Monday, January 28, 2008

Wine: 2006 Syrah, Third Stone Winery (Monterrey County)

Drunk Friday, Jan. 25, with our usual Friday pizza, the quattro stagioni with oil base.

Excellent tip of the tongue flavors: fruit, and wood, and herb, and a nice follow-through on those flavors. We felt it was a little lacking in middle-of-the-mouth oomph, though. Maybe a little more time in the cellar would have been a good idea.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

NSFW?

Several years ago, when I was traveling someplace or other, I went into an airport bathroom stall and found... porn. It was not an event that I expected to be repeated, least of all at my place of work. But yesterday, I headed to the fourth-floor men's room, and what is on the floor in the last stall, in full-color, glossy format? Oh, yes, you guessed it: The 2006 "Images from the Hubble Space Telescope" calendar.

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Things to read

I've had these articles sitting open in various windows of my browser for weeks begging for a thoughtful reading and response, but this is a blog so all that's really required is a half-baked expression of interest.

An article on Thomas Midgley,
inventor of tetra-ethyl lead as a gasoline additive, developer of CFC-based refrigerants, and victim of spectacularly poetic justice.

An article on American democracy
, and the staggering lack of knowledge thereof amongst the youth, its causes, and perhaps even a few rays of hope.

The secret to raising smart kids
. Reward effort, not results. Slightly counterintuitive--doesn't "the real world" reward results?--but the overall idea is that you want to make sure your kid is working up to her full potential--that is to say, working her hardest.