Friday, May 16, 2008

Is Age an Issue In Presidential Race?

The answer to the title of this entry is left up to each individual, gentle reader. But I just stumbled across the funniest blog.

It's called "Things Younger than John McCain." It is hilarious.

I certainly won't spoil all the fun but things younger than John McCain include the area code, TV dinners, nylon, velcro and cheerios. And on and on it goes.

Having recently passed a birthday divisible by five, I'm getting sensitive to old age. But I remember writing back in the 80s that Reagan was too old for the job and much of the post-mortem on his presidency bares that out.

McCain would be 72 at (heaven forbid) inauguration in January 2009 - the oldest U.S. President ever.

Any way, read the blog by clicking on its name above - it is humorous regardless of your politics. Wait, many Republicans are humor-less, but that's a different entry!

Thursday, May 8, 2008

A Great NYT Piece on Wine

I am still at stage I devour stories on web, magazines, wherever I may find them about wine.

I keep thinking I'll use this blog to drink about the 2-3 bottles I usually open per week. Maybe I will.

But today, looking for something else at work, I stumbled across a piece in the New York Times about wine. "Wines Pleasures: Are they all in your head?" is a fascinating read.

It talks about a couple of different consumer taste tests where customers were given a sip of a very expensive and a very cheap wine. Of course, "average consumers" often piced the less expensive. The formally educated eonophile often picked the more expense. No surprise, really!

But the article built a convincing argument that larger, less sophisticated segment of the market is largely manipulated by marketing, wine magazines, critics, and wine snobbery.

I've probably fallen guilty to each of those. But with that being said, I agreed with much of what I read. I'v elinked the story to its title above. If you like and care about wine, it's a great read.