Good morning everyone. First, I’d like to start with an apology. Beloved Commenter The Hyperbole let us know in an excellently glibertarian way (drunk and ranty) last night that some of you have been submitting articles and not hearing back from us.
Okay I didn’t wanna be a whiney bitch but fuckk it IO’m drunk. I’m not even gonna correct the tpos that are redlined, thats how little of a shit I give. anyway if you are gonna ask for sbmissions and request pitches and say ‘we’ll get back to you’, then you should get back to people. ‘Hey, thanks for the submission but you’re proposal sucks ass’ is much better than nothing. I’d assume maybe shit gotl,ost in the ,ail but it’s been like three times now. I can take it , if my bllshit ain;t yo bag, groovey, but fuck sakes tell me to piss off the silen treatment just leave fuckers in the lurch nd nobody nees hat. fcks sake.
We give that an 11 out of 10 on the glibness scale. We are not ignoring you or out spending your donations on old hookers and young meth. It appears the email filter has been a bit — zealous — in keeping the submission email box clean. We’re sorry. If this has happened to you, or happens to you in the future please go to the link at the top of the main page that says Leads/Submissions and fill out the form there to tell us submit@glibertarians.com is being a bad robot. That one goes to about 5 real email addresses, and not as a redirect. Thank you, and again, we’re sorry. We fucked up.
In the Tourney Pick ‘Em — JamesG, Banjos, Ed Mavis, and Paul are tied for first. I’m not there because Miami lost. I suspect they may have been distracted. And now… the links!
Charlie Stross was both early and late on this trend. Rule 34 came out in 2011, but I believe was set in 2019. Anyhow, child sex robots are creepy but better than actual sex with children by night and day.
Stupid pilot, save that drugging and raping for the cabin crew, not other pilots.
Sorry, this has been in my head and needs to come out. Sometimes you just need to ding a ding dang your dangalong ling long
March in Del Boca Vista is…bland. It’s just…pleasant. It’s not horrible, it’s not great. It’s just unremarkable.
Day after day, the same weather, the same activities, the same people. Which, according to OMWC’s (((Mom))), is just the way they like it. (The only mystery around here is how such a lovely lady could have spawned OMWC.)
OK, Webdominatrix is enjoying the lack of snow. I am enjoying the lack of Chicagoland traffuck.
Whenever I come to DBV, I am struck by the fact that nearly everyone I see is an oldster. The grocery stores are filled with elderly people in motorized carts blocking the aisles. The parking lots are filled with giant cars with NY Giants bumper stickers. The restaurants are filled with senior citizens enjoying the ubiquitous Early Bird Discounts. The swimming pools are filled with…well, I’ll let your imagination be your guide there. Let’s just say, tattoos are generally not attractive on 85 year old bodies.
There is nothing wrong with free association, but it pulls me up short when I realize I’ve gone days without seeing anyone under 70 who isn’t a server or health care aide.
Much as I love my MIL, I’ll be happy to get back to the nonstop excitement of living with OMWC.
The Ides of March they are upon you/All the live long day. If you belong to a certain college fandom, that will be rattling around in your head if it wasn’t already. Otherwise, it’s just a Thursday that feels like Friday to me because holy hell does it take a lot of energy to pretend to have things to do. I am in the waiting stage of a project, and a little like a smart dog left at home too long. I’m about to start tearing shit up out of boredom. That’s not great. Also, some sportzball thing is happening — sorry Sooners fans. Missed it by that much. So onto the links
More collusion between the Trump administration and Russia. This time the administration is attempting to throw the Gnostics off the truth by apply sanctions! Don’t fall for it, Sheeple!
Conclusive video footage of that brave SRO standing around attempting to draw fire by not seeking better cover. “Investigators revealed Peterson’s focus was on getting nearby streets and the high school shut down and keeping deputies away from the building.” Were a crowd to descend on his home and burn it down with him inside it, I’d have a hard time convicting them of anything worse than burning trash without a permit.
In general, as a libertarian, I’m skeptical of any new laws that people want to propose. Controlling people just goes against my grain. But I’ve noticed lately that people of differing policies seem to be talking past one another. So, I’d like to propose a universal framework for considering laws.
In general, I think any law should be decided upon as a balance sheet–with benefits weighed against costs. The important thing is to recognize fully all the costs and benefits and reject the things that shouldn’t be included.
I’ll start with my libertarian observation that any law, of necessity, entails a curtailment of individual freedom. That’s (for me) a big run up in the costs category. But different people are going to assign different weightings to different rights and freedoms. The important thing to recognize here is that people will assign different weightings to the loss of freedom and to understand that a different weighting isn’t the hallmark of stupidity or evil. The one time I think it’s genuinely fair to discount the cost of freedom is when you have a situation where a law is banning an actual violation of individual rights. I think it’s fair to say we shouldn’t mourn the loss of people’s freedom to rape, rob, or kill other people.
The second consideration is whether the law is going to work. Too often people demand laws because they don’t like something or consider something awful, and assume the legislative process is a magic wand to make the world be the way they want. But it isn’t. And that kind of magical thinking is how we wound up with the wonders of organized crime during Prohibition and the glories of our modern War on Drugs. Generally, trying to ban something that’s wildly popular is a pretty sure recipe for massive flouting of the law. It’s not a perfect guideline, but, if you already have a bunch of laws on the books about something, one more probably isn’t going to do the trick. The benefit you see of a law should be weighted by the probability of the law actually working.
On a related note, ask yourself what the secondary and tertiary effects of your law will be. Sometimes these can be positive, but, much more often, they fall on the cost side of the ledger. In fact, quite a few of the problems people have that they want to pass new laws for are the result of previous laws that people thought would magically change human nature. Consider whether the law you’re seeking to implement is going have some relatively easy workaround. If it is, ask yourself what will be the consequences of huge numbers of people availing themselves of that workaround. Make an entry in cost or benefit accordingly.
Now, ask yourself about enforcement. How heavily are you going to have to enforce the law, and, perhaps more importantly, how heavily are you willing to go to enforce the law. Some laws can be implemented with little attention to enforcement. A lot can’t. If the law would be easy to enforce, that probably counts as a benefit. On the other hand, if you’re not willing to go to the extent you’d need to to enforce the law, you should probably count that as a cost. As a libertarian, I tend to implement this standard through what I’ll call the silver-haired, kindly old grandmother rule – if I’m not willing to shoot someone’s silver-haired, kindly old grandmother in the face over it, it probably shouldn’t be a law.
Finally, we get to motivation and morality. Ask yourself, are you advocating this law as a rational means to achieve a specific policy goal, or are you looking to feel good about yourself without much personal effort or sacrifice? If it’s the latter, you should probably discount your expected benefits of the law accordingly or even throw out the proposal in its entirety. Passing laws doesn’t make you a good person. You don’t get moral credit for what you demand someone else do. If you want to be a good person, just go about doing that in your own life without placing demands on everyone else. The rest of us will respect you a lot more.
So, there you have it. This is a framework that, I think, will allow conservatives, libertarians, progressives and liberals all to discuss proposed laws and much of the rest of politics, in a common framework. As a libertarian, my calibration of the framework obviously tilts against any proposed law. But, it can be calibrated lots of different ways. And at least acknowledging the calibration might lead to more meaningful engagement between people with different politics.
Well, after a day of sheer hell at work yesterday, I get to face yet another today. I had to miss the superb wine post of Pie’s, HM’s evisceration of noted public intellectual Stephen Pinker, and rest of the general merriment. But dammit, NOTHING is going to prevent me from haunting you with Links this morning. And I avoided any bad-pun references to the Ides of March, so you can thank me for that.
And there are some interesting events. People are making a very big deal out of the ultra-thin victory by Team Blue in a purported Team Red area (that, ahem, went big for Obama in 2012). It was delightful to hear the pissing and moaning on Hate Radio, with most of the blame being directed at… the Libertarian candidate, who apparently stole votes that were rightfully Team Red’s. Memo to Team Red: if you want libertarian votes, run candidates who aren’t horrible on liberty. And let me introduce you to a libertarian friend of mine in the area, at whom you can try to hurl invective. It will be most amusing to watch Warty quietly, calmly, and effortlessly snap you in half.
Oklahoma reacts to disincentives and decides to kill prisoners using the same methods garages use to rip off customers who don’t understand the Ideal Gas Law. I have a more novel suggestion if the state insists on having a death penalty: dress the prisoner like a dog and let him loose near some cops.
More plastic panic as “researchers” find exactly what was expected. There’s been a growing wave of Media Reports of High Concern about how plastics are destroying the planet, the ecosystem, human health, and our American Way of Life. I swear I’m going to try to get the time to do a real article about this (it was a research specialty of mine and I’ve actually got a string of peer-reviewed papers and grants on the subject), but I’ll slip the conclusion ahead of time: as the global warning thing shows evidence of petering out, this will be the next political abuse of science to panic the public and be a theme for aspiring Team Blue politicos.
Happy Pi Day fellow Glibs. At Akira’s suggestion I made a shoofly pie based on the NYT recipe, shamelessly stolen from an 1860s Amish family cookbook (cultural appropriation at it’s flakiest and sweetest). It was delightful and my coworkers have been gently brought back under my control except the one doctor that grokked I was just trying to get them all fat. The Verge is already in before you start grousing about Tau Day, so don’t, not that it’ll stop you since it’s like herding cats below the fold.
Breitbart reports having pictures of Hawking’s last moments on Earth
The decision marks a stunning about-face by Duterte, who has repeatedly dared the ICC to indict him and said he was willing to “rot in jail” or go on trial to defend a war on drugs that has killed thousands of his own people. […]
Last month, he indicated he would cooperate with the ICC examination and even said he would prefer a firing squad to prison.
Like the other instructors, Dr. Deema Alsekait has a driver’s license from living abroad. Hers is from the state of Virginia. Saudi leaders lifted the driving ban in part to boost women’s participation in the workforce as the economy diversifies away from oil.
We’ve been made aware of the commentariat’s…appreciation for tits, and wish to include this gift of tits for you as a value-added perk to Afternoon Links
Last week, as part of his latest book-shilling tour, Steven Pinker looked us straight in the eye and threw down the gauntlet with his Big Think rumination “Why libertarianism is a marginal value and not a universal value.” Pinker argues that “the free market has no way to provide for poor children, the elderly, and other members of society who cannot contribute to the marketplace.” Furthermore, Pinker claims a robust social safety net as a necessary characteristic of a “developed” economy.
Of course, this is argument is even more laughably fallacious than his criticisms of the connectionist model of language acquisition. To support his premise, Pinker indulges in a false choice fallacy, argumentum ad populum, and the beloved ‘Somalia fallacy‘. It truly is a mediocre bit of hackery that exposes the poverty of his arguments in just a little over 4 minutes.
Split Pinker’s wig and bust his cheeks open in the comments below, and when you are finished, you can wash your ears out with this.
So we covered a bit of general information and a bit of history on wine in Romania, best wine in the world. Now let’s get a bit more specific and let’s us talk grapes. Well not individual grapes of course, I mean varieties. As mentioned previously, accurate figures are difficult to come by, in Romania or elsewhere, due to informal wine making and general issues with such statistics, but I will try to give some numbers, as accurate as I can. So take it with a grain of tartrate, so to speak. According to Ministry of Agriculture estimates, Romania has about 200,000 hectares of vines, 80% of which are dedicated to extracting the nectar of the grapes, making 500 million liters of wine. Give or take 150 million. Half of them are European vines, half are hybrids. I will ignore the latter altogether because, personally, I do not consider that to be wine wine, and frankly there is not much to say of the mighty Căpşunica.
Isabella or strawberry wine
Fine… I will talk briefly of Căpşunica, the most popular hybrid wine grape. The word comes from căpşună, meaning strawberry. It came to Romania via Italy, where it was called Fragolino, hence the name. It is a hybrid originating in, I think, South Carolina or thereabouts, where it was called Isabella or somesuch. Many Romanians drink wine made of this. I am not among them. I find it utterly unpalatable. Anyway… Moving on…
About 70% of wine grapes in Romania are white and the remaining 30% red. There may be a few confused, inter-color, bi-curious and such, but a negligible amount. This data is basically approximation as no one knows for certain. This is due to the highly fragmented nature of the holdings, mostly because of those who grow for personal consumption. While in the EU the average vineyard size is 1.3 hectares, in Romania it is 0.2. So everyone and their grandmothers have a couple of vines to make a bit of wine, usually ready in spring and to be drunk by mid-summer, otherwise it goes sour. There are exceptions though; a minority of people do make good homemade wine.
The white is predominant due to local preference for lower alcoholic, sweetish wines that can be drunk in high quantities, usually mixed with soda water. Șpriț, as the locals call it, word coming from the German Spritze. This leads wine snobs, such as yours truly, to turn their nose up and look down upon the plebs. For one thing, I dislike wine that isn’t dry. And second, I would rather drink a smaller quantity of something good than a larger one of something bad. And I don’t mix my wine. Some people actually put Cola in wine. One thing that amused me, as an anecdote, was one such person criticizing another: I understand drinking red wine with Cola, I do it all the time, but white wine with Cola is just weird. White wine is with Sprite or mineral water. But the șpriț has its reasons: if you want to drink all night and keep hydrated, half wine and half water works better. You don’t get pissed as fast.
Old school sifon
As an anecdote, most people use bottled mineral water now. But back in the day – 80, 90 or so, it would be sifon, which I don’t know how to translate other than soda water. This was basically tap water with CO2 added. There were special places – sifonarie – where you would take your reusable bottles to refill. The bottles had a special head.
The main white grapes cultivated in Romania are Fetească Alba, Fetească Regală, Riesling, Aligote, Sauvignon Blanc, Muscat Ottonel, Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, Tămaioasă Românească, Grasă de Cotnari, Francusă, Galbenă de Odobești, Crâmpoșie Selectionata, Mustoasă de Mădarat, Zgihară de Huși, Sarba, Plavaie, and several others. Riesling is mostly Italian Riesling, but small amounts of Rhine Riesling have been planted recently, for the local need of a wine with just a hint of petrol in the nose. The largest amounts are planted with the local grapes Fetească albă and Fetească regală, together being 18% of plantations.
The main red grapes planted are Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Băbească Neagră, Fetească neagră, Pinot Noir, Burgund Mare, Traminer Roz, Busuioacă de Bohotin, Cadarcă. Merlot is the most planted red grape, with about 12 thousand hectares. (As a side request for the admins, please catbutt any post saying they won’t drink any fucking Merlot.)
I will not talk of international grapes much, but focus on the local ones. While there are several varieties, a fraction of the pre-phylloxera varieties still exist. I think there are probably lost varieties still grown among villages off the beaten track, but there is no project or funding to identify and preserve them (one of the things I would fund were I a billionaire). Many more were probably lost in the recent frenzy to replant everything with Cabernet and Syrah and other such invasive species.
Fetească is sort of the local flagship grape, both in white (alb means white) and red (negru means black). Fetească Alba is a white clone of Fetească Neagra. Feteasca comes from the word fata, meaning girl, and it could be translated as young girl like. I do not know how this came about. Another common grape Băbească neagra (red fruit, higher acidity), comes from babă which means old woman. Băbească is to Fetească maybe stretching it a bit what Pinot is to Cabernet, and is used to make lighter somewhat fresher and fruit forward wine. Fetească is the more serious grape, making more complex wines. There is an old saying, heteropatriarchical I would think, about how young men like the older woman and old men like younger girl (meaning youth prefer the lighter wines from Băbească and the older, with or without candy, like the more complex Fetească). Băbească also has it’s white wine clones Băbească Albă sau Băbească gri, but these are very rare.
The general harvest date for Fetească Neagra (considered typical with a significant aroma of dried plum) is around 15 September, having a growth period of 160-170 days. They get about 230-240 g/l of sugar and acidity of around 7 g/l. I will not give technical notes on other grapes. For more info there are encyclopedias for this sort of thing.
Negru de Dragasani
Less common red wine varieties which make, in my view, good wine are Negru de Drăgășani (black cherries, blackberries, blueberries and other dark fruit) and Novac (raspberries, sour cherry, cloves, black pepper, dark chocolate – I do not do tasting notes myself so I just copied these from some professional wine taster, I find describing wines in such detail a bit silly), both from Drăgășani, a wine region in southern Romania, and both obtained by different crossings of an old Romanian pre- phylloxera grape Negru Vârtos with the grape Saperavi. They make a velvety red wine with some aging potential and one of the local candidates to making what some might call “Great Wines.” Negru Vârtos – meaning strong, powerful black – was one of the more appreciated pre phylloxera wines of Romania, and it was preserved in Negru de Drăgășani and Novac.
As a note, many of the wines that are traditional to Romania (which contains the subregion Moldova) are also common in the now independent country Moldova. Some say one grape comes from one or other, but being that the language and culture are mostly common (despite the best efforts of Russians to make Moldova Russian), I do not think it is relevant. Jancis Robinson makes claims about this, for example, but I find it meaningless. The national grape of Moldova is Rară neagră which is simply another name for Băbească Neagra.
Now to go through a few more grapes quickly… Grasă de Cotnari -gras means fat – is the flagship grape of the Cotnari region and is used to make sweet, aromatic white wine – and I remember reading that it was also planted in South Africa for this purpose. Fetească Regala is a cross between Fetească Alba and Grasă de Cotnari in order to get a more aromatic wine, but used for dry whites. Francusă is the Cotnari grape used for dry and rather acidic wine. In the old days people in general preferred sweet wines to dry, but the legend goes that Cotnari wine was generally so sweet that the boyars occasionally drank some Francusă as a palate cleanser.
Crâmpoşia is one of the grapes believed to date back to ancient Dacia. Crâmpoșie Selecționată was obtained from Crâmpoșie crossed with a grape called Gordan, which I know little about, in order to solve some problems with sterile vines. It has high acidity and is used to make fresh, fruity whites. While traditionally used for dry wines, the possibility of both high sugar and high acidity made it useful for semi sweet and sparkling wines (Prince Stirbey vineyard makes a good sparking from Crâmpoșie). Another local wine use for sparkling is Mustoasa de Madarad, from the Arad region of western Romania.
Tămaioasă Românească – tămaie means frankincense – is of the main white grapes used in Romania to make sweet aromatic wine. Although traditionally only used for sweet, some dry varieties were produced recently, due to the changing of tastes towards dry wines – Romanians still like a lot of sweet or semi-dry wines but tastes are shifting. Some of the dry versions were, in fact, pretty good. The grape is related to the French Muscat de Frontignan. A variation called Tămaioasă Roza – used to make a rose sweet wine – is actual Muscat de Frontignan, but they are, apparently, not allowed to call it that.
Another sweet rose wine of some fame is Busuioaca de Bohotin. Busuioc means basil and it is a reference to the wine being quite aromatic. This was, during communism, grown on a limited surface and was reportedly Ceaușescu’s favourite. Due to this – the dictator drunk it and the people didn’t get any – after communism it got real popular because everyone wanted to drink Busuioaca. In the 90’s, probably 10 times more Busuioaca was sold than produced, a cheap, sweet red wine of the poorest quality. Recently, a few reputable producers made some, and while I’m not a fan, it can be pretty good as sweet wines go.
As far as international grapes, I would say that if you are a fan of Pinot Noir, I would be very careful buying Romanian one. It is most likely bad, and not very typical due to the hot summers. Say what you will of Romania as a wine region, Burgundy it is not. Not even, say, Oregon. Furthermore, Pinot Noir was mostly made in Romania as a semi-sweet red wine of poor quality. It was what Romania was known in the past in England and Germany for – bad cheap Pinot for students and drunks.
I was thinking of making one more post on recommended Romanian wines, but due to the availability in the states, there is little point. I already mentioned the wineries I like in the first post. Most wines from those are good. To highlight a few, Fetească Neagra I like from SERVE (Guy Tyrel de Poix), Bauer (FN quite different style to others), Davino, Balla Geza (Stone Wine Fetească Neagra) and Ferdi Feteasca Neagra – although this is nearly impossible to get in Romania, small family winery which does not really retail in stores, you need to know a guy. . . For Negru de Drăgășani and Novac the top is Prince Stirbey. There are other producers in the Drăgășani area that make it and only one outside, Via Marchizului Negru de Drăgășani from the somewhat hotter Dealu Mare, but an interesting variation of the wine. White wines I drink less of, but recommend the same producers. Stirbey and Bauer make great Sauvignon Blanc, but that is not a local grape. Bauer is the main oenologist of Stirbey, who made his own boutique winery with great results and even made the first Orange wine in Romania.
About where to get it … TotalWine apparently has the mid-range Recas, which OMWC reviewed. The net said something about Mariano’s in the Chicago area, but we will have to ask Swiss if that is true. Mission Liquor & Wines Pasadena, CA, had, at least on the website, Nedeea – a blend of Fetească Neagra, Negru de Drăgășani and Novac and some Panciu which should be decent if not spectacular. The website has some stuff on it, no idea if it retails or how. Besides that… who knows.
Greetings, Glibs. Today I have ensured proper links. On time. Early, in fact.
Celebrate the links!
Sports – the NCAA Basketball Tournament got underway. Are you in the Glibs Bracket Challenge? [Group ID: 52048, Group Password: Podesta] If no, why not? All the cool kids are doing it.
Music – I will just link a song so you have one. This is an odd, yet compelling piece.
Links:
Famous physicist, sometime jerk, Stephen Hawking has left the building. For good.
Need an illustration of closing the barn door, after the horse has gone? Here you go. I don’t know if the bribe…er, aid will work. Too late to calm down the electorates of various EU states as well.
Insert zombie apocalypse joke here. Or, being the UK, is it a 28 Days Later joke here?
Wasn’t United’s old motto “Fly the Friendly Skies”?
Una ordenanza propuesta, remitida por el comité al consejo completo para su consideración, prohibiría la publicidad de marihuana dentro de 800 pies de lugares sensibles como escuelas, limitaría un negocio de cannabis a un letrero en el lugar que tenga un tamaño máximo de 75 pies cuadrados, y prohibir carteles portátiles o señales de sándwich ubicadas en el derecho de paso público.
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A proposed ordinance, forwarded by the committee to the full council for consideration, would prohibit marijuana advertising within 800 feet of sensitive places such as schools, limit a cannabis business to a sign in the place that has a maximum size of 75 square feet , and prohibit portable posters or sandwich signs located in the public right of way.
No puedo creer que hayan hecho una barbie de nuestra Friducha que nunca trató de parecerse a nadie y siempre celebró su originalidad”, escribió Salma Hayek en su cuenta de Instagram.
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I can not believe they made a barbie from our Friducha who never tried to look like anyone and always celebrated their originality,” Salma Hayek wrote on her Instagram account.
El domingo por la noche, Trump reveló su propuesta sobre armas de fuego tras el tiroteo en Parkland, Florida, que dejo 17 muertos. ¿Adivinas lo que quedó fuera de estar propuesta? Sí, nada sobre elevar la edad mínima para comprar algunos tipos de armas.
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On Sunday night, Trump revealed his proposal about firearms after the shooting in Parkland, Florida, which left 17 dead. Guess what was left out of being proposed? Yes, nothing about raising the minimum age to buy some types of weapons.
We give that an 11 out of 10 on the glibness scale. We are not ignoring you or out spending your donations on old hookers and young meth. It appears the email filter has been a bit — zealous — in keeping the submission email box clean. We’re sorry. If this has happened to you, or happens to you in the future please go to the link at the top of the main page that says Leads/Submissions and fill out the form there to tell us submit@glibertarians.com is being a bad robot. That one goes to about 5 real email addresses, and not as a redirect. Thank you, and again, we’re sorry. We fucked up.
The second consideration is whether the law is going to work. Too often people demand laws because they don’t like something or consider something awful, and assume the legislative process is a magic wand to make the world be the way they want. But it isn’t. And that kind of magical thinking is how we wound up with the wonders of organized crime during Prohibition and the glories of our modern War on Drugs. Generally, trying to ban something that’s wildly popular is a pretty sure recipe for massive flouting of the law. It’s not a perfect guideline, but, if you already have a bunch of laws on the books about something, one more probably isn’t going to do the trick. The benefit you see of a law should be weighted by the probability of the law actually working.
