Some very old (and one hopes, authentic) wines to be auctioned off by La Tour d’Argent in Paris:
A total of 18,000 bottles — including wine from Cognac, Champagne, Burgundy and Bordeaux — will be auctioned.
The sale is intended to raise 1m euros (£0.9m) to renew the cellar’s contents and ensure the restaurant keeps its multiple Michelin stars.
Its wine list is 400 pages long, with no fewer than 15,000 tipples.
Tunku Varadarajan updates Ambrose Bierce for the Copenhagen conference:
A is for anthropogenic: (as in anthropogenic global warming, or “AGW”), a $10 word for “man-made” which global-warmists wield as proof of expertise — no one more so than Al Gore, who, after having invented the Internet, turned his prodigious mind to the conundrum of AGW.
[. . .]
C is for the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, the now-discredited source of much of the data used to fuel climate hysteria. In November, in an episode that was oh-so-predictably dubbed Climategate, a cache of leaked emails showed that researchers systematically hid or manipulated data that was inconsistent with the accepted narrative of man-made climate change. (Read John Tierney’s clear-headed critique here.) Don’t forget carbon dioxide, a colorless, odorless gas once considered essential to life on earth, not to mention bubbles in Champagne. (Although it’s now regarded as a poisonous pollutant, you can, however, trade it.) Think also of consensus — the idea that science is settled by an asserted poll of experts after all objections from dissenting scientists have been suppressed.
It will come as no real surprise to anyone that the Copenhagen gab-and-grabfest will “produce as much carbon dioxide as a town the size of Middlesbrough”:
On a normal day, Majken Friss Jorgensen, managing director of Copenhagen’s biggest limousine company, says her firm has twelve vehicles on the road. During the “summit to save the world”, which opens here tomorrow, she will have 200.
“We thought they were not going to have many cars, due to it being a climate convention,” she says. “But it seems that somebody last week looked at the weather report.”
Ms Jorgensen reckons that between her and her rivals the total number of limos in Copenhagen next week has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up on Thursday and ordered another 42. “We haven’t got enough limos in the country to fulfil the demand,” she says. “We’re having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden.”
And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? “Five,” says Ms Jorgensen. “The government has some alternative fuel cars but the rest will be petrol or diesel. We don’t have any hybrids in Denmark, unfortunately, due to the extreme taxes on those cars. It makes no sense at all, but it’s very Danish.”
The airport says it is expecting up to 140 extra private jets during the peak period alone, so far over its capacity that the planes will have to fly off to regional airports — or to Sweden — to park, returning to Copenhagen to pick up their VIP passengers.
I’d point out the irony, but the earnest types in the AGW movements don’t do irony.
In short, it was definitely the worst game the Vikings have played this season, with poor performances in all aspects. The injury bug bit, hard, with Viking players dropping on both sides of the ball, and both Brett Favre and Adrian Peterson having season-worst outings.
The game started well for the Purple, with an early forced fumble giving the Vikings a short field and a quick touchdown (although Brad Childress had to throw a challenge flag after Visanthe Shiancoe was initially ruled out of bounds on the reception). And that was pretty much the high point of the game, with the wheels coming off early in the following series. With backups on the offensive line, there was nowhere to run for Adrian Peterson, and Brett Favre threw two interceptions (and could easily have had four, had Cardinal backs been able to hang on to the ball).
Poor play aside, probably the biggest loss was the season-ending injury to middle linebacker E.J. Henderson:
The silence in the Vikings locker room late Sunday night was all one needed to observe to understand just how painful of loss this team had suffered at the hands of the Arizona Cardinals.
Not only had the Vikings easily played their worst game of the season in a 30-17 defeat to the Arizona Cardinals but they also had lost defensive captain and middle linebacker E.J. Henderson to a fractured femur in his left leg. Players choked up as they attempted to discuss the injury to Henderson.
Coach Brad Childress said Henderson would remain in a Phoenix-area hospital tonight and probably undergo surgery. The severity of Henderson’s situation — the second time he has suffered a season-ending injury in as many years — made the loss almost secondary.
“It’s a horrible injury,” linebacker Ben Leber said as he fought his emotions. “I feel bad for the guy. He has battled through so much.”
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