First?

so many questions in the previous boodle and I finally catch up to find they've all been answered already. Except: "Grace Under Fire". I too loved that show.

Wade Swoboda: I love you like a Sister.
Grace Kelly: Oh, Wade. I'm Southern. Please don't tell me you love me like a sister!

Here's a link for bc:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaon

A SciFi book I'm reading has this term in it, and I at first thought it was a word the author made up. Was a bit annoyed that he never explained what it is. Looked it up this AM and it now makes less sense. Should have just stuck with thinking it was the author's imagination.

Frederik Pohl: "Starburst"

Too bad Brett Butler self-destructed as she did. Another talent lost.

I think we all should self-demographicize ourselves...

I'm a 35-45, white, veteran, civil servant, college grad, unaffiliated, non-smoker, non-drinker, married male. And no, you can't guess how I'll vote.

:-)

Scones! You had to say SCONES!

Worked from home yesterday, nobody told me it was tie day here. But an unasked friend scrounged up one that completely matches my shirt down to the glitter threaded stripes and cafe au lait color. Go figure. It's the first time I've ever worn a tie.

50+, white, advanced degree, Dem/Indep, non-smoker, light drinker, divorced female. Above the salary demographic mentioned in Joel's kit. Lesse. Her husband is speaking here today, I'm not going--although I probably will for her.

Now to go get that scone.

So I guess this means that Miles would definately vote for Obama. I'm also guessing here, but Jack probably wouldn't vote at all.

(Think "Sideways")

Oh, and Rita Rudner.

Lovely bunch o'comments over at the print version... *RME*

:-)

I think this is one of the most important things Joel has ever written. Seriously. And that he did it without resorting to a discussion of overlapping distributions is even more impressive.

One of the most horrible things we people do is treat groups as sentient creatures. This has led to all sorts of grief in the world. We do it both because it is easy, and because there are enough common characteristics in a given group to fool us into believing in a group consciousness.

The point, of course, is that *even if* there are statistically significant aggregate measures that can be applied to a group, the predictive power of such measures when applied to an individual is insignificant. And this isn't some kind of mooshy statement of philosophy. It is a hard mathematical fact.

I mean, the average number of children in an American family with children is 1.86. While this figure has great importance in looking at the aggregate nature of American families, I defy anyone to use this figure to absolutely predict the number of children in any given family.

Indeed, I assert without fear of contradiction that the number of families that have exactly 1.86 children is zero. There *are no* average families.

In the same way it is foolish to predict any kind of individual behavior on group statistics. There are no average whites. There are no average blacks. There are no average men. There are no average women. There are no average people.

And, as Joel so eloquently explains, there are no average voters.

All your getting from me is that I'm unaffiliated/independent; fiscally conservative/socially liberal. Which is why I almost always vote Dem.

From the Weingarten school of thought: All women are above average.

Wait, what the heck kind of word is Demographicoguery? And why did it take me so long to notice?

From the tail of the previous Boodle:

Personally, I think Jack Benny was funnier as a stand-up comedian, but Groucho's movies and wide-ranging social and political commentary are superior to anything I ever saw from Benny though I don't discount his inclusion of the Rochester character.

I'm not sure who was a better foil/straightperson for each; Rochester for Benny, or Margaret Dumont for Groucho.

Having said all that, Benny and the Marx Brothers both came up through vaudeville in the early 20th century, and I'm pretty sure that they were friends. Benny was involved with - maybe married? - one of the Marx sisters, IIRC.

On a seperate note I see that Marc Kaufmann has written a piece about something I've long been saying would be a problem: With the decomissioning of the Space Shuttles in 2010, the US will have no manned space capability until the new Ares/Orion systems come on line in 2012 or so.

And the Russians get to name their prices for ferrying Americans to the ISS, as tensions between the two countries are rising...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/06/AR2008030604070.html

bc

Posted by: bc | March 7, 2008 09:04 AM

Now give me a moment to catch up with this Kit and kaons...

"Starker! There is *no laughing* in Kaons!"

bc

bc

Never mind, I figured it out.

I'm confuseder than before bc: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Starker%21+There+is+*no+laughing*+in+Kaons

Scones didn't look as good as something else.

Count me in as a member of the blueberry muffin demographic. (Almost typed demongraphic there. Hmmmm.)

Methinks bc was doing a K.A.O.S./Kaon play on words.

But I've been wrong before.

:-)

joel, i think you mean "excerpt" not "except."

Oops. THANKS LAL

Demographicoguery. Wow, Joel has such a way with words. I'm in awe. It's...Germanic in the way he put the syllables together so that you know exactly what he means.

Given my demographics (female, over 50, master's in public administration, retired, non-smoker, occasional wine drinker), you'd think I would be solidly in Hillary's corner. But I'll most likely vote for Obama in the primary.

I am READY for SERIOUS change.

(318 days till January 20, 2009!)

Great kit Joel.

Demographics is a delicate issue with me at the moment I move up a bracket in a few months and everytime I see something that reminds me of that I get a little anxious.

Ooops, forgot the muffin demographic:
Carrot cake.

And let's not get into the comedian demo, shall we?

:-)

Married male, 30s, college grad, educator, toker, non-smoker, beer-swiller (but never Pabst- I'm a connoisseur), Sonic for breakfast (no doughnuts or scones), and with a kid and an 8-1/2-month pregnant wife, I believe that I actually do have almost exactly 1.86 children.

Great writing JA, and love your photos. Hilary and Obama are both coming to Casper, Wyoming today...have to see the tax man first, though. Wapo rocks!

Joel,
You got screwed, blued and tattooed by the San Antonio Express-News this morning. I'm talking about your reporting about the age, contentious by all accounts, of the Grand Canyon.

I saw your blog item, read John Noble Wilford's reporting on the same at the NYT, then returned to washingtonpost.com to read your entire article. That's how I know Wilford's reporting ended with a mention of John Wesley Powell and his 1869 trip down the Colorado River through the canyon, the story of great interest to me--an extension of the stories of Western exploration and mapping told by Goetzmann in his award-winning book.

What did I find on the second A section in our paper this morning, on page 15A? A reprint of the Wilford article, but with 10 paragraphs appended after the mention of Powell. I thought to myself, "This sure looks like Joel's work from yesterday." At the end of the entire piece, there is a small blurb that reads, "The Washington Post contributed to this report."

No shared byline for the reprinted article, no mention of your work, Joel, nada. I'd say you were Texas hornswoggled.

Thanks scotty, it now makes sense. well, at least the no laughing part.

Joel, thanks for reminding me to pick-up half a dozens at the Scone Witches. Darn they are good.
I've entered Catholic churches in a state of mortal sin without any unpleasant incidents. Should I wear asbestos underwear for Commemorative service of a colleague's mother this PM? The first Protestant mass I'll ever attend will be held in a nice downtown United Church (that is everything but United these days).
Enough bad things happened to that woman in her life one would expect at least her death would be dignified and peaceful, but this is not the way it happened. The tough ones gets challenged to the end apparently. She is at rest now, finally.
As for demographics I'm not a citizen nor a resident of the USA, so it doesn't matter. I'm quite sure I would not have voted for W though. I do not trust people born with a silver spoon in their mouth pretending to be one of the boys.
Weekend forecast :12-20in. of snow. Oh joy.

Jack: If they want to drink Merlot, we're drinking Merlot.
Miles Raymond: No, if anyone orders Merlot, I'm leaving. I am NOT drinking any f*ing Merlot!

omni - after I saw that film I looked sheepishly at my own modest collection of wines and sighed.

I really enjoyed "Sideways" although the image of the fat nekkid guy haunts me still.

Just to prove Shriek really does have reason to complain.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080305.wnewwinterpicsMarch0305/PhotoGallery01?slot=11

omni, you're hurting me with reminders of the movie that made my beloved Pinot more expensive! Although I tend to agree with him about Merlot...

Probability is not applicable to single events, not really. Thank you, RD. It took me a very long time to find scientific literature to back up what I knew instinctively but couldn't express, being not very educated, science-wise. Here's something from the internet:

"... According to Reichenbach, the probability concept is extended by giving probability a 'fictitious' meaning in reference to single events. We find the probability associated with an infinite sequences and transfer that value to a given single member of it. ... This procedure, which seems natural in the case of the coin toss, does involve basic difficulties. The whole trouble is that a given single event belongs to many sequences, and the probabilities associated with the different sequences may differ considerably. The problem is to decide from which sequence to take the probability that is to be attached 'fictitiously' to the single event."

Groucho once said that Dumont was so good with him because she had absolutely no sense of humor and never got the joke, never anticipated the punchline.

Male, white (well more of a blotchy beige), almost 60, very married, parent of (very) adult child, non-veteran unless you count being born in an Army hospital and spending 16 years as a military brat, college- graduated from University if Texas Laudy How Cum, 1.86 chins, bald, semihemidemipaunch, ex-Marlboro man, no coffee, yes wine and beer (no PBR, we have our standards. They're low, but we have them.) In the coming contest i favor Obama, mostly because I cannot stand the thought of listening to all the garbage about Monica and Jennifer and bimbo eruptions and blue dresses and the definition of "is" for another four years. If Bill should take a flight on Amelia Earhart Airlines between now and the election I could vote for HRC without qualm. I have no respect left for Johnny Mac. Over the last seven years he has compromised each and every principle he ever had in his quest for the White House. At first it was sad to watch. Now it's just disgusting.

Wait just a gull-durned minute. I've got some business from the last boodle to take care of: Wilbrod wrote: "I foresee an plant rights movement coming up...."

That being so, it occured to me that the VRM (Vegetable Rights Movement) needs a catchy, bumper-sticker type slogan and songs. I prose the following:

"Free the Broccoli 11"
"We Will Not Be Sauteed!"
"Tippicanoe and Cauliflower Too"
"54-40 or Blight!"
"Okra-homer, Where the Wind Comes Sweeping Down the Plain"
"You Say 'To-may-to,' I Say It's a Not a Stupid Fruit"
"A Fool and His Succotash Are Soon Parted"
"A Grazing Maize, How Sweet the Ground"

Just tryin' to be helpful.

omni beat me to the Sideways merlot quote. I use that as often and as loudly as possible.

Speaking of movies, it looks like an "unemployed psychologist" may win the Netflix prize for figuring out a better algorithm for movie recommendations.

"Next to Potter's computer there's a sheet of notebook paper. On it is an intricate computation in a neat, squarish hand. Not his -- the calculation was done by his oldest daughter, Emily, a high school senior who plans to start a degree at Oxford next fall. She is, for the moment, serving as her father's higher-math consultant. "He gives me bits of calculus to do," she says, in a manner that suggests she feels ready to assume a position of greater responsibility on the project. (Emily has received no authoritative word as to what portion of any prize money would accrue to her personal accounts.)"

Read it all here:
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/16-03/mf_netflix?currentPage=2

I like good Merlot, especially when blended with a little Cabernet Sauvignon. The problem is that a lot of mediocre grapes have been hauled into service, so the overall quality has been debased.

Maureen Dowd called the older female voters that support Hillary "shoulder pad" feminists. I guess that means women that were old enough to remember wearing shoulder pads in the office.

http://dowdreport.blogspot.com/2008/03/shoulder-padding.html

Her commercials in Texas were very much aimed at women exclusively to the point of exhuming the shoulder pad wearing Ann Richards to endorse her from the grave.

Good morning. Thinking about preparing to get busy here - thanks, Cassandra, that was really funny. And so true.

Joel, brilliant column, and I second RD on its importance. Of course, the riposte would be that this is all anecdotal, but then that's the point of actual individual stories rather than statistical projections: the former are anecdotal. The voter is always the particular, not the general.

Female, short, white, 47, married, one child, lawyer, musician, community volunteer, policy wonk, Democrat, non-smoker, like country music, rock'nroll and opera, beer, wine and sour mash whisky, donuts & scones, cowboy boots & high heels. Prefer books to TV. Simpsons watcher.

Lots of problems with the Texas caucuses--logistic, legal challenges, by the way for those not following the Texas press. Many calls, editorially in the last two or three days, to do away with the Texas Two-Step--specifically, a call to eliminate the caucus system. As was proved Tuesday with huge voter turnout, the caucus system is unwieldy.

I came this close to staying after our caucus to apply for being a delegate, but the night was cool and getting colder and I was still cramping from the procedure. After I waited almost a half hour, my husband with me, we threw in the towel and headed home to our warmer house.

Our caucus went relatively smoothly, since our 2099 precinct is dinky. We were colocated with another larger district, 2066, which had a very large turnout--the lines for Baack and Hillary very evenly split, according to my rough-approximation headcount and to our amazement. It was very tempting to stay, since our precinct falls in state Sen. Leticia Van De Putte's district, she to be one of the Dem convention cochairs in Denver.

If you look at the map of Texas, the Democratic vote, Hillary swept almost all of rural Texas, and the border areas--except large Brewster County where the Rio Grande bends and gives the border its well-known bump.

Obama took Dallas and Fort Worth, Houston, and a checkerboard of counties in eastern Texas. What surprised me most was the number of counties that went for Obama around Austin, and south to just north of San Antonio, including a swath of counties to Austin's west.

Interesting that Obama chose to deliver his Texas primary election night speech from in front of our Municipal Auditorium, with its oversized black doors--this in a county, ours, Bexar, that was really a sweep for Hillary Clinton. "Si se puede" just didn't seem to hold any magic for Obama here.

As one of the gay guys with whom I stood in line with at the Clinton rally, the one from Arkansas, pointed out, no one in our area of line fit the Hillary blue-collar, less than $50,000-income stereotype. After his analysis, we all laughed.

All educated professionals--the former municipal judge; the two older female students working on their doctorates at UTSA; the gay couple, the one I chatted most with having worked in the telecomm business for decades; the 80-year-old woman who worked for Motorola for years in Chicago, before retiring here in her mid-60s, San Antonio her husband's hometown. And this humorous man from Pine Bluff, whose parents attended Mike Huckabee's church--his father a Baptist, his mother Greek Orthodox, said he actually preferred Dunkin' Donuts to Starbuck's.

The headline in today's paper--rate increased proposed for energy, about $7 a month. D@mn Texas nuclear boondoggle down on the coast! Electicity up, gas up, food up, medical care very expensive, gold up, stocks way down. What next?

Sorry Raysmom, but I've got more...This part gets me emotional every time. I fall in deeply in love Virginia Madsen all over again.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maya: You know, can I ask you a personal question, Miles?
Miles Raymond: Sure.
Maya: Why are you so in to Pinot?
Miles Raymond: [laughs softly]
Maya: I mean, it's like a thing with you.
Miles Raymond: [continues laughing softly]
Miles Raymond: Uh, I don't know, I don't know. Um, it's a hard grape to grow, as you know. Right? It's uh, it's thin-skinned, temperamental, ripens early. It's, you know, it's not a survivor like Cabernet, which can just grow anywhere and uh, thrive even when it's neglected. No, Pinot needs constant care and attention. You know? And in fact it can only grow in these really specific, little, tucked away corners of the world. And, and only the most patient and nurturing of growers can do it, really. Only somebody who really takes the time to understand Pinot's potential can then coax it into its fullest expression. Then, I mean, oh its flavors, they're just the most haunting and brilliant and thrilling and subtle and... ancient on the planet.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Miles Raymond: What about you?
Maya: What about me?
Miles Raymond: I don't know. Why are you into wine?
Maya: Oh I... I think I... I originally got in to wine through my ex-husband.
Miles Raymond: Ah.
Maya: You know, he had this big, sort of show-off cellar, you know.
Miles Raymond: Right.
Maya: But then I discovered that I had a really sharp palate.
Miles Raymond: Uh-huh.
Maya: And the more I drank, the more I liked what it made me think about.
Miles Raymond: Like what?
Maya: Like what a fraud he was.
[Miles laughs softly]
Maya: No, I- I like to think about the life of wine.
Miles Raymond: Yeah.
Maya: How it's a living thing. I like to think about what was going on the year the grapes were growing; how the sun was shining; if it rained. I like to think about all the people who tended and picked the grapes. And if it's an old wine, how many of them must be dead by now. I like how wine continues to evolve, like if I opened a bottle of wine today it would taste different than if I'd opened it on any other day, because a bottle of wine is actually alive. And it's constantly evolving and gaining complexity. That is, until it peaks, like your '61. And then it begins its steady, inevitable decline.
Miles Raymond: Hmm.
Maya: And it tastes so f*ing good.

Classic Houston quote from Marilyn Oshman, art patron who founded Orange Show Center for Visionary Art, sponsors of the Beer Can House: "One good thing about not having any zoning is you can do stuff."

Yes indeedy.

[NYT article, today.]

I like merlot. I like quiche (though not together -- I make a vegetarian spinach quiche, and it really is better accompanied by a dry white). If you disagree with me on these issues, or are contemptuous of my tastes -- well, you don't have to eat my darned quiche, and you can go buy your own dang beverage.

White, male, almost 46, reasonably well paid, advanced degree (PhD), professional scientist, fiscally conservative, personally fairly conservative with a strong belief that others have a right to choose differently than I do, strongly feminist, registered Dem, never taken illegal drugs (except an underage drink or two), never smoked, no fixed religious affiliation, determinedly heterosexual, monogamous, procrastinator. Woulda voted for Hillary Clinton in the primary, but I didn't arrange for an absentee ballot in time and I was out of state on that day. Will vote for whoever will do the best job of publicly repudiating George W. Bush before the world's nations.

yello,
Ann Richards children were split--the daughter going for Hillary, saying Ann would, too, if she were alive. The Richards sons going for Obama.

That shoulder pad column was weird. I could mail Dowd a whole box of shoulder pads that I took out of my clothing. Always thought I would cut up the foam and make yard pillows out of them. The most appropriate place for that fashion look is next to my derriere. Now this year, we have those awful swing jackets. Last year it was the baby-doll, empire look. Fashion, bah.

From the story about the Netflix prize:

In other words: The computer scientists and statisticians at the top of the leaderboard have developed elaborate and carefully tuned algorithms for representing movie watchers by lists of numbers, from which their tastes in movies can be estimated by a formula. Which is fine, in Gavin Potter's view -- except people aren't lists of numbers and don't watch movies as if they were.

Hmmm, accidentally on kit. Just change "people aren't lists of numbers and don't watch movies as if they were" to "don't vote as if they were."

Female, 47, married, mother of 2, veteran, spouse of a soldier, red wine and beer drinker (not together), gardening enthusiast, donuts and bagles, proudly pantyhose free since July 9, 1999, community volunteer, policy wonk, singing impaired, opposed to fruity bits in baked goods (especially raisins).

Good point on Merlot, RD. If you went into a wine store and grabbed one $10 bottle of each varietal, chances are the Merlot would be the worst.

Female, 50s, WASP, twice-married, no kids, MBA, fiscal conservative, social liberal, wine drinker, NASCAR watcher, (very) occasional cigar smoker, panty hose hater, HGTV addict, help-desk phobic. Good luck.

In the movie "Notting Hill", one of the characters is a fruitarian meaning she will only eat plant matter that has voluntarily committed suicide, i.e. fallen of the tree.

Keziah: No thanks, I'm a fruitarian.
Max: I didn't realize that.
William: And, ahm: what exactly is a fruitarian?
Keziah: We believe that fruits and vegetables have feeling so we think cooking is cruel. We only eat things that have actually fallen off a tree or bush - that are, in fact, dead already.
William: Right. Right. Interesting stuff. So, these carrots...
Keziah: Have been murdered, yes.
William: Murdered? Poor carrots. How beastly!

The movie slightly overstates the beliefs of fruitarians who are a subsect of vegetarians that believe no food should be cooked.

http://www.fruitarian.com/

She brings tears to my eyes. The quote doesn't really do it justice. Just so many words. You really have to hear her saying it.

A YouTube search only finds the Miles quote. dang

A Wilford-Achenbach mashup. Hmm. Sounds tectonic.

Saddened to see today's story of the shooting death of the student body president at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
http://www.dailytarheel.com/

Merlot's making up the more than half some of the greatest Bordeaux (like the Pomerols IIRC) RD Padouk. It's a mixture grape in my own opinion. That the Merlot vine can produce a lot of grape is its potential downfall as the quality dwindles when the yield increases. The miserly yield of some merlot vines, they even harvest off half the green grapes for crying out loud, gives us the mighty Pétrus. Not that I afford Pétrus but I had a couple of glasses of one great Pomerol or another over the year and those are great wines and mostly merlot.

Linda, I know it's childish but I chuckle interiorly every time you mention Mrs Van de Putte. Pute in French is short for putain (wh@re). So I read it Van the 'ho. I'm not proud of it, it's sad but true.

I'll try to find some time to post snow pictures next weekend, you know, between shoveling sessions.

omni, "Starburst" is one of my least favorite Pohl novels. Interesting ideas and science, kinda goofy execution of the plot IMO. I'd have advised against it, though my memory of it is from 20+ years ago...

Scotty figured out my K.A.O.S/kaon "Get Smart" double entendre. Perhaps I'm not completely insane.

Kaons, mesons, hadrons, bosons - the intersection of quantum and particle physics is a quarky eigenstate of strangeness for me.

Speaking of strangeness and probabilities, predicting the actions of individual voters is subject to what I propose we call the Achenbach Uncertainty Principle, in that we Observers can know certain demograpic properties of a given voter - ethnic, food and beverage preferences, location, etc., but not exactly how they'll vote. That vote exists as a cloud of probablilites (and properties of a given voter) in the Higgs Ocean unitl it collapses when it's cast in the booth somewhere (see Schrodinger's Cat thought experiment).

And for each individual vote, Observers can't know exactly who cast it, but can assign some statistical probablities based on what you Observe of the voters in a given district, but you'd be hard pressed to assign that vote to an individual.

In all of these thought experiments, People are Unpredictable actors, as well as Unreliable Observers.

But we're all we've got.

bc

Yellojkt, SonofCarl, etc... this is for you...

http://xkcd.com/393/

I don't know how men wear ties day after day! It's open further than a necklace I wear every day and it's still bothering me.

On the other hand, someone in the ladies' room loved it, calling it (unasked) the "perfect yet insouciant look." Sounds like style creds to me. :-)

I'm Liking it just fine, 'Starburst' that is. It's kind of quirky (and quarky). I do think I agree that it's not one of his best. I have another at home (don't recall the title at the moment) and recently finished 'The Coming of the Quantum Cats'. I needed a break from all the classic lit I've been reading lately. The used book store (Idle Time Books) at the bottom end of the block is now in the near the top, and I frequently find myself walking past after Sat brunch. Its gravitational pull is immense. I think my favorite Pohl is 'A Plague of Pythons'. I read that more than twenty years ago. Close to thirty I think. It was my Mom's book.ha

I wear a tie every once and a while just to prove to myself that I can still do a decent double Windsor. But if I wear one too often I start to lose street cred.

Besides, it makes everyone think I must be interviewing for a new job.

I only own three ties. Your classic business power red, a shiny metallic gold and a shiny metallic blue. The last time I wore one to work was fifteen years ago, first day on the job, never again after that. The shiny blue sort of metallic one I wore with a shiny green silk shirt to a friends christmas party about five years ago. Strangely enough it was a really cool look. So once in the past fifteen years for me.

No discussion of gaming with the Reaper is complete without "De Duva" from 1968-

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3803584387889303730

Self-strangulation devices are unfortunately a fact of life in my office.

When I'm out of my cubicle, that is. :-)

When I first started working here all the men in IT and finance and all the male managers wore ties. I didn't wear a tie on my second day. By the end of the year only one guy in IT was still wearing a tie. About six moths later we finally broke him and he stopped wearing one. Nowadays only finance and upper level management stil wear them. Am I a trend setter or what.

SCC:months not moths

time for a walk and lunch

I have not worn a tie since the 80's, it was my Grandfathers tie. Fashion was awful in the eighties, I believe I wore my grandfathers old fedora with the outfit.

Here's my key to wine snobbery. Find one white and one red varietal that you like and stick to it. Ours are pinot gris and merlot. This was before Sideways made merlot a punchline. Once you have the variety down, you usually have between two and five choices in that category. Then you can make some arbitrary decision based on region, reputation or (my favorite) price. Don't order the cheapest of anything in a restaurant, but the next cheapest is usually not that much of a premium.

"Our" wine is Rutherford Hill because we toured their winery in Napa Valley once upon a time and they market mostly to restaurants rather than wine stores. We were shocked and delighted to find a reasonably priced RH merlot at Sparks in New York. If it's good enough for Sparks, it's good enough for anywhere.

http://www.rutherfordhill.com/
http://www.sparkssteakhouse.com/

We're generally a white wine couple. A recent favorite is Elk Cove Pinot Gris from Washington State. Unfortunately, it's currently out of stock--wine store says maybe 2-3 months. Also found a very nice red from Spain (name escapes me at the moment).

Good kit, JA. Is this not an exciting election? Of course, they're starting to get ugly. I kind of knew that was going to happen, but we can hope. And I think it is wonderful that people are interested, really interested, in the voting process, especially the young people. I just hope they vote.

African-American female, 50's, child of God and lover of Christ, Bible study teacher and community volunteer, grandmother, widow, Achenblog boodler,registered Dem., hearing-impaired, HGTV and DIY watcher.

Mudge I had to laugh at your list. Where do you get that stuff?

Omni, I saw the movie,but don't remember that exchange. I thought the movie was funny.

Glad you got a laugh this morning.

yello, I've heard the advice about ordering wine in a restaurant the other way around. No one likes to look cheap by ordering the cheapest, so they order the second cheapest. Therefore, that's the one on which the restaurant puts the biggest markup. Ah, rules of thumb--who knows? Actually, I tend to order wines I've never heard of (at least then I'm blissfully unaware of the markup) or have an unusual attribute (Tasmanian Pinot Noir, anyone?). And the best words to describe the wines we have on hand are "abundant" and "eclectic."

Oooh. cassandra watches design tv! I'm an addict. When you come to Calgary, cassandra, we'll cook and eat and watch all ten design channels non-stop (scoffing at 'theme' decor not only permitted, but encouraged).

Me too Scotty,although I have yet to be endangered by catching it in something. My tie always ends up in whatever i am eating.
Also we have to wear the same standard tie everyday, every once in awhile I will put on something different to see if management notices,so far 3 different ties and they haven't noticed.

I had been an avid beer drinker for the longest time,Then a friend turned me onto wine and i haven't looked back. I still have a occasional beer or two,at a sporting event or steamed crabs,but now a 12-pack last for a couple of months.

And Joel,from your list of travels you may want to consider this Johnny Cash ditty as your theme song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H-lQNSILM0

You have been everywhere man

Speaking of the Alamo...

Who showed up early yesterday for the reenactment but British pop star Phil Collins. (Tony Blair was also in town--another story.) Who knew Collins was such an Alamo history buff? According to the local press, Collins' interest was stimulated by the Disney "King of the Wild Frontier" series.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA030708.01B.Alamo.b55f54.html

Among the nearly 200 in attendance was Collins, drummer for the rock group Genesis, whose career includes such hits as "In the Air Tonight," and "One More Night."

"I'm just very moved by it," he said of the ceremony.

Though at least 11 Alamo defenders were from his homeland of England, Collins said he's simply had a passion for the Alamo since he was a boy -- roughly the same time he started pounding on his first tin drum.

"I've had an interest since I was 5 years old, watching (actor) Fess Parker" as Davy Crockett in the 1950s, Collins said.

"I've really developed an interest in the last 20 years, collecting bits and pieces (on Alamo history) here and there," he said. "I've been here twice, once in the 1970s and again four years ago. But I've never been here at this time of the year."

Great article today, Joel!

The constant demographics talk has been driving me nuts. The twin assumptions underlying these articles seem to be: 1) People vote for the candidate with whom they can identify personally, and 2) Race/ethnicity and gender are the key components of identity, closely followed by age and income. Reality is much more complicated.

Two "outliers" I've come across:

- both white women in their 70s, lifelong D voters

- one retired, middle class, high school education, loves Bill O'Reilly, from NY,
can't STAND Clinton, and votes ABC

- one retired, upper middle class, grad. degrees, liked Biden, but can't choose
between Clinton and Obama, voted McCain in the primary because he's the
only R she could accept as president, will vote any D in the general

Anyway, thanks again for a thoughtful piece!

Hours of fun for fans of demographics: http://factfinder.census.gov/

Where do I get those ideas, Cassandra? I like to think maybe it's a brain tumor benign).

Although my wife and I are both semi-serious "grape nuts" (many thanks to Maggie O'D for that phrase) we are pretty far outside the "mainstream," in that neither of us likes wine aged in oak barrels--too tannic and too dry. We prefer wines aged in stainless steel. My wife loves almost all white zinfandels and "blush" wines (which her friends make fun of as "Kool Aid"). I like German and Italian white wines, Liebfraumilch and pretty much any kind of Riesling and Gewürztraminer. I like most pinot grigio wines, and any kind of sweet or semi-sweet wines (and dessert wines/"ice" wines). If I have to drink a red, I like chianti, Montepulchiano (by Citra), and just about any reasonable Sangria (which I can drink all night). If my only choice is a merlot, I'd rather drink a glass of water.

I've harped on my favorite winery often enough here: Stone Mountain Vineyard, out near the Shenandoah Valley (love their Bacon Hollow Revenuers Reserve), and Vuiansa and Madoona wineries in the Sonoma Valley. (Virginia, amazingly, has something like 160 vineyards/wineries, and there's a lot of darn good wine coming from that state.) (A number of us had a mini-BPH last year at a wine festival at Montpelier (Madison's estate) last year.)

Great article, Joel!

OK, I'm game:

Late 20s, married, WASP (Episcopal), lawyer in "BigLaw", mother of 1, originally from SC but live in VA, parents were strong Republicans (dad worked for Strom Thurmond), went to a women's college, fiscal conservative but social liberal.

Voted for Obama in the primary, but if Hillary gets the nom, may consider not voting at all in the general election.

Oh, and I abhor the taste of beer. Blech. I'll drink just about any wine as long as it's good wine!

SCC: Viansa http://www.viansa.com/

Hey, PLS! Howya been? You haven't been around lately.

Sure good to hear from a lot of the old gang recently: PLS, Tangent, Miss Toronto. UI'm forgetting somebody else who just stopped by in the last day or so. Anybody able to refresh my memory?

Anyway, welcome. Sit down. Have a canape. Don't mind the doilies.

We here on the banks of the mighty Anacostia are about to get deluged with rain in about two minutes, methinks.

D@mn! My prediction was off by a minute.

Mudge, I'm surprised that you mentioned Viansa, because they make *a lot* of oaky wines. Bet you like Vittoria, their Pino Grigio, and their Frescolina. Am I close?

Mudge... if you like sweet Virginia wines, you would like Sweet Evangeline (or anything with "sweet" in the name) from the Breaux winery near Purcellville. I find it at Harris-Teeter and Wegmans.

Our new favorite sweet wine in the G house is Samos Muscat. A deliciously sweet Greek white.

But lately I'm a Cabernet Sauvignon person. The "bigger" the better.

Hey, Mudge! I've been good, just busy. I'm going to have write down some of these Virginia wineries - I haven't gotten to very many. We lived in Berkeley, CA for a while, so we've been to at least a couple dozen West coast wineries. Some of my favorites: Trefethen, Goosecross, Cakebread, Paradigm, Duckhorn, Ferrari-Carano, J Vineyards (they specialize in pinot noir), Grgich Hills.

Columbia Crest has a pretty good Cabernet, but I am not a big winer (wino?). At least I dig on it, though that may not say much. The stuff is probably comparable to rotgut in the eyes of serious wine-drinkers, but It's something I can swallow. I hate the buzz I get from too much vino, though. I prefer a good Fat Tire buzz, but a Blueberry or Northern Lights buzz takes the cake any day. No hangovers, and dinner tastes so nice.

My wine selection technique involves a mix of of price (I favor the cheap) and evaluation of the funniness and unpronounceability of the name. An unpronouncable funny name is a good sign, because then the only thing that could persuade anyone to keep the wine on the market is a decent quality.

I tend to go to the lesser priced wines lately, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't enjoy a nice Cakebread,Stagsleap or Frogsleap.

And who can forget Martooni's wine list from a couple of weeks ago.Man I am still laughing. How are you doing Dang Hippie?

Time to put on my "self stragulation device" and head to work.

Everyone have a nice weekend!!!

Raysmom: yes, especially the Frescolina (visited Viansa when we were in S.F. several years ago).

TBG: Got a couple bottles of Sweet Evangeline at home right now (might have bought them at the Montpelier BPH, as I recall). We've been to Breaux--they make good stuff. (

For locals: if you head out Route 7 toward the Blue Ridge and turn onto Rt. 9 West, there's a string of seven pretty good wineries (one of them is Breaux, on Rt. 671 off Rt. 9) all within a 10- or 15-mile stretch of road. You can do an entire day of winetasting just in this one stretch of road. (If you think you can do more than 4 or 5 in a day you ain't doin' it right). You don't even have to know the names of the vineyards in advance--just drive out Rt. 9; ya can't miss 'em.

Someothers LTNS posters showing up recently (I think I have this right):

crc
Gunde
kancha
kindathinker
mo

Fat B@stard has been a favorite in my circle of buddies...I'm not into wine far enough to have favorites, although I do like a good dry white.

Dave, Mr. T just noted that the UNC Board of Trustees has a $25,000 reward out for info on the killer of the UNC student president. She was a senior pre-med with a double major in PoliSci and biology and a Morehead scholar. A huge and terrible loss.

Thanks, omni.

Your some of you newbies, about a year ago we here on the boodle were all pulling for PLS, who at the time was study for her bar exam (and while being a wife and mother of a fairly recent newborn, IIRC). And then she made it! So now she swims in shark-infested waters with some of our other barristers, such as Ivansmom, Son of Carl (Canucki Division), and there's one other, who I'm forgetting. Mostlylurking, was that you? And of course Yoki, who isn't a shark herself, but kind of a high-ranking shark wrangler.

I'm mostly a Cabernet drinker. White wines tend to make me drowsy, but my favorite white is Retsina. I generally don't like sweet things. I also like Shiraz and Malbec and Pinot Noir. Merlot to my taste buds just seems too soft, not enough flavor. But I'm not a snob like Paul's character in Sideways. I will drink it if it's free.

Today's Gene Pool is much more interesting than yesterday's. Much more. Unfortunately I have nothing to add.

Middle east democracy building: Rolling Stone has a reporter that actually went there, and actually spoke the language.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/18722376/the_myth_of_the_surge

Demographic information: glass of fashion, mold of form, pedant's pedant, otherwise perfect. No more need be said.

13/11 on last quiz (whatever it may have been).

We did the wine tour day trip a few falls back. we hit three and decided that's all that was safe without a designated driver.

At the last winery a party bus showed up and they had been more than tasting. They were luck to get in and out of the bus upright.

My folks buy a joke wine called Old Fart. The find it hilariously appropriate.

And the prevalence of lawyers, copy editors and other users and abusers of the written word in the boodle often makes me self-conscious.

High-ranking shark wrangler, very funny Mudge and a nice description of Yoki. Firsttimeblogger is also of the shark persuasion and I know there are a couple of others.

Good to hear from you PLS!

Speaking of wines called Fat B@stard and Old Fart, myy wife brought home a bottle of wine she and her gal friends like, called simply "B1tch."

My sister bought us a bottle of Jarhead Red just because she like the name. It wasn't bad. Cheap, too.

Well, the results are in, and it appears that actual white guys who read Doonesbury prefer Obama 3 to 1 over the Hillster.

http://www.doonesbury.com/media/strawpoll/strawpoll.tt

Vital stats:
Scot-Melungeon
I am the same age as the last two digits of my birth year
Non-cheese eater
Pickup truck owner
Two pets
middle eastern music listener
7 keys on keyring
I have lived in 14 towns longer than 6 months.
I have had 27 jobs in my life.

Right, right, it was FTB, not mostly. Sorry to whichever of you I may have offended. (Probably mostly.)

Congrats on reaching 54, Jumper.

Isn't Bill Everything also a shark...er, lawyer?

There are two types of pleasurable wine experiences, the times that "damn the dollars, let's get the good stuff" actually results in a revelatory glass, and the times (much rarer and therefore more exciting) when you find the vintage $9 bottle of Chateau Thames Embankment that actually tastes pretty darn good.

Sorry, Curmudgeon. I'm 4. Born in '04.

bc just phoned me from his car to report that at this moment on the local radio station of NPR, WAMU (88.5 FM) they are talking about the age of the Grand Canyon.

I'm the same age as roughly 63% of the peeople born the same year I was. Figure that one out...hehehe

Sadly, I have only one Chateau Thames Embankment "wine" glass left.

Interestingly, the spell-checker in Safari identifies "Thames" as a misspelling. That's the problem with obscure rivers running through obscure little towns located in obscure banana republics. Nobody knows how to spell the name.

At a recent restaurant outing, we were gazing at the wine list and noticed bottles prices at $1,200 - $1,400. We had a short discussion of the price point at which you stop enjoying the wine and are simply throwing money away (guessing this is subjective).

We by the way did not order anything remotely as expensive - probably $30 range.

Born in 04, Jumper? That makes you two years older than Jesus, doesn't it?

Oh, sorry. I didn't see the apostrophe there. Thought it was some fly scat on my monitor screen.

When the prices top a grand, it's usually for a 1.5 liter magnum, effectively dropping the price per glass in half. Not that it makes the prices any less outrageous.

Mudge, your 2:41... Clinton's not a shark. He's a Jet!

A lot of strange things show up when you do a google image search on Chateau Thames Embankment wine glass. While "Chateau Thames Embankment wine glass" is a currently a googlenope.

I read somewhere recently that there are significant differences between people's senses of taste, so that some pretty large percentage of people just don't taste the difference between decent wine and deservingly-ridiculously-expensive wine. But some (I think smaller) percentage of people do. It was a new study or something. That seems like the kind of thing I would have read here. Did I read it here?

True, omni, true. But Googling "Chateau Thames Embankment" without "wine glass" gets you this Wikipedia entry on dear old Rumpole: "On a daily basis he visits "Pommeroy's", a wine bar located on Fleet Street within walking distance of both the Old Bailey and his law office at Equity Court, and at which he contributes regularly to an ever-increasing bar tab by purchasing glasses of red wine of a questionable quality, to which he refers as either "Cooking Claret", "Pommeroy's Plonk", "Pommeroy's Very Ordinary", "Chateau Thames Embankment", or "Chateau Fleet Street".

I've always been partial to "Chateau Fleet Street," myself, Fleet Street being the (notorious?) home of British newspaper people.

OK, I realize it's only been 21 minutes since my 2:50 challenge. But I'm headed home now with a couple of well known (at least here on the boodle) pitstops along the way.

Well, there you go. Takes all kinds. Say the word "Fleet" and some think "Navy" some think "Tabloids" and some think "Enema."

Good answer Yello, when I saw the price I didn't look close to see that the $1,400 was a large format bottle 3000 ml, however,
that doesn't apply to all there expensive wine, at $1,200 it is still regular size, from their online wine list (I love the internet).

Chateau Lafite Rothschild, Premier Cru, Pauillac, 1990 $1250.00
Chateau Haut Brion, Premier Cru, Pessac-Leognan, 1990 $1250.00
Chateau Mouton Rothschild, Premier Cru, Pauillac, 1990 $1250.00

Dang. I really needed to listen to the Grand Canyon piece.

WM, 50.5; married; 3 children; registered indep; Episcopal; one leg shorter than the other by nearly an inch; hangnails; public school teacher.

I'm back from church. With not a burn, singe or even a rash. Good thing.
Lots of old folk on hand of course, the lady was 86 and the husband is a frail 92. That made for a slow visiting line.
The grieving colleague wasn't pleased that his youngest daughter, about 14, was not there but "with friends". That young lady will have her ears ringing soon.

"French Rabbit" is a decent cheap single cépage white (cabernet sauvignon). It's packaged in a multiply carton so it's also easier to pack for fishing expeditions and goes well with fish. What more can you ask?

As I've said before, the best way to buy wine is to go to a lot of wine tastings. Indeed, I believe that the mega wine store by my house is having one now.

And here I am hanging out here.

I'm fond of Border Shell and Bull Cabernet Sauvignon. You may be more familiar with it as Frontera Concha y Toro.

RD Padouk - so true! I wouldn't know the wines that I *really* like if I hadn't done tastings at all of those vineyards out in CA. For every vineyard where I found a wine I liked, there were probably two others that I would give a pass to if I were to go back to that area. (Robert Mondavi is coming to mind for that purpose.)

And no discussion of wine is complete without a link to this Monty Python classic:

http://www.phespirit.info/montypython/australian_table_wines.htm

With the immortal line:

"Of the sparkling wines, the most famous is Perth Pink. This is a bottle with a message in, and the message is 'beware'. This is not a wine for drinking, this is a wine for laying down and avoiding."

Well, with my totally non discering palate when it comes to Cabs I know I'm going to be happy with anything I get unless it's corked.

SCC: put an 'n' about 66% of the way into the 6th word and a comma after Cabs.

dmd, those three wines are in the top five Bordeaux from the 1885 classification. It's not wine, it's prestige and history. Those wines would be very old school but probably very good as well, to my old-school tastes anyway.

I tried to name the Puppy "Lafite", I thought that was clever for a dogue de Bordeaux. I was so badly outnumbered and ridiculed by the female members of the clan it wasn't even a contest.

Well Shriek my favorite wine is Chabis from Bordeaux, but I have eased back as the prices have risen.

Count me as someone who's palate just could not appreciate $1,200 for wine - it might be very good but I would just think it a waste of money.

Snow has started here, wish I could just spend the next 36 hours drinking.

I've had bad luck with expensive wines. My friend who offers them is actually the one with the bad luck, he BUYS them and then ages them. So often they are corked, or just not significantly delicious. Occasionally he scores big, and the wine is just monstrously good. But not regularly. I used to work at a wine distributor, and with all the tastings, I learned that (in '94, so adjust for inflation)$50 bottles were usually far better than the $40. I would guess that's about a $60 average threshold now, but I don't know. I quit the stuff, it's just too strong for me these days. Sigh.
I confess a liking for new wine. The whites can be very nice. Even some red zinfandels can be just mouth-watering good. Old age may be overrated. Except for the glenfiddich. Yow! But that's another story.

A few years ago we drank a wine that was given to Raysdad back in the 80s--a 1986 Lynch-Bages. It was very, very good. A few months later, we were in a wine store and saw a 1996 vintage of the same wine, and it was over $300! The fact that the wine we drank probably went for $30 when it was purchased did not alleviate my sense of sullied Yankee thrift for having drunk that wine vs. re-selling.

Long story short, it *was* a very, very good wine, but not appreciably better than wines costing far, far less. There is some type of law of diminishing marginal returns in quality as one goes up the price scale. Hence the reason that most of the time we drink anything that's under $10 at Trader Joe's.

shriek... I think Steenky Lafite would make an excellent name for a puppy.

And since we have wine with dinner pretty much every night, we have asked the question, "Honey, what kind of wine goes with hot dogs?" (Which, by the way, is a Googletres.) Answer: beer.

I am off for the weekend, kids are on March Break and it is hockey tournament weekend. Snow, and hockey I am a walking Canadian cliche (modern canuck I guess as the hockey players are girls).

Have a good one all.

Just FYI and BTW, Steenky Lafite is also available as a Boodle handle. Contact Scottynuke for details and Boodle-friendly pricing.

Wanna see pictures of lava falling into the ocean? Check this out and click on see more photos. Beautiful!

http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080307/NEWS01/803070383/1001

The demographic statistics sometimes remind me of baseball commentary - "He's six for seventeen against left-handed batters at night games when it's over 70 degrees."

I suspect the reasons are similar, too. You have a bunch of people (political analysts or sports broadcasters) stuck for several hours (election night or an afternoon game). They have to keep up a continuous stream of chatter, but the actually interesting events (precinct reports or exciting plays) are spaced pretty far apart. Fortunately (or unfortunately) for us, they have computers...

Thanks TBG. I'm actually home ith a glass of rosé in my left hand, thinking about what should I serve for dinner.
And it is snowing heavily. The 20-50 cm forecast of this am has solidified to 30-35cm, approx 12-4in.
The FIL was posted in France for a few years, he returned in 1991 I think. The hundred or so bottles he came back with were made in 1989-90, two of the best vintages of the 20th century. Most were OK to good bottles (say 8-20$ at duty-free French prices of the time) with a few great bottles thrown in. We got a few outstanding experiences out of this lot, with only a few duds. I think we drank the last bottle at the next to last Christmas. It was a great wine.

Aloha, Aloha!

I just love saying that.

All this talk of wine makes me want to go have a glass. Aargh. I like wine and drink a glass most evenings with dinner (I ask the same kind of things, Raysmom). However, I have deliberately failed to cultivate my palate. That way I can pick up the $5 to $15 bottles,that are perfectly good with a meal. I also feel free to experiment. Tempranillo, nero d'avila, grenache, carmenere, grape names I can't remember - all are grist for my mill. Or grapes for my stomping. Whatever.

Omni and bc, I just found this definition easier to stuff into my head than the wikipedia article.

http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entry/kaon

In short, a "mega-heavy, unstable meson that's the child of a huge particle collision."

That's a character portrait right there.

All that technicality about strange quarks and such was just poorly written and confused wonkiness, like a lot of wiki articles on physics.

Aloha-Do you have your flight to the big island booked yet? Great pictures, thanks for posting the link.

To Raysmom or Ivansmom or anybody else who usually has wine with dinner. Can I come over? I don't eat much.

Thanks for sharing those pictures, Aloha. Mr. T and I went to Hawaii for our honeymoon (I swear, the only reason the man married me was to have an excuse to go to Hawaii!). We loved the Big Island and Volcanoes National Park. There was a lava flow into the sea that May; we watched from a safe distance. The rangers had marked a trail over the old flow; it's amazing how difficult it is to walk on such uneven terrain. And the heat. Boy, was it hot. And windy.

Price is only weakly correlated with wine quality. Anything under 5 bucks or so usually tastes it. By which I mean you don't want to drink it as much as use it to remove paint. But anything above that really is a matter of taste. I recently bought a few bottles of Australian Shiraz at $7 each that I think are very good.

Now, as you go up in price, you will encounter some truly spectacular wines. The point is, just because a wine is expensive doesn't necessarily make it great. I have spent over 50 bucks on a wine and found it disappointing.

Wine tastings are your friend.

One of Pa Frostbitten's surprising new hobbies after retiring from the cattle business is studying and tasting wines, and learning a lot about viticulture. Of course living in Paso Robles, CA makes that easy. I love the Pinot Noirs of the Paso area, but will drink Cabernet and Merlot just as easily. Fortunately he is a generous man so I rarely have to buy them as most of my favorites, from York Mountain winery in particular, have exceeded my $20 a bottle limit.

We generally only drink wine in the $5 to $15 range. A few times I've paid up to about $35 or $40 in a (very) fancy restaurant, but that sorta doesn't count, since restaurant markup is about three times the average store price (so a $45 bottle in a restaurant would cost you $15 in a liquor store or wine shop); it was still only $15 wine.

Well, I see by the old clock on the bottom of my monitor screen that it's about that time on a rainy, miserable Friday afternoon, so I'll be outa here any minute. (I'm still having Internet troubles at home; don't know if I'll get the *&%$#^ back up over the weekend, so I'm very liable to be silent until Monday afternoon. I'll probably have severe Boodle withdrawal. Cassandra, don't worry about me.)

Everybody stay warm and dry.

ebtnut - Elk Cove is in Gaston, Oregon. Absolutely lovely grounds. Would probably the perfect site for a major party - if I was planning any such major do. If you are in a direct shipping state a case would run $193.80 plus shipping.

www.elkcove.com

Nice article, Joel. I think everybody resents being generalized, especially people percieved as minorities.

Who wants to be patronized as though they're incapable of seeing past the surface to the issues and intangibles?

Everybody who's been in a "minority" or so classed as such knows a lot of people in the "same demographics" that they are polar-opposites with and would never want to be in the same room for more than 2 seconds.

I sure do feel that way about a LOT of people I share at least one or more of "the same demographics" with.

Americans are too mobile and work in too many diverse workplaces now for them to ONLY know and be comfortable professionally with people of same demographics.

And no, I'm not listing MY demographics.

The secret society of gnomes shalt remain yet unknown to mankind.

Deaf people can't join the military, but there are deaf people in the military now anyway.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080307/ap_on_re_us/combat_hearing_loss

Tinnitis is really devasting; the constant distraction can make focusing on tasks difficult. I can't say as I miss that at all.

I would suggest that the Pentagon consider recruiting deaf people and working on how to make combat operations possible with a single deaf unit-- communications, support, etc.

I know so many deaf people who are highly patriotic and would serve in a heartbeat if they were only allowed to enlist. Many in fact work in civilian support for the military already.

Allow me to clarify further: There are already digital hearing aids out there that are programmable to only emit sounds on specific frequencies for deaf people who have hearing loss in specific frequencies.

Such a digital hearing aid that also provided significant hearing protection on other frequencies, as well as a combat unit radio feed-- that would likely be precisely what the Pentagon needs to combat hearing loss from combat.

Earplugs per se are worse than useless.

Military dogs already serve as good sentinels, and it's often estimated that if there had been more dogs in Vietnam, combat fatalities wouldn't have been so high.

I'm with you wilbrod. Tinnitus drove a nice young man my sister went to school to commit suicide. He just couldn't take it any more.

Mudge, from your wine list, I'm failry certain you would like Erhefelser. Currently not priced too highly, but as people learn of it, its will be come prized. full fruited and dry.

I'm pretty sure that next summer we will be doing more wine tasting in the Okanagan. Next time we might try to go when its wine festival season.

SCCCCCCC I sometimes wonder if my eye sight would improve if I drank more wine.

Wilbrod

I've had tinnitus so long, I can't count the years. As I type this comment the sound has elevated several decibels. It is constant, it neverending, it is loud, and it is nerve racking.

I was sitting in a restaurant one evening, and suddenly it just stopped for about two minutes. I thought I was getting ready to die. Then started right back up.

It never goes away. The only relief is sleep. It is always there. Sometimes loud, sometimes, slight, but never gone.

I tried to drink it away, but that did not help. I've learned to live with it. Yet it does wear one down.

Mudge, I will try not to worry if you don't chime in on over the weekend. Enjoy your weekend, and give my best to your family. Hope you get your Internet connection working.

Have a great weekend, folks. JA, hope you're getting some rest in between all the traveling.

As for the wine, I don't drink wine. I like wine, but it used to give me a terrific headache, so I basically don't bother. And as one that has had a serious drinking problem, I pretty much avoid anything stronger than Coke.

I was thinking by the time the voting got around to North Carolina, it would all be over. It seems we just might have an impact.

Oh yeah, when I used to THINK about hearing, the tinnitis would skyrocket. After a while, I noticed the tinnitis would drop pitch gradually and that I would never hear a sound again after it had been rung out of my ears.

Now I just have sound synthesia induced by motion or light flashes, which is normally very soft, almost not there-- no tinnitis pain at all.

It's glorious whispering silence. The only downside is that I can have constant whining synthesia at night from moonlight, or when I sleep with my shoulder in the wrong position. So, I just sleep with my eyes covered. You may want to see if that helps at night.

Oliver Sacks wrote in Musicophilia about auditory hallucinations occuring in deaf people and I had to write him on that.

I'd urge you to read the first few chapters, you'll feel so not alone, Cassandra.

Drinking could have worsened it, so it is indeed just as well that you stopped.

Howdy y'all. Cassandra, have a great evening and I hope all is well with you and yours.

I had that glass of inexpensive Bordeaux, and communed with Beatrice the bunny, and am much happier. It is so fun that Joel wrote this excellent Kit on demographics, which we all applaud, and it led to a discussion of wine. What a Boodle.

For you Obama supporters, he's now a character on World of Warcraft. He's a level 35 Dranei hunter. Or so the Boy tells me. Someone has a sense of humor, or a really committed political perspective. Hey - where's the online geek Dem demographic?

Can you (or the Boy) translate what a Dranei is, Ivansmom, for those who have never played WoW?

We're back from supper. I suppose we're getting into an elderly demographic, because we tend to eat dinner early. Oh well, that's when I'm hungry.

We tried a place that just opened in the building where a Mexican restaurant had been for about three decades. The new place specializes in burgers. Mr. T and I shared a basket of sweet potato fries with bleu cheese dressing - excellent. And we both had real buffalo burgers, also excellent. No wine, just unsweetened tea for us. We will return.

Wilbrod, Dranei are Alliance. They are space goat squids. They come from space, they have tentacles for beards, and their knees go backward like goats. They're blue, except Barack Obama was dark purple. That's Alliance, meaning that they are not Horde. I can't fully explain the difference between Alliance (humans are Alliance) and Horde, except to repeat the Boy's explanation that they just have a lot of wars because they don't like each other.

I suppose it would be difficult to really survey the political affiliations of the online gaming geeks, since (a) they so seldom emerge in a recognizable form in real life, so (b) you'd have to interview them online in the course of the games and (c) they could give unreliable information, claiming for instance the affiliation of a character they've created which would have no actual voter counterpart. Gee, this demographic reporting business is hard.

Thanks a bunch, Wilbrod.

You too, Ivansmom. I'm alone, and it is quiet. I think I need a pet, but the g-girl would probably come back and be afraid. Not a bunny, a beautiful cat. I'm crazy about cats. They're so much work, and hey, I'm trying to avoid as much of that as I can.

My apartment still looking the same way. This is an update from this morning.

dr, I can understand that young man's trouble. I wish he could have worked it out some other way, though.

I want to thank you guys for supporting us in the radio outreach program. Your support means a lot. Just hooking up through the Internet and listening is support or plugging in, as they say.

My bed is calling, and I feel like answering. Good night, boodle. Sweet dreams.

Never mind, I looked it up and nearly fell asleep reading about the Draenei. I did nab something about heroic and inspiring presence, though.

No, I'm not of the lawyerly persuasion - I'm a computer tech, which is nearly as despised (and believe me, I'm not so thrilled about it either). Not offended, but amused.

Pinot Grigio is my favorite these days. I usually get WA state wines - Covey Run is one I like. Riesling, Muscat - I prefer chilled white wines to red. And I'm sure I can't tell an expensive wine from a cheap one - I'd probably prefer the cheap one (having started out on Boone's Farm and Mateus). Will have to see what's in the fridge.

Trying to feel more a part of things by emailing my posts home to be edited and sent at night. Joel has hit on one of my favorite annoyances, being pigeonholed. Slightly over 60, some college, divorced but committed, somewhat liberal to flamingly so, depending on the issue, unenrolled (as they call independents in MA), but can count on one hand the times I've voted for a Republican. I voted for Obama but would vote for any Democrat over McCain (altho' Hillary is making this harder with her endorsement yesterday of McCain's leadership abilities and the dissing of Obama's. Um, Hil, are you a Democrat or a Liebermanish toady?). I agree completely with K'guy about McCain's selling out his principles. I don't think the Dems and Independents who claim they will vote for McCain if their candidate doesn't win are thinking things through. The Supreme Court make up, the war in Iraq, healthcare, continued tax breaks for the wealthy, are some examples of issues they should consider.

Can't add anything to the wine discussion for obvious reasons. But I am very impressed with how long you all have managed to stay on that topic.

Yeah, if she's going down, she's taking Obama down with her, is her thinking. Maybe she's trying to bully her way to the nomination.

Bad Sneakers, you have a point there, but I really would rather take my chances on McCain and a democratic congress, than Hillary and a hostile congress who may well become Republican by 2006 if she ticks people off enough. And she will.

I go to wine tastings for the cheese.

:-)

Happy weekend, everybody!

I have had an extremely challenging week but it's over and I am less than 12 hours away from leaving on vacation.

:-)

I'll be totally off line for about a week. Not reachable by mail, phone, email, or even in person. The only communication option will be ESP, and by that I do NOT mean that no communication will be taking place. I expect to be sending and receiving messages all week, but it might be difficult to characterize or quantify them.

I hope everybody has a happy week. I hope porching season arrives on schedule for as many people as possible.

I am looking forward to meeting up with some local DC boodlers on March 19. I'm sure I'll be checking in here sometime before then.

Peace, y'all.

Wilbrod, therein lies the problem. I cannot vote for McCain but a vote for Hillary may bring a scenario such as you describe. Let's just hope Obama prevails.

I am continually amazed by what the family geek finds on the Web. This site gives me the giggles. Enjoy, everybody:

http://icanhascheezburger.com/

As for demographics, I am well over 60, have a BA (and had one job of about eight where a degree was a requirement --- mostly I just typed.) A Republican all my life except for a little handwashing there after Nixon, represented by a vote for Carter.

I will not vote for Hillary, I find her too condescending. And I will not vote for McCain. My husband had a 28 year career in the military; our oldest son went to the Naval Academy.

I read McCain's bio in Wikipedia. He got into the Navy as a "legacy" -- father and grandfather were Admirals. So he took a free ride thru the Academy as a trouble maker, and graduated third from the bottom.

I don't find that the kind of info I want to help add to the history books!

Have a great vacation, kbertocci!

I'll be sending good thoughts your way, you'll have to let me know if you received them when I see you on the 19th.

On the Cosmological front, I see that there were more results released today concerning 5 years' worth of data collected by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), which reveals several ways that the universe has evolved over the past 15 Billion years or so.

Interesting new information about cosmic neutrinos, the compostion of the Universe with regards to matter (light and dark) as well as energy (ditto, I suppose) and all the other stuff in the 'verse, as well as some measurements from The Beginning:

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/wmap_five.html

Cool stuff, IMO.

Anything that helps me understand Who's to Blame for All This and Where They Went Wrong, I'm all for it.

bc

>

I am pretty sure these are sheep.

I am pretty sure *neutrinos* are sheep.

I'm with you nellie, I think they are supposed to provide the finest wool for knitting.

Toodles boodle. Time to pack for the return to the frozen north. Wish me luck in getting the trusty truck started when I get to Minneapolis. It's a 4.5 hour drive and I'd like to get home by darkish.

Fondue!

Good luck to frosti and all who are starting a long trek somewhere. Enjoy your time off, kbertocci; it sounds great. I'm going to have a little quiet rabbit time, then off to bed. Vaya con queso, and fondue.

kb, have a great vacation! We'll be thinking of you. Can hardly wait to hear all about it and the BPH - I'll be there in spirit.

I found the Rolling Stone story on the surge sad. Corruption is so rife in the invasion of Iraq that it's not even funny anymore.

Morning all!

Time to get the chores and such out of the way... An hour less time to do 'em this weekend, of course. *SIGH*

*semi-soggy-but-properly-perky-for-a-Saturday Grover waves* :-)

Morning everybody. Scotty, you are too perky for that time on a Saturday morning.

I hope it's a pleasant Saturday for everyone. We're expecting falling temperatures, snow, and high winds this afternoon in the High Country. I think I'll stay in. Good thing I brought a couple of books to read.

And there's that UNC/Duke basketball thing today too.

Good morning all, woke up dreading the snowfall that is supposed to happen today, kids have four games between them so sitting at home in front of the fire is not an option. Thankfully the tournament is our local tournament so no real travelling issues.

Then I saw the morning paper and noted that Toronto has had 178 centimetres of snow this year, the record from 1938-39 is 207.c centimeters. So I am thinking if we have to go through this weather we might as well go for the record. Expecting 15-20 centimetres in Toronto over the next day, with luck and a little change in the winds off the lake we just might make it.

Still our record is puny compared to Shriek's - 400+ centimetres?

Morning all! Off to the airport in a bit to pick up Son of G coming home for spring break.

Maybe someone already posted this, but here's an excellent piece about the Charlotte Allen "women are dumb" cr@p. I believe it was firsttimeblogger who actually expressed these particular sentiments in words here, but I'm sure we were all thinking it...

"A far more important question is this: Why did The Post publish this nonsense? I can't imagine a great newspaper airing comparable trash talk about any other group. "Asians Really Do Just Copy." "No Wonder Africa's Such a Mess: It's Full of Black People!" Misogyny is the last acceptable prejudice, and nowhere more so than in our nation's clueless and overwhelmingly white-male-controlled media. I can just picture the edit meeting: This time, let's get a woman to say women are dumb and silly! If readers raise too big a ruckus, Outlook editor John Pomfret can say it was all "tongue in cheek." Women are dingbats! Get it? Ha. Ha. Ha."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/06/AR2008030603240.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

dmd, we are sitting at 365cm this am. We are between systems as they say. The 10cm we got last night makes it very pretty as it was light very fluffy snow. The next system is the big one, 20-30cm are expected later today. We'll see the 400cm this weekend maybe.
Some area in eastern Quebec have nearly 200cm on the ground. oy
http://www.meteomedia.com/snow/indexQC

Good morning, friends. I see I'm late to the discussion. I got a telephone call early this morning with not so good news.

I have a headache too. Hoping it will ease off eventually. I'm jumping in the shower so I can get to the radio station this morning. Then I have a missionary meeting up the road a piece. Don't you just love country talk?

Kbert, please enjoy your vacation, your lovely voice will be missed.

Mudge, Scotty, Slyness, Martooni, good morning to you, and all. *waving*

Time and time again, we do the same things, the same tasks, the same work, even the same body language, yet we keep hoping for difference, for something new, something unheard of, something magnificent. Oh, the sweet smell of change, the new-ness, the lovely path of beginnings.

As you can see, the medicine is kicking in.

Hope your weekend is a shout. I'm out of here.

God loves us so much more than we can imagine through Him that died for all, Jesus Christ.

Ron Paul quits the campaign.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/07/AR2008030703061.html?hpid=topnews
Where will Pop Socket go?

Morning! I've been up for a while, waiting for the rain to let up a little bit so we can go for our walk.

TBG, I think the aftermath of that article and the explanations for it are almost worse than the article itself. They're doing the "See? Women don't have a sense of humor!" bit. Grrr.

Today brings finishing up the taxes (the printer derailment segued into considerable procrastination on my part), going through closets for charity donations, and similar chores.

Wine report from last night: A Chilean blend of Cabernet, Malbec, Merlot, and Carmenere. Rich flavor, almost chocolatey, with a silky quality.

Okay, I posted something over at "The Gene Pool." Naturally it includes a typo. I don't know how often I will do this.

It made me feel vaguely disloyal.

Raysmom - Those Chilean reds used to be a great value back in the 90s. I haven't checked them out lately, but that one sounds impressive.

Good morning, all.
Got up, got some exercise, probably heading over to a friend's house later to do some race car work, then out to dinner and a movie with some friends...

As I said before, and even insinuated last Sunday, I think the problem with Allen's piece is that she wrote what she thought was satire, but without using humor or some other device (obvious hyperbole, etc.)to make readers receptive or bringing them into the joke.

Instead, she (and the editor, it must be said) chose to put it in the Outlook section with a headline that some would find offensive, and engaging readers' critical thinking without signifying obvious satirical intent. If she'd simply suggested something like an online system for receiving virtual undergarmets thrown from at Sen. Obama's Web Site (I expect that the Obama site accepts Linden Dollars for campaign contributions, I wonder if they'll accept Lindenthongs?), or calling someone "Ms. Poopypants," then things might have been different.

But that's just my opinion when it comes to humor - if you try to be too smart by half, then you're lucky if you end up looking even half-smart.

bc

Am lucky that the good-low priced wines work for me.

I like Shiraz best, well, because that name sounds realistically exotic. Pino Grigio in summer helps with the sticky evenings of the Potomac. I did enjoy some Vouvray and its cousin or child, as it were, called moelleux for an evening of January babies, as we call ourselves. Nice. But if if becomes an IT wine, will be expensive soon. Best served NOT chilled but not room temp, so this is a nice white choice for winter.

Frosti, CPDad, fierce man that he is, lives in the foothills near San Luis Obispo. Easier to be old and independent in a temperate clime, I think. The wineries in the Santa Lucia range near Paso Robles are quite fine, but suddenly out of price range for me. Tobin James Cellars is quite nice but I only enjoy this at the kindness of Christmas elves.

I fit that Hil-gal stat of over 40 (48) and making under 50K. But what is more interesting about me as a data point on a huge cohort curve would be these:

*pro-life democrat
*pro-life feminist
*no heels; no hose; seldom socks
*bike to work since 2001; in rain and snow and occasionally in a skirt
*practicing R. Catholic with interests in liberation theology and RC social teaching critique of capitalism
*anti-death penalty (things\bubbling in MD this spring)
*children are (and have been) the minority in their public high school
*heroes include bullmoose Republican Teddy Roosevelt and Nobel Pr. economist Amartya Sen
*Love Jane Austen's stuff AND L. McMurtry's Lonsesome Dove stuff equally
*voted for Barry Commoner when I first was legal, but voted for Bob Dole because if we are really honest with ourselves, centrist Dems and centrist Repubs are awfully similar fiscally; Congress keeps an ideology in check

And, must admit, I have NOT seeen the Grand Canyon but I know the northern tier of the West quite well. I will travel someday to the North Rim. While we are at wonders, Niagara is sublime. I prefer the tacky US side, but the casinos make me sad. Not all tribes benefit from this odd and touching hegemony. Driving along the river above the steep canyon permits a view of that huge turquoise-green whirlpool. Occasionally, you see a miner's hand cart pulley across the canyon. See that contraption makes me feel weak in the knees. Keep driving to the lake, Ontario, naturally, to Niagara-on-the-Lake and you can see Toronto -- friendly and polite -- across the wide water.

Bia: You're right, people's sense of taste varies depending on taste bud quantity and quality (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/07/WI0UVB2AL.DTL&type=science). Then there's the psychological factor. A recent "study" in the news indicated that people's enjoyment of a particular wine was linked to how expensive they preceived the wine to be.
I'm a male of indescriminate age, avid F. Pohl fan, Barrack supporter, Hillary disliker, Ralph Nader conflicted, epicurean stoic.

RD, the Chilean wines are not as inexpensive as they used to be. That one was $13.99. I got it at my favorite wine store up in my mom's neck of the woods. They're really good about getting a variety of wines from around the world, not just those that people are familiar with. And they post any ratings the wine has received (and are good about being sure that the rating is for the vintage they are offering). I shop there using the $ per points method. This one was rated a 90 by Wine Enthusiast. I know this because I wrote it on the label, not because I have such an excellent memory. (cross-reference: Retentive, An@l).

Good morning y'all. It is a beautiful sunny morning here and might even warm up. Those brave daffodils look cold.

RD, you can post on other sites without guilt, as long as you save the good stuff for us.

Cassandra, I'm sorry to hear about that bad-news call. I hope the radio and meeting make the day better.

I liked that Katha Pollitt rejection of the Allen flop, and the elegant way she raised the larger point of why it was published.

Change of subject, but sad news about Patrick Swayze and cancer. Always seemed a decent sort and to manage a 30 year marriage to one person is no small feat. People may enjoy seeing him in S.E. Hinton's youthcult story, _The Outsiders._ Other young and familiar faces are:
* Matt Dillon
* Ralph Macchio
* Rob Lowe
* Emilio Estevez
* Tom Cruise
* Diane Lane
* Leif Garrett
* Tom Waits a

Don Swayze, Patrick's brother, plays James Bonham in "The Alamo: Price of Freedom" that is shown regularly in the IMAX theater ne