Nothing To Wine About

The end of a very long era:

While New World wines have adopted the screw top for years - with up to 90 per cent of New Zealand wines and 60 per cent of Australian bottles using them – giving up the time-honoured cork has met with much stiffer resistance in France beyond the cheaper end of the market.

But according to one wine expert, two of the world's top names - Domaine de la Romanée-Conti in Burgundy, whose bottles can sell for tens of thousands of pounds, and Bordeaux's legendary Chateau Margaux – are now looking into screw tops.

I don't even like synthetic corks so of course I consider screw caps to be an abomination but hey, that's progress. And admittedly, they do prevent oxidation much better and more consistently than either type of cork. I just like the ceremony of opening the bottle the old fashioned way; there's always an aura of anticipation for what you're going to get from that particular bottle that twisting off a screw cap just can't inspire. C'est le vin.

Introducing Obama

Barack Obama's first big ad buy of the general election, costing 15 million dollars and running in 18 states of which only 4 were won by the Democratic candidate in 2004:
This is all part of his larger 50 state strategy: to use his massive fundraising base to outspend John McCain in many of the closer "red" states normally ceded to the Republicans, taking the fight right to him and making him spread his resources thin across the country. Now I'm actually not a fan of the "winner take all" electoral college system we use to select our presidents but it's the system we have in place and just like the delegate system used in the primaries, Obama and his people have studied it well and are making the most of their strengths. The horse race has officially begun...

The Betting Process

"Short version: McCain is a high-stakes craps player who loves the pure, adrenalin-pumping, rush of the game. Obama is an exceedingly low-stakes poker player who sizes up his odds methodically and rarely loses money." -political writer Noam Scheiber, summarizing Michael Scherer's and Michael Weisskopf's article in Time magazine on the candidates' respective gambling habits

Middle East 2.0

As the dollar wilts and many Americans struggle just to make their inflated mortgage payments, the folks in Dubai are paving their streets with gold and platinum-plating every new building in the country; OK, they're probably not doing that but they obviously aren't hurting for cash as they announce the latest of many grandiose construction projects for the upstart Arabian emirate:

Costing a whopping $281 million, the new fountains will shoot water 450 feet into the air and pump 22,000 gallons of water through it at any given time. 6,600 lights and 50 projectors will shoot video and images onto the spray as its in the air, making it a remarkable sight, especially seeing that it'll be installed in the middle of the desert. It should be complete sometime next year, if you're a fountain enthusiast and want to go check it out.

Some of you might remember the innovative dynamic architecture project from a few weeks back. I haven't ever had plans to visit Dubai City but if they follow through on all of their proposed architectural plans I just may have to drop in someday on the fastest growing city in the world. How cool would that be?

Obama: Smart On Crime

Video of Barack Obama, last September in New Hampshire, talking through a head cold with a compelling, common-sense, narrative on how the country's judicial system must be changed so as to stop over-clogging the system with nonviolent drug offenders:

The South Shall Snack Again

Fatness by state. Ya'll up for some fried Twinkies?

Dead Sea Stone

News from the land of the bible:

A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew found near the Dead Sea in Jordan that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is raising eyebrows in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it is believed to speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days, suggesting that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.

The tablet, which is similar in style to the Dead Sea Scrolls, is written, not engraved, across two neat columns, similar to columns in a Torah. But the stone is broken, and some of the text is faded, meaning that much of what it says is open to debate.

From what I've read there were a lot of so-called messiahs running around the Middle East 2000 years ago, so it's no surprise that the mythology surrounding Jesus incorporated a recognized tradition from Jewish folklore. From what I can tell though this isn't exactly earth shattering news; we know no more now about the actual Jesus than we did before this discovery and I don't expect that to change any time soon.

Conspiracy Theory Rock

Apparently this School House Rock parody was only shown once in it's original Saturday Night Live broadcast and then cut from the summer rerun. Lorne Michaels told the New York Daily News he "didn't think it worked comedically" but in an interview SNL alum Harry Shearer said "The truth is that Lorne wanted to continue working at 30 Rock." GE certainly takes a pounding here:

Goodbye Jesse Helms

Regular readers might notice the lack of my usual RIP; from Dispatches From The Culture Wars:

Jesse Helms died on the 4th of July and the nation celebrated with fireworks, BBQs and a day off for everyone. I can't think of a single nice to thing to say about him so I'll say accurate things instead. It is a matter of some dispute whether Helms' most obvious and prominent attribute was his ignorance or his bigotry. He was a malevolent voice for obscurantism and anti-modernism in every conceivable way. This was a man who, as late as 1995, was declaring that the Washington Post and the New York Times were "infested with homosexuals" and called gays "morally sick wretches." This is also the man who called the University of North Carolina the "university of negroes and communists" and who said, in response to vigils on college campuses by students in the wake of Martin Luther King's death, "They should ask their parents if it would be all right for their son or daughter to marry a Negro." No, I won't miss him, nor will the world. Rot in peace.

I've never had any problem speaking ill of the dead when they deserve it and I still don't, so fuck you, Jesse Helms; we're all better off as a race without this hateful bastard. Amen.

World's Largest Freehand Drawing

I really love that there are people out there creating incredible things like this:

jim denevan is a chef from california, USA, but not all of his handy work fits easily onto a plate. denevan also creates huge freehand sand drawings using a combination of tools and a truck. one of his more recent pieces has been dubbed the 'largest freehand drawing in the world' and it certainly is big at 3 miles (4.8km) across! the circular work took 100 (160km) miles / eight days of walking to complete and was washed away in a rainstorm the next week.

For some reason, temporary outdoor installations are some of my favorite works of art; I don't know if it's the effemeral quality or the vast spaces they usually occupy. A few years back I went to New York City to see some good friends, the new MOMA and Christo's The Gates in Central Park:
I'm the good looking guy on the left.