Quotulatiousness

August 11, 2014

The science of “wine fingerprints”

Filed under: Science, Wine — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:27

Okay, the title of this post is a bit ahead of the facts: scientists are still developing ways to detect the differences in wine from various regions, but they think they’re on the right track.

Malbecs from Argentina and California made by the same winemaker and using the same protocol had distinct molecular signatures and flavours.

But the delicate aroma of a rare vintage can quickly be eroded by poor storage after bottling, the team said.

Details were reported at the American Chemical Society meeting.

Despite the cynicism over wine critique — and the rather grandiose adjectives lavished upon certain appellations — it really does matter where your plonk comes from, according to the researchers from the University of California Davis.

They are attempting to fingerprint “terroir” — the unique characteristics that the geography, geology and climate of a certain place bestows upon a wine.

Subjective regional character is based on the appearance, aroma, taste and mouthfeel (texture) of the wine — all of which combine to create its flavour.

But demand is growing for a more objective test — to help consumers bypass woolly terminology, protect artisan producers’ intellectual property, and help auction houses detect fraud — a growing problem.

Questions from Ferguson, Missouri after police kill unarmed teenager

Filed under: Law, Media, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:00

Scott Greenfield has some questions about the official account of what happened in Ferguson, Missouri:

There may be a good explanation for why Ferguson, Missouri, a mostly black working-class suburb of St. Louis, had a white mayor and police force. There might be a good explanation for why an unarmed, 18-year-old high school graduate, Michael Brown, was shot down in the street. But if so, nobody has said so yet. The only thing for which there is a good explanation is why Brown won’t be starting technical school today. That’s because he’s dead.

From the New York Times:

    The fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager Saturday by a police officer in a St. Louis suburb came after a struggle for the officer’s gun, police officials said Sunday, in an explanation that met with outrage and skepticism in the largely African-American community.

The cop isn’t named. The story makes little sense.

    At a news conference on Sunday morning, the St. Louis County police chief, Jon Belmar, said that a man had been shot and killed after he had assaulted a police officer and the two had struggled over the officer’s gun inside his patrol car. At least one shot was fired from inside the car, Chief Belmar said.

    “The genesis of this was a physical confrontation,” Chief Belmar told reporters.

Good use of the word “genesis,” but it’s a lie.

    Just after noon on Saturday, the police said, an officer in a patrol car approached Mr. Brown and another man. As the officer began to leave his vehicle, one of the men pushed the officer back into the car and “physically assaulted” him, according to the police department’s account.

The genesis was when the shooter approached Michael Brown. Why? Then he “began to leave his vehicle.” Why? Then, according to the police account, “one of the men” pushed the cop back into the car and “physically assaulted” him. Why? Who? But mostly why would a kid who just graduated high school do this?

Ordinary British life before August 1914

Filed under: Britain, History, WW1 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:35

The Telegraph has an interesting series of short articles drawn from their 1914 archive, showing ordinary life in Britain before the start of World War One. This isn’t the upper-crust’s way of life we tend to see in TV and movie presentations of the immediate pre-war era:

A month before the outbreak of war Henley Regatta opened in “brilliant fashion”, The Daily Telegraph reported, with record crowds and “perfect” weather. It presents an image of Edwardian Britain as we fondly imagine it to have been, before the sudden cloudburst of August 1914.

Of course, the reality was far different for the 99 per cent of people who did not own land, collect rents or vacation at Biarritz and Marienbad. Most Edwardians worked in dark, noisy factories, cut hay in fields, toiled down dirty and dangerous mines; had bones bent by rickets and lungs racked by tuberculosis. Life expectancy then was 49 years for a man and 53 years for a woman, compared with 79 and 82 years today. They lived in back to back tenements or jerry-built terraces, wore cloth caps or bonnets (rather than boaters, bowlers and toppers) and they had never taken a holiday — beyond a day trip to Brighton or Blackpool — in their entire lives.

The country was a seething mass of social tension and violent confrontations. It was a land torn and dislocated by the struggle of increasingly militant suffragettes; strikes in mills, mines and on the railways; the constitutional battle between Lords and Commons; and the threat of civil war in Ireland.

Readers of the Telegraph — as a glance at the archives will reveal — were far better informed about the true state of their nation and the world than our sugary sentimental view allows us. In a dramatic scoop, the paper had published an exclusive interview with Kaiser Wilhelm II in October 1908 in which the Kaiser had expressed alarmingly frank — and hostile — views about his mother’s native land (the Kaiser’s mama, Empress Victoria, was Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter). In this interview the Kaiser accused “you English” of being “mad, mad, mad as March hares” for fearing that the construction of Germany’s High Seas Fleet was aimed at challenging the Royal Navy’s command of the world’s oceans. Implausibly, he claimed that Germany’s real target was the rising sun of Japan.

H/T to Marian L. Tupy for the link.

QotD: The decay of the profession of arms

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Military, Quotations, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 00:02

We lecture the [West Point] cadets on professionalism but we practice bureaucracy. To summarize the difference, professional cultures debate, discuss, and continually innovate to stay effective in the changing world. Bureaucracies churn out ever-restrictive rules and seek to capture every eventuality in codified routines.

Consider this: From day one at the academy every possible situation that a cadet could conceivably encounter is accounted for by strict regulations. Not sure how many inches should be between your coat hangers, whether you can hold your girlfriend’s hand on campus, or how your socks should be marked? Consult the regulations. Moreover, all activity is subjected to the cadet performance system, which essentially assigns a grade to every measurable event in a cadet’s life (think shoe shines, pushups and pop quizzes) then ruthlessly ranks the entire class from first to last. Cadets at the top of the list get the jobs and postings they want after graduation. Those near the bottom end up driving trucks at Fort Polk, Louisiana.

The result is two-fold: First, cadets have very little experience adapting to unfamiliar environments. After all, what happens when the regulations don’t describe what’s going on around you? Second, cadets devote zero attention to activities that “don’t count.” If it’s not on the syllabus, and it’s not for a grade, the cadets aren’t learning it. Ask a cadet to spend a few minutes writing up a list of the skills, traits, and knowledge that he wishes he’d have when he finally takes over his first platoon in combat. Then compare this to his four-year curriculum and summer training plans. There will be surprisingly little overlap between the two lists, and the cadet has neither the time nor the incentive to learn what’s missing. In the end, we graduate far too many cadets that are more bureaucrat than professional, lacking the expert knowledge of their trade and the flexibility to be effective in the complex environments they’ll soon encounter.

Major Fernando Lujan, U.S. Army, quoted in “West Point faculty member worries it is failing to prepare tomorrow’s officers”, Foreign Policy, 2010-06-11

Canada’s Special Forces

Filed under: Cancon, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

CANSOFCOMbadgeLast month, I posted an item on the organization of the Canadian Army, but I didn’t include the Canadian special forces … partly because the special forces are Canada’s “fourth” branch of service and not organizationally part of the Canadian Army … and partly because I just plain forgot about them. Having just read a short article in the most recent Dorchester Review, I was reminded to include Canada’s special forces units (as much as we know about them, anyway). Special forces fall under their own service command, separate from the Canadian Army, the Royal Canadian Navy, and the Royal Canadian Air Force, known as the Canadian Special Operations Forces Command (CANSOFCOM), established in 2006.

The core unit of CANSOFCOM is the original Joint Task Force-2 (JTF2) which was formed in 1992-3 when the Canadian Forces took over the domestic counterterrorism role from the RCMP. When JTF2 was included in the new command, other units were established to support a wider range of missions and capabilities. CANSOFCOM is headed by a Brigadier General and composed of a headquarters and the following units:

Although the official web page for CANSOFCOM emphasizes its domestic role, Canadian special forces have also been involved in overseas operations beginning (so far as we know) with Afghanistan in 2001-2. Very little information about JTF2 missions in specific or CANSOFCOM in general has been released by the government, and this is unlikely to change in the near future. Joseph Jockel’s article in the Dorchester Review states:

The consequences of the successful deployment […] are clearer. JTF2 had been tested and admitted to the “international tier 1 counterterrorism community”, the other members being the special forces of the US, UK, and Australia. A good indication of this was that the US military planned to include Canadian special forces in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. A year after Canada declined to go to Iraq, “the US government sends a démarche to Ottawa specifically requesting JTF2 deploy to Afghanistan for a second one-year commitment”. Ottawa “obliges relatively quickly to the US request for forces and CANSOF deploys for a second one-year commitment in the summer 2005”

The Wikipedia page has more:

Core tasks

CANSOFCOM’s core tasks are: to provide the Canadian Forces with a capacity to prevent and react to terrorism in all environments, to provide the CF with a capability to perform other missions as directed by the Government of Canada, such as direct action (DA), special reconnaissance (SR), defence diplomacy and military assistance (DDMA), as well as special humanitarian assistance (such as the evacuation of non-combatants).

Commanding officers

On September 12, 2005, Colonel David Barr was appointed the provisional commander of the CANSOFCOM. During his tenure as commander, Colonel Barr also deployed to Afghanistan as commander of the Canadian special operations task force in Operation Enduring Freedom.

Major-General D. Michael Day, OMM CD – Commander of the Canadian Special Operations Forces Command 2007–2011

Brigadier-General D.W. Thompson, OMM MSC CD is the current commander of the Canadian Special Operations Forces Command, appointed in April 2011.

The current command chief warrant officer is Chief Warrant Officer John H. Graham, MSM CD.

Uniform

With operational uniforms, all members of CANSOFCOM wear the tan beret, regardless of their environment (navy, army or air force), with the badge of their personnel branch or, in the case of the Royal Canadian Armoured Corps and Royal Canadian Infantry Corps members, the badge of their former regiment. With ceremonial and service dress, navy members wear service caps with tan bands, army members wear tan berets and air force members wear blue wedge caps with a tan insert.

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