Grappa power!
I’m a fan of the liqueur known as grappa. This pungent drink is literally the bottom of the barrel, the end of the line for wine. Once winemakers have sucked all the juice from the stems, skins, and seeds at the bottom of the tub there’s left a goopy sludge (called the lees). Someone somewhere was the first person to think hmmm, maybe I can distill that crud and make a drink. Hence grappa.
I remember when my wife and I first tried our hand at winemaking in 1996. I wanted to make grappa also, but didn’t quite remember that personal distillation was, well, illegal until I posted openly on Usenet asking where I might obtain a still. Ah, the folly of ignorance. A few backchannel e-mails later I was fully informed that I was a dumbass for posting this request publicly. The wine itself ended up a hellish swill, not alcoholic enough to compensate for its lack of taste. I should have made grappa, you see.
Many people think grappa is jet fuel. Like tequila, there’s a vast chasm of drinkability between the bad stuff and the good stuff and, true enough, the smell of grappa can singe the nasal passage. It is an acquired taste.
It turns out I can no longer precisely counter the argument that grappa tastes like gasoline. For grappa, I have learned, can be turned into ethanol without much effort. Wired mag reports:
From October until June, backhoes pick apart a pile [of lees] and feed the mulch onto a series of conveyors, which carry it to a series of presses and kettles. The resulting solution is further fermented to make both grappa, a potable (to some, anyway) alcohol, at one end of the distillery and biofuel at the other. Caviro [an Italian distillery] produces a relatively small amount of grappa compared with its nearly 793,000 gallons of ethyl alcohol. The potent fuel is sold throughout Europe.
Naturally most Italians are aghast at the thought of using precious wine grapes to power their cars. But I bet they’d have no problem mulching a few French vineyards for it.
[Tip: for a real kick in the pants add grappa to espresso to make a Caffè corretto, literally, corrected coffee. Ah, yes, now the coffee is correct! That’ll get you going in the morning.]
Superfriendly
Pardon the Al Bundy moment here, but I gotta say that reliving childhood via your own kids can be damn fun. Possibly my strongest memory of pre-8 year old life is watching the Superfriends cartoon (followed by Scooby Doo) with my dad in the basement on Saturday mornings. I loved the Superfriends intensely, so it was with some trepidation that I bought the recently released first season of The Challenge of the Superfriends for my five-year-old son. Trepidation because, of course, nothing ages well from the 1970’s. Or very little besides Pink Floyd. I didn’t want to load the DVD initially, afraid that’d I’d fracture a time-honed nostalgia that remembered the Superfriends as gallant, smart, and timeless.
Certainly the Superfriends is simplistic. The Legion of Doom’s goal is simply to spread evil and conquer the universe. Dialogue is overt and crude. And the whole thing is borderline racist with token ethnic superheroes that are clearly secondary to the main stock. And yet, I wasn’t disappointed. The storylines are suprisingly unique and clever. Yes, each episode starts with a new plot by Lex and friends (none Super) to overthrow the Hall of Justice with the Superfriends having always to react (how about some proactive justice, people?), but there was a lot of thought put into each episode’s twist. Time travel, summoning of the undead, alternate universes — the type of thing that was way beyond me as a kind but now strikes me as fairly interesting for a saturday morning ‘toon. And if the the recent upsurge in nightmares of my son is an indicator also fairly “adult” in content.
The real evidence of the value of The Challenge of the Superfriends comes from comparing the seasons that preceded it. Challenge was the first where they got rid of the awful, basically useless teen sidekicks and pets. You recall Wendy, Marvin (I’m sorry, Marvin the Superhero?), and their dog Wonderdog and of course the Wonder Twins and their annoying monkey Gleek, yes? Well, sorry about that. What a dark period that was.
Viva Green Lantern.
SOAMFP
What are you doing reading this blog and not standing in line to see this movie?
UPDATE: So I got to see this movie about snakes. Believe it or not, they are actually in the plane, not on it. So you can imagine the problems this causes! Good fun. The movie was sublime perfection, everything I could possibly have imagined. Best part: the story doesn’t so much as imply a reason why a gangster would try to down a plane with a crate load of snakes. Plausbility is for the weak.
Mileage whore
When I was new to business travel I proudly called myself a mileage whore. I’d do just about anything for an upgrade or extra frequent flyer miles. Recently I heard a scheme from an acquaintance that puts my hijinks to shame. In fact, I think it crosses the line.
This person, let’s call him FlyGuy, makes it a contractual stipulation of employment that he will use his own frequent flyer miles for normal business trips (not upgrades) if his company will reimburse him for 75% of the face ticket value. The pitch (he’s a salesman) is that this saves the company 25% on every ticket. The company loves it and they do it. This is how he travels.
First things first. To me, it matters how you accumulated these miles. If they are 100% from your own out-of-pocket expenses in a way this is a fair trade. Sort of. (More on that in a second.) But the reality is that most miles are acquired through business travel, paid for by your company. FlyGuy has been with a number of companies, mostly start-ups, so his balance (I reckon) is comprised of miles originally paid for by different companies.
The point is that he is actually earning income by cashing in a “credit” obtained from money spent by an employer.
Now, you will say, this is a personal perk that is his to do with as he pleases. And if his company is willing to go along with it, what’s the harm? Two things. First, FlyGuy is essentially selling a benefit given by his company back to his company. Like saying, no thanks I’ll pass on the dental plan so pay me $2000 extra.
Second is the potential for abuse. Consider this scenario: You can choose between two flights to NYC. One leaves at 6AM and costs $200, the other leaves at 7AM and costs $600 (for whatever reason, discrepancies like this happen all the time). You’re going to choose the $600 ticket because you’ll “earn” $450 rather than $150. The frequent flyer mileage required to obtain the ticket is, presumably, identical since it is the same route. Where is the incentive to go with the lowest fare? There isn’t one. The incentive now is reversed. In reality the employer may be saving 25% but paying for a more expensive base ticket than they would otherwise have to.
Airlines do offer the ability to purchase frequent flyer miles. They are pretty costly, but if you had to have a scheme like this it seems a fairer trade to have your employer pay what you’d have to pay to buy the miles rather than to buy the ticket.
I have a feeling many of the business travellers who read this blog will disagree with me. Comments welcome.
Ore consequences
My parents recently built a second home in Galena, IL. Galena is in the far northwest corner of the state, nestled between Iowa and Wisconsin. It was a major river town in the 19th century, home to Ulysses Grant and a slew of other Union generals. But the river silted up, Chicago grew up, and Galena slumbered away. Now it is basically a quaint time capsule catering to Chicago weekend escapees, the kitschy knick-knack obsessed, and Civil War buffs.
Galena is the word for lead sulfide, veins of which criss-cross the area. As luck would have it, my parents’ land has an abandoned lead mine on it. This isn’t suburbia; the lots have (fantastically) reverted to native Illinois prairie. But it was once farmland and apparently the owners way back found a small lode and went for it. The builders of my parents’ home wanted to fill the mine entrance in with excavated soil and landscape it. My father, to his infinite credit, said screw that I want a lead mine on my property. And this brings us to today when I had to enter and see what there was to see.
I’ll preface this by saying that my adventure was not formally approved by the family. My boys of course were right there with me but mama’s look of disapproval, had it been cast groundward, could have dug its own mine.
I struggle to list a hazard that this mine doesn’t contain so in the interest of having something to blog about I’ll here detail those that it does. The mine is completely structurally unsound, having been abandoned more than a century ago. The whole reason for digging it in the first place is because it contains lead, the very substance that causes parents to obsess about our kids eating paint. It is wildly overgrown and so home to all manner of critters, vermin, and poison flora. There are tons of snakes in these parts and my dad mentioned that he saw something “dog-sized” leaving the shaft yesterday morning. Hmmm, lovely.
So I went in. The kids, standing at the rim of the depression that led to the shaft, were nearly apoplectic with excitement. And while we’re using apoplexy as a metaphor I’ll mention that it also described my wife at this moment, but for very different reasons.
The shaft entrance had long ago been filled in. Metal containers of all varieties, a tire, and barbed wire clogged the hole. I struggled to loose them but the entrance was a garbage pit. Every time I unearthed a rusty shard I expected some venomous slitherer to inform me of its displeasure. A wooden beam — really a crudely shaped log — lay uphill from me in the overgrowth and seemed to mark the entrance to the shaft. My father, lost to me but for yelling, agreed that the best plan was to wait for fall when the foliage died off and then resume digging. Actually he wants to rent a ground radar to see what we’re up against. He thinks he’s identified a second entrance (exit?) nearby.
In the end this is just good fun. How many kids grow up with an abandoned lead mine as a playlot? Too few, I say.
Victory and fear
James Fallows has an good piece in this month’s Atlantic Monthly (teaser only online to non-subscribers, alas). Yesterday’s events in the UK make it a great piece.
Fallows argues that the “war” on terror should be declared over because of the successes the US and its allies have had (dispersing al-Qaeda, foiling plots, etc) but mostly because calling this protracted struggle a war plays right into terrorists’ hands.
Perhaps worst of all, an open-ended war is an open-ended invitation to defeat. Sometime there will be more bombings, shootings, poisonings, and other disruptions in the United States. They will happen in the future because they have happened in the past (Oklahoma City; the Unabomber; the Tylenol poisonings; the Washington, D.C.-area snipers; the still-unsolved anthrax mailings; the countless shootings at schools; and so on). These previous episodes were not caused by Islamic extremists; future ones may well be. In all cases they represent a failure of the government to protect its people. But if they occur while the war is still on, they are enemy “victories,” not misfortunes of the sort that great nations suffer. They are also powerful provocations to another round of hasty reactions.
Hasty reactions. A good tagline for what will surely ensue after yesterday’s anti-terrorism victory. Boing Boing chronicles the new idiocy:
Check out this article from Asheville, NC. “Maya Leoni, who is held by Angela Perez, cries as her mother, A.J. Leoni, pours the last of her drink into the receptacle while in line for the security checkpoint at the Asheville Regional Airport.”
POUR IT INTO A RECEPTACLE? Don’t you think that some of these potentially explosive liquids might be more dangerous when, I don’t know, mixed in a big vat in the middle of an airport?
Christ, why don’t they just have people put their liquids into a big bonfire?
If we overreact to this plot — tremble, retrench, withdraw, not think — it will be little better than if the bombs had gone off.
Snackposts
To tide you over until the next meal.
Voting on panels for next year’s South by Southwest Interactive conference is open. Remember this is purely a popularity contest and that I will send you a postcard from Austin if you vote for my panel. (Note that the list of available panels randomizes itself on load to prevent giving precedence to those near the top. Lovely!)
The woman who cuts my hair has no e-mail address. She can only be contacted via MySpace. Now, I don’t profess to understand what the hell is going on at MySpace, but this seems a bit extreme no? Also, the name she uses in the salon isn’t her real name. The salon gives hairdressers fake names to ensure that they are mutually distinct enough not to be confused over the phone during appointment-making. Persona in MySpace; persona at work.
Propelled by Digg and del.icio.us, the LEGO mosaic post was shooting all over the ‘tubes last week. Off to the bandwidth races!
During this deluge Holly posted a link to a similar project of hers, effectively puncturing a hole in the bottom of the tub and flooding her site too. And what a site it is. Cracks me up. Hollyrhea: highly recommended.
Books that, when released, I’ll dump what I am reading at the time for: The Echo Maker, by Richard Powers and The Ghost Map, by Steven Johnson. (Oh, anybody know what Neal Stephenson is up to?)
And lastly, to the terminally dorky I ask: Why is there no way to convert an RSS feed to a webcal feed? C’mon people.
Shoehack, day one: criminal apprehended
So I’m running with my newly-technologized shoes yesterday. As I cross a busy street I see a cab going way too fast in the center turn lane.* It suddenly turns hard right, slams full speed into a Jeep Cherokee headed the other way, and throws it up onto the sidewalk and a parking meter. Me and another guy running on the opposite side of the street immediately sprint for the collision. As we get to the cab the driver’s door opens and out falls a little kid, maybe 10 years old. He hits the deck, bleeding from his mouth, and then gets up and runs. So we run after him. I don’t exactly know why, but it seemed like he shouldn’t just run off. It was only when we had tackled him back to the pavement that it occured to us that this kid had just stolen a cab and taken it for a joyride.
He lay on the sidewalk, spitting blood, and moaning not to turn him in. I guess I’ve watched too many Cops episodes because the first thing I asked was “Do you have any weapons or needles on you?” He didn’t respond. I asked him if his face hit the steering wheel and he said yes. The police came, quickly. The elderly driver of the Cherokee was pinned in and covered in glass, but he seemed to be OK. It is amazing to me that pedestrians were not hit. That section of the street has very broad sidewalks that are heavily trafficked. The cab would have thrown pedestrians straight through the plate glass of the bank building there.
Clearly my robo-shoes have transformed me into a crime-fighting superhero. This is the only explanation. Who knows what dastardly deeds I will foil on my next run.
[*] Ashland Ave. just north of Belmont for Chicagoans wanting coords.
Nike plus iPod minus Nike
Have you seen the new doodad from Nike and Apple? The receiver that you hook onto the iPod nano and the transmitting pedometer that you put in your shoe? It looks perfect. It’ll track my runs (even indoors — take that, GPS!) and then synch it all online when I dock the iPod. Perfect.
Except, wait. I have to buy new shoes that fit the pedometer? And they have to be Nike running shoes? But I hate Nike running shoes. I think most people hate Nike running shoes. Well, this sucks. It’s like … Nike is locking people in to proprietary hardware just like … Apple. Hmm, making more sense now.
The Intertubes of course offer a few solutions to this. Some people are velcroing the pedometer under their laces. Others are just sticking it in a little lace-attached pouch.
All fine shoehacks, but I thought I could do one better. See, I have flat feet — Kansas flat feet — so I run with orthotic inserts. Turns out they are almost exactly the right depth to fit the little pedometer, if properly cored out. Note that this might work with the regular inserts in shoes. Orthotic inserts are not that much deeper than the factory inserts. Try it.
Remove the insert.
Grab a power tool for shaving off the hard plastic. Make the hole a little smaller than you need.
Pop it in.
Behold your new cyborg shoe.
Building a virtual world one tourist photo at a time
The phrase “Hey, wanna see my vacation photos?” has stricken fear into the hearts of co-workers and family members since photography was invented. But the combined mass of pics could help build virtual worlds of, well, of the whole photographed world. The University of Washington and Microsoft (believe it or not) have created a jawdropping demo of stitching together disparate photos of the same place into a textured navigable world.
The site is called Photo Tourism, but that doesn’t do justice to what these people have done. Only the videos convey the concept.
Soon enough this will be integrated with Google Earth and its ilk. A virtually navigable earth at all levels of detail can’t be that far off.
Of course, most tourist photos contain people in them. But that appears not to be such a problem either. Witness Tourist Remover. (Oh, to have this in real life.)
Mission Elapsed Time: 20:00:21:06:42:40
Recently this blog (and my Flickr account) turned 20 years old, forever in Internet years. I went back through it all, retracing digital footprints made on what feels like a different planet. Here are some highlights.
The Terror Tourist
A roughly monthly exploration of places in horror fiction — real or imagined, geographical or psychological — culled from The Heavy Leather Horror Show.
Subscribe to the podcast or the email newsletter or just read through the archives posted here.
The Ampcamper
How I hauled myself, two teens, an 80 lb dog, and a whole load of crap 4000+ miles across six states in twenty days using an electric vehicle. And survived to tell the tale.
