The site is still acting funky and we don’t know why.
Archives for July 2009
History in the making
Mark Buehrle (live game feed):
Consecutive perfect innings pitched
* 14.1 – Mark Buehrle, Chicago White Sox – July 18 through July 28, 2009
Props to the wiki guy who kept this up to date.
Update. And it’s over at 15.0 with a walk.
Update. And the hitless innings streak ends too.
Tea-bagging queen
If you’d told me someone named Lou had used the phrase “tea-bagging queen”, I would have guessed it was Lou Reed, circa 1970. Turns out I was wrong:
The most trusted name in news, my friends.
The return of wine blogging
I just returned from a fascinating wine tasting held at the New York Wine and Culinary Center (in Canandaigua, NY). It was an all cabernet franc tasting — 21 different cab francs, 17 from the Finger Lakes (all from the 2007 vintage), three from the Loire region of France, and one from Long Island.
Cabernet franc is one of the most interesting and under-appreciated wine grapes, IMHO. The most famous cab franc-based wine in the world is Cheval Blanc (two-thirds cab franc, one-third merlot) from St. Emilion. Miles is seen drinking a 1961 Cheval at a fast food restaurant at the end of Sideways; the 1947 Cheval regularly shows up in “best wines of the 20th century” lists. More frequently, cab franc is produced in a somewhat more humble style in the Loire region (Chinon, Bourgueil); these wines are usually, but not always, a big lighter. Cab franc is also grown in the Finger Lakes, where it is the region’s most successful red wine varietal by most accounts.
Flavorwise, cab franc is similar to cab sauvignon but with more of a distinctive vegetal note — mint, pepper, mocha, chocolate. The fruit tends to be a bit less dark than on a cab sauvignon (raspberry rather than currant) and the body is usually lighter than a cab sauvignon. It’s also a bit more food friendly than cabernet sauvignon.
Today’s tasting went almost exactly as I thought it would. My favorite producers are Daminai, Shalestone, and Ravines, and I ended up scoring those the highest (it was a blind tasting), along with an interesting no-oak cab franc, called T23 (I don’t know where this name comes from), from Lamoreaux Landing. Unfortunately, Shalestone and Damiani are next-to-impossible to find, unless you visit the tasting froom. Lamoreaux Landing and Ravines are a bit easier to find — some shops in New York City should carry them and they may be available elsewhere. The Lamoreaux Landing T23 in particular is only $15 and would appeal to people who like lighter red wines, like typical pinot noirs. It has lovely raspberry fruit and a nice spicy component. It would go well with just about anything except shellfish (on one end of the spectrum) or beef or lamb (on the other). I recommend checking it out if you ever see it at a store. If you ever seen any of the others, I recommend those as well. They are a bit more expensive, but the Shalestone and Damiani in particular are big, rich, chocolatey wines that should be real crowd-pleasers.
I also learned about a great wine science blog that I’ll be talking about more later.
Update. If you’re not in the mood to discuss wine, could you tell me where I can find the Shatner Palin video now that it’s down off YouTube?
Site Issues
A number of you have emailed to tell me the site looks funky, and I have no idea why it would. Please explain what the problem is, what browser you are using, and what OS, and if you can put up a screen cap on an image hosting service, that would be appreciated.
If any of you know what has caused this and have a workaround, please fill me in.
Going With the Gut
I find stories like this fascinating:
The United States military has spent billions on hardware, like signal jamming technology, to detect and destroy what the military calls improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s, the roadside bombs that have proved to be the greatest threat in Iraq and now in Afghanistan, where Sergeant Tierney is training soldiers to foil bomb attacks.
Still, high-tech gear, while helping to reduce casualties, remains a mere supplement to the most sensitive detection system of all — the human brain. Troops on the ground, using only their senses and experience, are responsible for foiling many I.E.D. attacks, and, like Sergeant Tierney, they often cite a gut feeling or a hunch as their first clue.
Everyone has hunches — about friends’ motives, about the stock market, about when to fold a hand of poker and when to hold it. But United States troops are now at the center of a large effort to understand how it is that in a life-or-death situation, some people’s brains can sense danger and act on it well before others’ do.
Aside from the fact that a certain individual kind of ruined the notion of going with gut feelings, I honestly do believe there is something to this. It is that little internal trigger that says “this is a bad idea” that every one of us has experienced.
A Poet and Doesn’t Know It
Via Sullivan, this is simply genius. Every now and then someone does something that is so perfect that you have to watch it several times, and this is one of them. William Shatner reading Sarah Palin’s speech:
For me, it was the bongo in the background.
I challenge you to only watch it once.