Folie de Mars

Problem: I buy wine pretty much on a whim, choosing from whatever there is on a wine store shelf based upon vital oenological concepts like “Nice label design” and “St. Emilion sounds familiar”. As a result, my experiences with wine drinking are, as we say in viticulture, spotty.

Solution: Science! And Sports! Or to be more precise, a double-blind NCAA-tournament style bracketed taste test.

Tools:

A list of 65 wines from the Bordeaux 2010 vintage in a range of prices. Since I am starting from scratch here most will be in the $10 to $20 price range. If you are more of a connoisseur, adjust accordingly.

2 bottles of actual wine.

4 people.

8 wineglasses.

Set up:

Open the wine according to whatever solemn ritual (letting it breathe, etc.) you deem necessary and pour it into the (identified by number or

colored rubber bands) wine glasses. Set two in front of each person (add dinner or other food to taste). The people should not know which wine is in each glass or even which two wines are being compared. You can figure out the mechanics of this yourself (perhaps by roping in a trusted cohort).

Experiment:

Enjoy dinner. Drink wine. Have each person write down their preference between A and B. Bring the covered bottles to the table and unveil the labels. Each person now fills in the first game on their Bordeaux 2010 Tournament Bracket. In this case it’s the play-in game, Arkansas-Pine Bluff 61 - Winthrop 44. Note that there is no tallying of votes. Every person winds up with their own, different bracket according to their personal taste.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Chacun a son Goût.

Branding - (and not with a coward's shame)

I see that people are styling themselves as "rationalists" and "progressives" - and that's just adorable. Since you can apparently call yourself anything you want to without proof, I will be establishing the "AWESOMIST" community very soon. 

It doesn't matter what we believe or whether we agree because we're just flat-out better than you. We don't even mock your amusing beliefs because we're better than that, too.

Gitchy gitchy ya ya here

Gitchy gitchy ya ya here

That not very useful phrase popped into my mind today and it took all of five seconds to find out what song it came from. Slow typing.

It occurred to me that my world view is much different than that of anyone who grew up after search engines were available. I had hundreds of questions that went unanswered because the adults around me weren't omniscient. It's not that the questions were important but the experience of adult failure was. As a result I grew up thinking that I'd have to figure many things out on my own. I also found the idea that the people in charge "know better" hilarious. It's something we occasionally pretend to believe but never take seriously deep down.

Contrast this with the life of someone who grew up thinking that Mommy and Daddy may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer but an appeal to the great God Google will answer all (correctly phrased) questions. So what happens to them when Google decides that "Search" is like "Reader", not a core product?

Panic in the streets. Witch burning. Ladies and Gentlemen I give you The Dark Ages.

Tools

Photo Credit: Sickle used to cut wheat by hand © Wimbledon Windmill Museum

Debt

Photo credit: Creative Commons / Chris R. Sims

Self-Help

Creative Commons / Bengt Nyman

Ambition