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.

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.

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.