Quotulatiousness

October 18, 2009

Vikings (barely) make it to 6-0

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 17:41

A fast start, a three-score lead, but then a defensive let-down allowed Baltimore to climb back in to the game, which was eventually decided by a missed field goal. I don’t know why Minnesota’s defence looked so out-of synch in the second half, but the Ravens took everything they could while the Vikings were struggling.

Even worse, for the Vikings were late injuries to Adrian Peterson and Percy Harvin . . . Peterson did return, but Harvin was out after being hurt on a kick return. Sidney Rice had a huge game, including the 58-yard reception that set up the winning field goal. From the AP summary of the game:

The Vikings took a 14-0 lead in the first 9 minutes and led 27-10 when Visanthe Shiancoe(notes) caught his second TD of the game with 10:08 to play. But Flacco was just getting started.

He threw a 32-yard TD to Mark Clayton(notes). After a field goal by Longwell, Flacco capped a 49-second drive with a 12-yard TD to Derrick Mason(notes), and it was 30-24.

Ray Lewis(notes) and the Ravens’ proud defense came up with their first big stop all day, and Ray Rice’s(notes) 33-yard run gave Baltimore its first lead 7 seconds after it got the ball back.

Stunned and reeling, the Vikings turned to Favre—this was just the situation they signed him for two weeks into training camp. He pump-faked and unloaded to Rice, who beat Frank Walker(notes) for the 58-yard catch.

But coach Brad Childress played it conservative with three straight runs, and Longwell’s 31-yard field goal gave Flacco one more chance with 1:49 to go.

A late mention that Antoine Winfield left the game in the 2nd quarter may indicate why the defensive effort was so much less impressive from that point onwards. Karl Paymah’s name came up a lot in the colour commentary . . . and not in a uniformly positive way.

Update, 19 October: The stats bear it out . . . that was a terrible quarter of football for the Vikings.

As much as the Vikings would like to focus on the things they did right Sunday in handing the Ravens a third consecutive loss — touchdowns on their first two drives gave the Vikings a 14-0 lead, the Ravens rushed for 13 yards in the first half — they are going to have to take a good long look at the fourth quarter.

It isn’t going to be pretty.

The Ravens accumulated 222 of their 448 yards in the final 15 minutes, including 196 passing yards by quarterback Joe Flacco. The Ravens’ yardage total was a season-high against the Vikings and marked the third game in a row they have surrendered 400 or more yards. Flacco finished with 385 yards passing, 1 more than the total Aaron Rodgers had in Week 4 when the Packers put together a fourth-quarter rally.

Some of Sunday’s meltdown had to do with the fact that with Winfield not on the field, Flacco went at his replacement, Karl Paymah, on a regular basis. The Ravens trailed 27-10 with 10 minutes, 8 seconds left and by 13 with 6:01 to go but managed to take a 31-30 lead when running back Ray Rice sliced through the defense for a 33-yard touchdown with 3:37 remaining.

October 17, 2009

Blogger, know thyself

Filed under: Humour, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 20:29

Gerard van der Leun knows blogging well. Perhaps a bit too well:

“THE 27 DAILY AFFIRMATIONS FOR BLOGGERS”

  1. When I post under an assumed name, I can get in closer touch with my Inner Sociopath.
  2. Through block-quotes and fisking I have the power to transform even the most harmless statements of my enemies into concrete evidence of their evil plans to enslave mankind and rule the world.
  3. In all humility I do not seek to rule the world. I seek only complete agreement and total capitulation.
  4. I assume full responsibility for my posts, especially the good ones that are just links to someone else’s posts.
  5. If, after publication, one of my posts should appear irresponsible, I will be responsible enough to make it disappear, along with the Google cache of it.
  6. Being more confused about the First Amendment than I am about copyright, I am free to reveal the obscene number of hours I blog at work, and the URL of my secret blog where I post the truth about my coworkers’ hygiene, bodily functions, porn-surfing habits, and gender reassignment surgeries without being fired. I know my rights.

Niagara’s wines

Filed under: Cancon, Wine — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:10

Richard Best was at the last Cuvée event and had these observations (in his Frugal Oenophile Wine Newsletter) about the current and potential values coming from Ontario’s wineries in the Niagara peninsula:

Niagara has the perfect terroir for Gamay, and yet only one Gamay appeared at this tasting. Every Gamay I’ve had from Niagara has easily bettered its counterparts from Beaujolais, and at a much better price. Attention grape growers: Please plant more Gamay.

Despite the hype and rumours, Niagara is still a bit of a way from consistently producing world-class Pinot Noir. There are occasional stellar wines, but too often I find Ontario Pinot underpowered, almost skeletal, and disappointingly tasteless.

Cabernet is still hit-and-miss. Our climate may be too cold, and the growing season is definitely too short to always ripen this demanding grape. It can be done, but ripe Cab in Niagara is the exception, not the rule.

An interesting marker for Niagara Chardonnay is “skunk”. Like cat’s pee in Sauv Blanc, coal oil in Riesling and barnyard in Pinot, a bit of skunk in a high quality Chard is quite appealing.

Speaking of Chard, Niagara is a great Chardonnay region. Not good; not very good; GREAT. Our winemakers routinely turn out Chardonnay that rivals the best in the world, and they do it year after year.

I certainly agree with Richard on the Gamay: I’ve never had a Beaujolais that was better than Chateau des Charmes’ Gamay Droit (in any vintage). He’s also spot-on with the Pinot observations, as there have been some amazing Pinot Noir values, but it’s still not consistently great . . . Flat Rock and Cave Springs seem to be able to produce the most consistent quality at the moment.

Ontario Cabernet Franc, with the slightly earlier harvest time, is more likely to be fully ripe than the Cabernet Sauvignon, especially in a year like this, with only a brief hot spell at the end of the growing season. With Cabernet blends and Meritages, you do tend to get what you pay for, at least in the $15-$30 range . . . there’s not much available under that price that’s worth the money. Kacaba, Strewn, and Daniel Lenko have some excellent wine (although Lenko tends to be at the higher end of the price scale).

Even though it’s out of style, I still love well-oaked Chardonnay. There’s something magical about what oak does to good quality Chardonnay grapes. I’m not fond of unoaked Chardonnay, but put that same grape juice into oak barrels and I’m interested. Most of the wineries in Niagara and on the Beamsville Bench can produce excellent Chardonnay pretty much every year. You can’t go too far wrong . . . and perhaps because it’s common, the wineries don’t mark up the price as much as they sometimes do with their Cabernet-based wines.

To subscribe to Richard’s newsletter, send an email to “newsletter@frugal-wine.com” with the word “SUBSCRIBE” in the subject line.

Tweet of the day: Mayan prognostication

Filed under: Americas, History, Humour — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:09

cetaylor: Everything you need to know about Mayan 2012 nonsense: They couldn’t foresee the end of their own effin’ civilization in the 16th century.

October 16, 2009

QotD: Maturity, fading

Filed under: Education, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:11

Maturity as a general virtue, however, declined in the Sixties when indiscriminate sexual liberty, detached from responsibility and emotional engagement, became a human right from puberty forward. With no need to defer the gratification of appetite, there was no further need for patience, maturity’s hallmark.

And yet what stage of life could be worse for indefinite prolongation? Adolescence is a period marked by extreme intellectual callowness, thrall to raging hormones, obsession with appearance and social caste, contempt for authority, fascination with the transgression of rules, immoderate self-righteousness and intense sensitivity to perceived offence.

For the negative physical consequences of adolescence as a cultural norm, consider the body-sculpting, porn and plastic surgery industries. Our culture’s obsession with youthful appearance and limitless, Dionysiac sexuality is pandemic.

For the more pernicious negative intellectual and political consequences, consider the universities. In academia one finds a ruling cadre of grey-haired, jeans-clad university teachers pickled in Woodstock-nostalgic revolutionary amber, still rebelling against their parents’ conformity and hypocrisy, still contemptuous of their parents’ institutions and values, even those that stabilized family life and nourished communitarianism.

The political correctness these ideologues embody, Epstein shrewdly notes, is a peculiarly adolescent phenomenon: “Political correctness . . — from academic feminism to cultural studies to queer theory — could only be perpetrated on adolescent minds: . . . Only an adolescent would find it worthwhile to devote his or her attention chiefly to the hunting of offenses [and] the possibility of slights, real and imagined.”

Barbara Kay, “The decline of maturity”, National Post, 2009-10-16

Careful with those compact fluorescent bulbs

Filed under: Australia, Environment, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:43

Andrew Bolt wonders why the Australian government — which has banned the sale of old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs — is not being more pro-active about handling and disposing of the replacement compact fluorescents:

Tens of thousands of Australians will next month be forced to buy these new greenhouse-friendly CFLs without the Government warning them that, unlike normal light bulbs, they contain mercury and are dangerous when broken. What’s more, they shouldn’t just be thrown out with the rubbish.

How many consumers know this?

How many of them have looked up the Environment Department’s website to find what its bureaucrats falsely describe as the “simple and straightforward” precautions to take against poisoning should one of these lamps smash:

– Open nearby windows and doors to allow the room to ventilate for 15 minutes before cleaning up the broken lamp. Do not leave on any air conditioning or heating equipment which could recirculate mercury vapours back into the room.

– Do not use a vacuum cleaner or broom on hard surfaces because this can spread the contents of the lamp and contaminate the cleaner. Instead scoop up broken material (e.g. using stiff paper or cardboard), if possible into a glass container which can be sealed with a metal lid.

– Use disposable rubber gloves rather than bare hands.

– Use a disposable brush to carefully sweep up the pieces.

– Use sticky tape and/or a damp cloth to wipe up any remaining glass fragments and/or powders.

– On carpets or fabrics, carefully remove as much glass and/or powdered material using a scoop and sticky tape; if vacuuming of the surface is needed to remove residual material, ensure that the vacuum bag is discarded or the canister is wiped thoroughly clean.

– Dispose of cleanup equipment (i.e. gloves, brush, damp paper) and sealed containers containing pieces of the broken lamp in your outside rubbish bin – never in your recycling bin.

– While not all of the recommended cleanup and disposal equipment described above may be available (particularly a suitably sealed glass container), it is important to emphasise that the transfer of the broken CFL and clean-up materials to an outside rubbish bin (preferably sealed) as soon as possible is the most effective way of reducing potential contamination of the indoor environment.

“Simple and straightforward”? Peter Garrett’s department not only deceives you about global warming, but about the ease of this useful “fix”.

It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to foresee a lot of lawsuits down the road, as the majority of folks who need to change lightbulbs won’t have read these instructions, and will try to handle them the same as the ordinary light bulbs they’ve used forever.

Olympia Snowe: Mighty Morphing Power Republican!

Filed under: Politics, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 12:26

David Harsanyi discusses the recently discovered bi-partisan super powers of Olympia Snowe:

It is always curious to hear irascible members of one political party accuse members of the opposing party of “playing politics” as if it were a bad thing. Can you imagine? Politics. In Washington, no less.

As you know, Democrats claim to be above such petty, divisive and low-brow behavior, especially on those days they are running both houses of Congress and the White House. What this country really needs, we are incessantly reminded, are more mavericks. Well, Republican mavericks. Folks who say “yes.”

How starved is the White House to unearth some imaginary bipartisanship on the health care front?

Consider that for possibly the first time in American history, a vote in a Senate committee was the lead story for news organizations across the country, simply because the ideologically bewildered Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, used her inconsequential vote to move forward a government-run health care bill.

Judging from the coverage, you might have thought that Snowe had nailed her 95 theses to the door of the Republican National Committee headquarters rather than sit in a safe seat and habitually vote with Democrats.

“Forget Sarah Palin,” remarked The Associated Press. “The female maverick of the Republican Party is Sen. Olympia Snowe.” CNN’s rational, reasonable, moderate Democrat, Paul Begala, called Snowe the “last rational, reasonable, moderate Republican.”

Friday links of possible interest

Filed under: Britain, Football, Health, Humour, Religion, Technology — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:25

The Science of Scams

Filed under: Science — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:06

H/T to Boing Boing.

October 15, 2009

Tweet of the day: Bob Dylan’s Christmas album

Filed under: Humour, Media — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 18:17

John Scalzi: Listening to the Bob Dylan Christmas Album, because, honestly, WTF. I think these days Bob’s just screwing with folks for fun.

John Scalzi: To answer the question: The Bob Dylan Christmas album is, in fact, terrifying. As in “stop it, you’re scaring the reindeer.”

Ralph Lauren moves decisively to quash negative press . . .

Filed under: Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:30

. . . by allegedly firing the model whose Photoshopped-to-stick-insect proportions drew the criticism in the first place:

The model featured in the Ralph Lauren Photoshop stick insect outrage — in which she was Photoshopped to within an inch of her life — claims she was sacked by the company for being “too fat”.

Filippa Hamilton suffered such an extreme digital makeover in an ad for the fashion company that BoingBoing was prompted to gasp: “Dude, her head’s bigger than her pelvis.”

Ralph Lauren quickly threw DMCA takedown notices at BoingBoing and PhotoshopDisasters for exposing the folly, but subsequently decided to apologise.

Remember: “Cellared in Canada” means it’s not Canadian wine

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Wine — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:02

Michael Pinkus has a couple of anecdotes about the marketing sleight-of-hand that allows certain Canadian wineries to sell foreign-sourced wines as if they were Canadian:

Picture, if you will, a classroom of about 30 adult students. Teacher stands up at the front and writes the words “Cellared in Canada” on the blackboard, he then asks, “Who has heard this term?” Head nods of agreement, they have heard of this. The teacher then writes these three letters “V-Q-A” on the board, “Who’s heard this term?” he asks. Everyone again nods accession. “What’s the difference?” Silence ensues. There are then some attempts to explain the difference, but there always seems to be a little confusion in the definition. The words, “no, but thanks for playing,” escaped my lips on more than one occasion. Yes I was that teacher and this happened less than 2 weeks ago. With all the media hype surrounding Cellared in Canada the only thing anyone knows for sure is that somehow cellared wines are bad; but VQA, has somehow been lumped in there too, the term has gotten lost in all the hype. Truth is, these two terms should be as clear as night and day to Ontario wine drinkers.

Now picture this. A man driving down the road, his cell phone rings, he answers, pleasantries are exchanged, then the question is posed, “What’s up?” The person on the other end of the phone is a winery owner with a very real concern, “We’re getting hammered here by irate customers telling us that they are disappointed with us and angry about being duped over our use of foreign grapes and off shore wines.” He pauses for dramatic effect, “We don’t make cellared wines, we’re strictly VQA, always have been always will be. Mike is there anything you can do?” Oh how I wish I could. My worst fears are now being realized; all Ontario wine is being painted with the sloppy broad-brush strokes of Cellared in Canada.

The two stories above are true and have come about due to the continuing controversy surrounding Cellared in Canada wine. Let’s be crystal clear about these two products: Cellared in Canada and VQA. Cellared in Canada is the foreign blend with 30% Ontario content (0% in B.C.); it is a bastard child with no home, an orphan with no earthly parentage. VQA, on the other hand is a purebred, it is 100% from the province it states, Ontario or B.C., currently the only 2 provinces with VQA regulations in place. A VQA wine has the flavour of its origin, it has a home, it has that aspect of “Terroir” the French so rightly hype. Terroir means soil, but it means more than that when talking about wine, it’s a combination, a culmination if you will, of everything mother nature brings to the table in any given year that goes into making that wine — the soil, the climate, the environment. VQA is Ontario wine — 100% — always has been, always will be — if it says VQA, it’s A-OK.

Nobel committee had reservations, was not unanimous

Filed under: Europe, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:14

Apparently, it’s not just the cranky centrists, paranoid rightists and lunatic libertarians who thought the Nobel Peace Prize award to Barack Obama was incorrect: so did a majority of the committee itself:

Three of the five members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee had objections to the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to US President Barack Obama, the Norwegian tabloid Verdens Gang (VG) reported Thursday.

“VG has spoken to a number of sources who confirmed the impression that a majority of the Nobel committee, at first, had not decided to give the peace prize to Barack Obama,” the newspaper said.

The Billionaire’s vinegar-scented legal decision

Filed under: Britain, Law, Wine — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 00:06

Following up on an item posted a couple of months ago (“The Billionaire’s Vinegar-scented lawsuit“), Michael Broadbent wins his lawsuit against the publisher of The Billionaire’s Vinegar:

This week, the man who authenticated the Lafite and presided over its auction won an apology and damages from the publisher Random House over a bestselling book, which, he argued, had suggested he had sold the wine knowing its provenance to be suspect. Michael Broadbent has retired as the senior director of Christie’s wine department but remains, according to Adam Lechmere, editor of decanter.com, “among the top three most respected wine critics in the world”.

Broadbent described the ruling as a “great relief”, adding that he planned to celebrate with a magnum of Mouton 1990 over dinner at his club.

The settlement relates to a book called The Billionaire’s Vinegar by American journalist Benjamin Wallace, which outlines the now notorious case of “the Jefferson bottles” – and which Random House, according to Broadbent’s lawyer, Sarah Webb, must now remove from bookshop shelves in Britain.

The Guild, Season 3 Episode 7

Filed under: Gaming — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 00:04

<br /><a href="http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-US&#038;vid=ad9da3c0-f956-4a84-91a0-29281cc13c51" target="_new" title="Season 3 - Episode 7: Coping and Stuff">Video: Season 3 &#8211; Episode 7: Coping and Stuff</a>

Also, Felicia Day’s commentary on this episode.

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