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Petite Sirah's Extra Large Wallop

By all rights petite sirah, which can be traced back in California to the 1880's, should by now have disappeared into the dusty archives of wine history, a relic of the years when California was searching for its winemaking identity. Instead, it has hung on despite seemingly overwhelming obstacles.

What we found was a collection of wines that fit nobody's marketing profile of what American consumers are seeking. In an era in which red wines have become progressively softer and easier to drink, the classic petite sirah packs intense blueberry and eucalyptus flavors along with a powerful wallop of tannin, which can make it almost impenetrable without a few years of tenderizing. The wines are highly aromatic yet with all the subtlety of a chain saw.

Surprisingly, though, while the spicy fruit flavors were somewhat reminiscent of zinfandels, these wines — and especially our favorites — contained less alcohol, 13 percent to 14.5 percent, than most zinfandels, which typically hover around 15 percent. Nonetheless, nothing is petite about petite sirah.

Free Upgrades

FireFox as my new web browser is so much better than Internet Explorer I am going to try Thunderbird to replace Outlook Express Email which really has given me problems.

Free Downloads:
Firefox 1.0 empowers you to browse faster, more safely and more efficiently than with any other browser. Join more than 12 million others and make the switch today. Firefox imports your Favorites, settings and other information, so you have nothing to lose.

Thunderbird - Reclaim Your Inbox

I will also recommend a free anti-Virus - AVG. It is a little annoying it checks your entire PC every day but better be safe than sorry and is great for being free.

Two more freebies - Spybot Search and Destroy and Ad-Aware should eliminate more unwanted hitchhikers on your system.

While I am thinking about it, Anita and others could use this - Atomic Clock Sync. No more wrong PC times - although Anita really needs to replace her PC battery.

Bruce Sterling State of the World 2005 - ongoing slow discussion

This tsunami is a healthy reminder that the world has disasters worse than those we inflict on ourselves. We seem to be in the time of the "Sixth Great Extinction" thanks to the human impact on the biosphere, but hey, there were five other Great Extinctions that really did happen long before we started playing with matches...

We're doing practically nothing useful about climate change and it's a steadily mounting disaster. I do think the next decades are going to see a whole lot of paramilitary Operations Other Than War in reaction to astonishingly bad weather. So, well, an event like the tsunami gives us the chance to refine our disaster-response chops. They could use the improvement.

Boing Boing: Cory Doctorow and Charlie Stross on the cover of Locus

"The Rapture of the Nerds" Recent new beautiful friend Amy used to work for Locus. Now she is a writer and librarian who throws good parties.

Christmas Day - After going for a walk in Dow Park and looking at the remaining little snow piles, very little snow piles, Pat and I went to a board gamers meeting. We got there around 7:30 and stayed until nearly 5 AM. Games played were Puerto Rico, Ticket to Ride, Citadels, and War and Peace (Krieg und Frieden.) I won the last which was nobles building a cathedral. Pat was napping and did not play that last game. Citadels was a role game which seemed similar to a game I recieved free and either gave away or sold for a dollar. I have not played Puerto Rico in a long time and did not have a good strategy. The winner concentrated on money at the beginning and victory points in the middle and end. He had two quarries which I believe is the optimal number.

Here is an interesting blog - Spaceflight Now | Delta Launch Report | Mission Status Center. Read backwards to see how the Delta 4 heavy was blogged through the countdown and flight.

Local Google better but still needs work - here is an example Google Search: Chinese near 77571. After the first hits you may not be getting Chinese restaurants.

Google 2004 Zeitgeist

What were the most popular clean searches in 2004.

I am trying out Firefox to replace Internet Explorer as my browser.

For one thing their Blog This actually works on my system.

My iWon is my start page for no particular reason anymore.

The New York Times Frugal Traveler Discovers Houston.

High Points: the Museum District and Great Food at the Original Ninfa's on Navigation and William's Smoke House.

I lost me frog. Him name is Hopkin Green Frog.

The worldwide campaign to find him.

Saving Mr. Bingle

Fiction but based on a true story of Mr. Bingle - a New Orleans Santa's Helper Icon. While researching the story the author discovered that the puppeteer behind Mr. Bingle had died and been buried in an unmarked grave.

Missile Command with comets

La Fendee - Tex-Mex Mediterranean Grill with BYOB

Allison Cook -

The mesquite smoke permeates an eggplant (dip) that has been blackened to a soft, evocative pulp. Most baba ghanouj dips in town depend on garlic, or lemon, or quantities of sesame-based tahini sauce for their character. La Fendee's version, creamy-smooth rather than coarse, thrives on its smokiness.

I could eat it three times a week, given an ample supply of pita bread, and I blush to say I have.

mezze plate: the requisite salads and dips here are uniformly attractive. The tabouli is one of the best in the city: juicy, tart, verdant with parsley, bristling with chopped tomato and scallion. Its flecks of bulghur wheat stay modestly in the background.

Hummus, the lemony chickpea-and-sesame spread, comes swirled with olive oil and crushed sumac leaves the color of garnets. The deluxe assortment brings a couple of irresistible, homestyle grape leaves stuffed with rice. (I find it hard to leave without bagging an order to go.)

Even the beef shawarma that comes with the deluxe mezze is worth eating, its shards crusty at the edges and tinged with cinnamon. I tend to view shawarma, its stacked layers twirling endlessly on a vertical spit, as overcooked mystery meats. This one, I admire.

Not so the gyros, a pressure-formed blend of lamb and beef that here is sliced thin and long. It's scary to look at and not much better to taste. Why not just leave it to the Greeks?

Especially since La Fendee's Middle-Eastern-style kebabs are so much more appealing.

La Fendee Mediterranean Grill: 1402 Westheimer at Yupon

Prices: starters $1.49-$4.99; entrees $3.95-$7.99.

Reservations: first come, first served

Noise level: quiet to moderate

713-522-1505


The Other Tortillas

The other day my sister made a Spanish totilla and I had to tell her what it was. In Spain they are egg, potato, onion and cheese omelet, not flat round wheat or corn bread.

Here is where to find tortilla espagnola in Houston.


Up yours to lousy restaurants

The Houston Press has recently been doing what newspapers rarely do in their dining columns - slamming poor food and service. Problems with osso buco and Cowboy Cooking gone bad are two recent examples.

David Forbus, monorail fan, sends this link to opening day photographs of the Las Vegas/Star Trek Monorail.

Strong Evidence Earth Magnetic Field Collapsing for a Reversal
 
In March 2003, "The Core," a Hollywood film, gave a wildly exaggerated portrayal of what would happen if the field vanished. People with pacemakers fall dead. Pigeons fly into people and windows. And the planet, a scientist warns, will fry in a year.

Dr. Tarduno said that practical effects on things like satellites and the ozone layer would be the same no matter whether the field reversed or simply weakened and bounced back. A major collapse of the Earth's magnetic shield, he added, could let speeding particles penetrate deeper into the atmosphere to widely knock out power grids, as solar storms do occasionally.

The consensus among biologists seems to be that the reversals are slow enough, and the Earth's creatures resilient enough, that most would learn to adapt. They note the lack of correlations in the fossil record between flips and mass extinctions.
 
To better understand the current collapse, the European Space Agency plans to launch three satellites in 2009. The spacecraft, flying in polar orbits a few hundred miles up, are to map its intricacies until perhaps 2015.
 
 

Fewer Noses Stuck in Books in America

The survey, called "Reading at Risk," is based on data from "The Survey of Public Participation in the Arts," conducted by the Census Bureau in 2002. Among its findings are that fewer than half of Americans over 18 now read novels, short stories, plays or poetry; that the consumer pool for books of all kinds has diminished; and that the pace at which the nation is losing readers, especially young readers, is quickening. In addition it finds that the downward trend holds in virtually all demographic areas.

The survey also makes a striking correlation between readers of literature and those who are socially engaged, noting that readers are far more likely than nonreaders to do volunteer and charity work and go to art museums, performing arts events and ballgames. "Whatever good things the new electronic media bring, they also seem to be creating a decline in cultural and civic participation," Mr. Gioia said. "Of literary readers, 43 percent perform charity work; only 17 percent of nonreaders do. That's not a subtle difference."

"It's not just unfortunate, it's real cause for concern," said James Shapiro, a professor of English at Columbia University. "A culture gets what it pays for, and if we think democracy depends on people who read, write, think and reflect — which is what literature advances — then we have to invest in what it takes to promote that."

The Census Bureau study upon which the survey was based measured the number of adult Americans who attended live performances of theater, music, dance and other arts; visited museums; watched broadcasts of arts programs; or read literature in the past year. The survey sample — 17,135 people — makes it one of the largest studies ever conducted on the subject of arts participation, and the data were compared with similar studies from 1982 and 1992. In the literature segment respondents were asked whether they had, during the previous 12 months, without the impetus of a school or work assignment, read any novels, short stories, poems or plays in their leisure time.

Their answers show that just over half — 56.6 percent — read a book of any kind in the previous year, down from 60.9 percent a decade earlier. Readers of literature fell even more precipitously, to 46.7 percent of the adult population, down from 54 percent in 1992 and 56.9 percent in 1982, which means that in the last decade the erosion accelerated significantly. The literary reading public lost 5 percent of its girth between 1982 and 1992; another 14 percent dropped away in the following decade. And though the number of readers of literature is about the same now as it was in 1982 — about 96 million people — the American population as a whole has increased by almost 40 million.

The survey found that men (37.6 percent) were doing less literary reading than women (55.1 percent); that Hispanics (26.5 percent) were doing less than African-Americans (37.1 percent) and whites (51.4 percent); but that all categories were declining. The steepest declines of any demographic group are among the youngest adults. In 1982, 59.8 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds read literature; by 2002 that figure had dropped to 42.8 percent. In the 25-to-34 age group, the percentage of literary readers dropped to 47.7 from 62.1 over the same period.

Last month the Association of American Publishers released worldwide sales figures for 2003, indicating that total sales of consumer book products increased 6 percent for the year. Much of the increase can be accounted for by sales of audio books, juvenile titles and nonpaper e-books, sold online. Adult hardbound books, adult paperbacks and mass-market paperbacks all showed relatively flat revenues, in spite of price increases.

The one category of book to rise markedly was that of religious texts, with total sales of $337.9 million, 36.8 percent over the previous year.

BBC NEWS -- Sunspots reaching 1,000-year high

A new analysis shows that the Sun is more active now than it has been at anytime in the previous 1,000 years.
Scientists based at the Institute for Astronomy in Zurich used ice cores from Greenland to construct a picture of our star's activity in the past.

They say that over the last century the number of sunspots rose at the same time that the Earth's climate became steadily warmer.

This trend is being amplified by gases from fossil fuel burning, they argue.

In particular, it has been noted that between about 1645 and 1715, few sunspots were seen on the Sun's surface.

This period is called the Maunder Minimum after the English astronomer who studied it.

It coincided with a spell of prolonged cold weather often referred to as the "Little Ice Age". Solar scientists strongly suspect there is a link between the two events - but the exact mechanism remains elusive.

Over the past few thousand years there is evidence of earlier Maunder-like coolings in the Earth's climate - indicated by tree-ring measurements that show slow growth due to prolonged cold.

Over the past few hundred years, there has been a steady increase in the numbers of sunspots, a trend that has accelerated in the past century, just at the time when the Earth has been getting warmer.

The data suggests that changing solar activity is influencing in some way the global climate causing the world to get warmer.

Over the past 20 years, however, the number of sunspots has remained roughly constant, yet the average temperature of the Earth has continued to increase.

This is put down to a human-produced greenhouse effect caused by the combustion of fossil fuels.

My favorite photo of me.



I found a free photo image hosting site. Larger if you click on it.