June 2005 Archives

If you are a wine lover and wine collector, you may think that anyone can ship wine to you, and that you can ship wine to anyone. You would be wrong.

There has been a lot of activity in the past few years devoted to attempts to come up with a better closure for wine bottles. There are a lot of complaints about TCA taint, and anyone with old wine has seen a dry cork drop into the bottle after disintegrating. People rightly wonder why now, in the 21st century, we can't find something better to seal bottles with than tree bark.

Here is a fascinating website where the webmaster collects old cameras hoping there will be old rolls of exposed film.

"The pages below show prints I made from processing film I found in old cameras. In many cases the exposed films were over fifty years old. You are seeing them for the first time as they were lost by the photographers that took these images."

I've always hoped that Mallory's camera would be found on Everest, with undeveloped film inside, but these bittersweet and strangely-moving photos will do for the now; actually they'll do quite well: Photos From Old Rolls of Film.

Zuppa opened last night in the old Cafe Monk space on 4th Street at Freelon across from Fringale. The fairly extensive menu is southern Italian with reasonable prices (appetizers are $6 to $9, and entrees are $16 - $19). The wine list is exclusively Italian with 26 whites and 40 reds. Wine prices range from $25 to a top of $220 with most selections being below $40. There is also a wine "By the Glass -or- By the Brocca" program with glasses of wine ranging from $7 to $13.

Inside, although the "Monk" portraits are gone, little has changed other than the addition of some nice bright paint. There is seating at the small bar, and seating for 10 along a counter in front of the kitchen. Tables (both upstairs and down) make up the rest of the seats. The exterior has also been painted and it spruced the place right up.

The menu is broken into six sections: Afettati (sliced meats), Pizze (pizza), Antipasti, Primi, Secondi, and Contorni (vegetable side dishes). There must be a dessert menu, but I didn't see it.

Portions appear to be large, especially the gigantic "Zuppa di Pesce Cuscusi" (mussels, clams, prawns and rockfish) which is served in an enormous ceramic bowl.

More after more visits!

A recently published study finds that genes may account for a significant amount (41%)of how we react to policy issues; genetics was less important in determining political party affiliation (14%).

In a conclusion similar to that in the infamous Bell Curve, where intelligence differences between segments of the population were forecast to increase because of "tribal intermarrying," the authors are not optimistic about the future of bipartianship.

It's a fascinating study and you should probably read Tyler Cowen's comments @ Marginal Revolution (thanks for the pointer) on the way there.

UPDATE: The folks at the New York Times have picked up this story: Some Politics May Be Etched in the Genes

Now that I've got your attention, you might want to check out this on-line gallery at Princeton University. A group there recently canvassed departments asking them to submit research images from science that were artistic.

The seductive Einstein image is titled "Knowledge is Beautiful" and was entered by a student in Comparative Literature studies in the English Department. Read the description. It is exactly what you would expect! There are lots of other interesting images there, with intersting stories. It is worth a bit of time to check them out! (Thanks to Dynamist Virginia Postrel for the pointer).

If you like this area of "art", you'll be interested to know that NASA has been doing this for years at The Astronomy Picture of the Day.

I have a habit of wandering through wine stores and picking up single bottles of wine that I think might be interesting or worthy of stocking up on. But, what usually happens, is that I put the bottle aside, the wine sells out and I am stuck with all of these "tasting experiments." I decided to knock off three experiments at once and took three bottles along to dinner at my local French Bistro to taste blind.

Kobrand, a big multi-national wine producing and distributing conglomerate, has a really nice set of Flash-based maps of the major wine-growing areas on their website. They are really top-notch and are detailed enough (at least in Burgundy) to note that Corton-Charlemagne is produced both in Aloxe-Corton and Pernand-Vergelesses. Right-clicking on the Kobrand maps will produce a pop-up tool-menu that will allow zooming in for more detail.

Don't waste too much time on these. They are guaranteed to provide hours of distraction for the dedicated wine geek!