeat it in each and every recipe.
- Dove 16y ago
  Clearly you've not spent any time in the world of defense contracting. The default is to put absolutely every last thing in the contract. If your contract doesn't say, "You can't put sawdust in the brownies," there will be a contractor who says, "What? You didn't say I couldn't." You might laugh. You might suppose there's some common understanding of quality that everyone can deal with. Especially when it comes to brownies. To some degree, I'd agree: it's a defensive attempt to avoid problems encountered in the past, and maybe an overreaction. The thing is, though, with weapons systems, the equivalent of putting sawdust in brownies happens all the time. The contractor doesn't live in Alaska, or on a carrier deck, where the thing will be deployed, and if the contract doesn't specifically mention cold or fungus or salt corrosion, it'll get overlooked. Worse, the contractor really has no experience in a combat zone, and has no idea what sort of abuse their equipment will undergo. The contract has to say. The defensiveness comes partly from the fact that these systems get a single iteration. There's some back and forth during testing and verification, and there are always contracts for upgrades and improvements. But by and large, you really need things to work right the first time. Hence the heavy reliance on contracts and standards. They're like an API telling the civilian contractor what's required in a battlefield environment. He really doesn't know things that soldiers consider obvious.
  - senki 16y ago
    I meant that they should write down these trivial things once in a standard, and later just refer to it in every recipe in two words. This spec already contains references to several federal and military standards, but clearly not enough. Thats why it's such a bloated piece of sh... paper.
    - Dove 16y ago
      Ah. Well, in this case, they kind of did that: 3.2 Ingredients. All ingredients shall be clean, sound, wholesome, and free from foreign material, evidence of rodent or insect infestation, extraneous material, off-odors, off-flavors, and off-colors. 3.2.1 Sugar. Sugar shall be white, refined, granulated, cane or beet sugar. Powdered sugar of equivalent quality may be substituted for part of the granulated sugar in the brownie formula to control spread. 3.2.2 Oatmeal. Oatmeal shall be the commercial product known as quick cooking oatmeal. It shall have natural rolled oat flavor and odor and shall be clean and free from burned particles, rancid, musty, sour, or other undesirable flavors and odors. . . . They factored out the "all ingredients" part of the standard. You know, I'm sorry to admit, but I've written these things before. There's a real tradeoff to make there. On the one hand, there's a virtuous impulse to do as much factoring as you can so you don't have to write things twice--or heaven forbid, update them multiple times when they change. On the other hand, you then find yourself calling for MIL-STD-340985 sugar and MIL-STD-320598 flour and MIL-STD-24098 molasses with deviations allowed to items 4, 5, and 9 of paragraph 6 when using process B of MIL-STD-32409 Baking Instructions. And there's sort of a desire by users of the document not to need to have twenty books open at once just to figure out if they can use this flour or not. Writing this sort of thing well is a lot harder than you would think. Edit: Upon reflection, there's a real parallel between that and walking the fine line between copypasta code and spaghetti abstraction.
- gte910h 16y ago
  The point of the language it to make it grounds for cancelling the contract. With the language there, the cancellation is a sure thing if they find those issues. If the language is not there, there can be a dispute.
- anigbrowl 16y ago
  Such logic rests on the assumption that other people are at least as honest and intelligent as oneself. Regrettably, this often turns out not to be the case.

JimmyL 16y ago

If they didn't put that in, what would stop a less-than-honorable supplier from low-balling the contract, using rodent-infested wheat, and then suing the DoD when they get their contract canceled because someone finds rat feces in their brownie? Or more broadly, what would allow the DoD to cancel that contract in the first place in that example, if the specs didn't say they had to be free of the stuff?