July 22, 2009

World's Largest Wine Appellation

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The appellation is 50 times the size of Bordeaux. I know a wine person named Tom Abruzzini. He has been in the business forever and once many centuries ago visited every wine region in Italy professionally and studied all the wines around. He also claims to be the inventor of the Single Vineyard concept. He claims his idea was copied by the French from the Italians. I personally do not care much to follow up with the claim but find the point interesting to bottle the produce of a single vineyard by itself for the sake of quality. The making of quality wine by nature makes the geographical area under the bottle small and even smaller when we refer to blocks or rows of a vineyard. The world's largest appellation is a great idea commercially but what does it accomplish? American concept of an appellation is very loose compared to the Old World which is justified because the industry needs to experiment and find what plants best in what soil and weather until someday becomes established enough the laws of the land have to protect the status. The existing appellation system is too loose to identify wine except for the marketing value attached to a name of a place. A very large appellation means a very large land of many soils, a huge number of changing climates and other unfriendly elements. The idea of making a very large appellation is impressive in the news but acts as an oxymoron. The worlds large and appellation should not be together unless one makes up own definitions for terms as we routinely do here in the US. The whole benefit of an appellation is in the consistency of specific quality within limits: Small is the word.

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David Furer

The USA will soon have the world's largest wine appellation - the 4m hectare Upper Mississippi River Valley AVA.

Covering 48,142km sq (4.8m ha or 29,914 square miles) over four states, the AVA averages 193km (120 miles) from east to west, 362km (225 miles) from north to south.

It encompasses some or all of ten counties in Minnesota, nine in Illinois, 18 in Iowa, and 23 in Wisconsin. The northern boundary begins near St Paul, Minnesota in the north to Moline, Illinois in the south.

The AVA is more than double the size of Wales (20,779km sq), and fifty times greater than Bordeaux (100,000ha or 1000km sq).

Representatives of the four states involved filed the petition in 2006. It will take effect 22 July 2009.

Lake Wisconsin, established in 1994, is the only AVA which currently lies within the new UMRV AVA.

It contains producers of some repute. The Wollersheim Winery of Prairie du Sac, for example, works with a range of grapes including Sangiovese and Bonarda, and has earned some 267 medals over the past 20 years.

The application for the UMRV AVA was based upon evidence of a glacial retreat 15,000 years ago.

The resultant water flows combined with the St Croix River and what became Lake Superior to form this bedrock.

As federal tobacco subsidies have diminished, and wine consumption has risen in the US, many tobacco farmers, especially in Wisconsin, have switched over to growing grapes.

Due to the abundance of cold and humidity, French and other hybrids dominate the region.

http://www.decanter.com/news/286008.html?aff=rss

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July 22, 2009

Protecting Social Security numbers online is a futile exercise

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I once worked for a retail company in Los Angeles and anytime a person clocked in and out, the printed time slip had the social security printed at the top. I reported it and eventually they disappeared from the printed report. The underlying assumption at that time was the number had no value. Anyone could know anybody's social security and it really amounted to nothing. Today, the world has changed a lot but only a little in some areas. The social security number is still worthless except on occasion and for the time being SS number is likely to cause more problems than do any good to the owner.
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News Tuesday that Social Security numbers may not be as random nor secure as believed is just one more security problem the ubiquitous identification number faces.

Last fall, the Government Accountability Office found that Social Security numbers are under attack and your personal records are more exposed than you’d like to think. At least that seems to be the observation in a frightening study that says among other things that 85% of large counties and 41% of small counties in the U.S. make records that may contain SSNs generally available in bulk or online.

On top of that, many record-keepers do not or cannot restrict the types of entities that can obtain public records and may not know how records are being used. Finish that observation off with the notion that some businesses are sending records with SSNs offshore, primarily to India and the Philippines, even though not much is known about how such data are protected overseas.

The dour Web-based GAO study looked at 247 counties across the U.S. responsible for recording documents — including the 97 largest counties by population and a random sample of 150 of the remaining counties. Records could include birth, death, and marriage records; criminal and civil court case files; and records that reflect property ownership, such as property liens. Some records contain personally identifiable information, such as SSNs, dates of birth, and credit card or bank account numbers.

Alaska, Connecticut, Hawaii, Rhode Island and Vermont were not included in the study because the GAO said individual counties don’t collect personal data in those states.

So, if you have ever wondered how identity theft can be the number one consumer fraud problem seven years running, costing consumers more than $1.2 billion in 2007 alone, and showing no signs of letting up, perhaps we need only look to the results of studies such as this.

Read the rest http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/070709-social-security-numbers.html?fsrc=netflash-rss

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July 22, 2009

New $1 million wine book to launch in spring

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The wine industry has improve greatly and now has outdone itself. A $1,000,000 price tag and how does it benefit the purchaser? The luxury products fail to have equal intrinsic value to their price tag but justify by the contribution to the size of one's ego. That is the principle beyond the marketing of such products and frankly nothing is wrong with having such niche and developing to benefit. However, the normal wine enthusiast either is excited wine can be taken to such level or confused of what wine is supposed to be and appreciated.
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Stuart Peskett

A US$1m wine book weighing 30kg is set to be released next year.

The Wine Opus will list the world's top 100 wineries.

As well as its US$1m (£600,000) price tag, at 30kg (66lbs) it will weigh as much as the average labrador dog (pictured), or a nine-year-old child.

Yes, I Suck: Self-Help Through Negative Thinking

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The never-ending talk about how people behave when told things holds some interesting truths. One is what I was once told and I have come to believe that whatever people are told they cannot do, they will automatically seek to do. Human mind sucks. If you tell people they ought not to stand in the middle of street for a while when crossing it, some people automatically begin doing it on occasion without even seeking a rationale. The rebellion theory holds some truth but I think there is more to it. I commented on a blog once when Foie Grae was being boycotted and was booed down for stating that drawing attention only makes the position stronger. That is how all contraversial efforts have grown over the history. The more they are opposed the stronger they get and eventually become more legitimate. That is history of most religions and cults also. Another thing which is closer to this article is I used to work in retail and when a customer would visit and was offered help the majority would decline automatically because they are programmed to ward off salespeople. I changed my line instead and would say to a client entering after I had greeted them "You don't need any help, right?" and almost everyone would give me the automatic decline response but 95% of them would process the comment and a second later would say they actually needed help with such and such. My approach implied they know what they are doing and would not need help now or later. The ego was being boosted and they would have to lower themselves to admit they needed something or help. Most people automatically stopped and used the help they needed and were being written off of. The human mind does many things and a good many of them make no sense.
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In the past 50 years, people with mental problems have spent untold millions of hours in therapists' offices, and millions more reading self-help books, trying to turn negative thoughts like "I never do anything right" into positive ones like "I can succeed." For many people — including well-educated, highly trained therapists, for whom "cognitive restructuring" is a central goal — the very definition of psychotherapy is the process of changing self-defeating attitudes into constructive ones.

But was Norman Vincent Peale right? Is there power in positive thinking? A study just published in the journalPsychological Science says trying to get people to think more positively can actually have the opposite effect: it can simply highlight how unhappy they are.(See pictures of people mourning the death of Michael Jackson.)

The study's authors, Joanne Wood and John Lee of the University of Waterloo and Elaine Perunovic of the University of New Brunswick, begin with a common-sense proposition: when people hear something they don't believe, they are not only often skeptical but adhere even more strongly to their original position. A great deal of psychological research has shown this, but you need look no further than any late-night bar debate you've had with friends: when someone asserts that Sarah Palin is brilliant, or that the Yankees are the best team in baseball, or that Michael Jackson was not a freak, others not only argue the opposing position, but do so with more conviction than they actually hold. We are an argumentative species.

And so we constantly argue with ourselves. Many of us are reluctant to revise our self-judgment, especially for the better. In 1994, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology published a paper showing that when people get feedback that they believe is overly positive, they actually feel worse, not better. If you try to tell your dim friend that he has the potential of an Einstein, he won't think he's any smarter; he will probably just disbelieve your contradictory theory, hew more closely to his own self-assessment and, in the end, feel even dumber. In one fascinating 1990s experiment demonstrating this effect — called cognitive dissonance in official terms — a team including psychologist Joel Cooper of Princeton asked participants to write hard-hearted essays opposing funding for the disabled. When these participants were later told they were compassionate, they felt even worse about what they had written.(See how to prevent illness at any age.)

For the new paper, Wood, Lee and Perunovic measured 68 students on their self-esteem. The students were then asked to write down their thoughts and feelings for four minutes. Every 15 seconds during those four minutes, one randomly assigned group of the students heard a bell. When they heard it, they were supposed to tell themselves, "I am a lovable person."

Those with low self-esteem — precisely the kind of people who do not respond well to positive feedback but tend to read self-help books or attend therapy sessions encouraging positive thinking — didn't feel better after those 16 bursts of self-affirmation. In fact, their self-evaluations and moods were significantly more negative than those of the people not asked to remind themselves of their lovability.(See pictures of couples in love.)

This effect can also occur when experiments are more open-ended. The authors cite a 1991 study in which participants were asked to recall either six or 12 examples of instances when they behaved assertively. "Paradoxically," the authors write, "those in the 12-example condition rated themselves as lessassertive than did those in the six-example condition. Participants apparently inferred from their difficulty retrieving 12 examples that they must not be very assertive after all."

Wood, Lee and Perunovic conclude that unfavorable thoughts about ourselves intrude very easily, especially among those of us with low self-esteem — so easily and so persistently that even when a positive alternative is presented, it just underlines how awful we believe we are.

The paper provides support for newer forms of psychotherapy that urge people to accept their negative thoughts and feelings rather than try to reject and fight them. In the fighting, we not only often fail but can also make things worse. Mindfulness and meditation techniques, in contrast, can teach people to put their shortcomings into a larger, more realistic perspective. Call it the power of negative thinking.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1909019,00.html?xid=rss-topstories

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July 22, 2009

Book Review: The Transformation of Cities: Urban Theory and Urban Cities (Paperback)

I was excited to read Tranformation of Cities. I was however not as satisfied after reading because of the theory part. I didn't expect the book to be about architecture or city layout but expect practical and useful information with good analysis. Transformation of Cities stays in the theory realm and what practical it offers explores too broadly for my reading sake. It is a good book overall.

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July 22, 2009

Book Review: Start Your Own Consulting Business

How-to books can be easy to read because of the intentional style of writing. Start Your Own Consulting Business teaches a good deal of useful techniques and knowledge in very easy to understand way. The information is great if you have no consulting knowledge or experience and mostly redundant if you have training in management and business start-up. You will learn more than a few useful things regardless of your background and makes for a quick read.

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July 22, 2009

Book Review: A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives

I speed-read A Mind of Its Own and somewhere about 1/3 of the reading I stopped asking myself if the writer was a woman. I checked the back jacket for her photo as I thought I had seen and yes. Women can write differently than men which is no surprise since we communicate very differently but the writing and the thought process can be so personalized that speed reading fails the reader. The thoughts and words are not arranged as a normal writer would and require close attention. I wish I had the time but I liked what I could read.

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July 22, 2009

How to Be a Regular

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The two waiters in the photo are actually the same person! Interesting service. Simple rules make outside dining very efficient and San Francisco has the highest average spending per customer of any city for restaurants so seating can be a little competitive. I really liked this article. The basic how-to articles can be a total waste of time because of reviewing the very obvious and useless stuff. Leventhal has a few good points. I think the hidden and most useful guidelines here is to be nice to the waitstaff. That is the hardest for many to do because protocol requires one to behave as guest while others behave as others. The best rule to become a successful regular in a restaurant can be to just be polite and even nice to the waitstaff by treating them as not waitstaff. What the article teaches you are "outsider" tips but what I mentioned is "insider" tip and works not only great but also makes you lucky.

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from Grub Street by Ben Leventhal

Any self-respecting eater is a Regular somewhere. It might be at his or her one favorite restaurant, or it could be at a small handful of beloved go-tos. But at these places, the Regular knows the staff, the best and worst seats, the menu's standouts and chef's blind spots. The Regular never waits for a table, desserts or drinks are perhaps “compliments of the chef,” and maybe the Regular even gets a discount (one top-level Soho restaurant in New York customarily knocks 50 percent off the bill for its top-level VIPs). Dining as a Regular is, obviously, a great pleasure. So how do you do it?

As conventional wisdom goes, there are three golden rules that are fundamental to being a Regular.

1. Go to the restaurant a lot.
2. Don't be a pain in the ass: Show up on time, say please and thank-you, respect the house and its rules (such as dress code).
3. Always tip 20 percent on the total bill, and tip in cash.

Okay, so the rules are a bit obvious — nevertheless, they are indeed essential behaviors of a good Regular.

But, if you're really serious about your bid for the house's undying love and affection, there's more you can do to make it happen. Herewith, five other very important things you can do to become a very important person.

1. Name-drop
As in, both yours and theirs. Restaurants have customer-tracking software these days, and if you're trying to become a Regular but not regularly using your name, you might as well be six shoes in at the $100 minimum table having not even pulled your Players' card. Moreover, you need to know the staff — a little personal attention from you goes a long way toward getting "VIP" next to your name in the computer. Take advantage of the system and they'll know you like your Caesar without the anchovies without you having to say it twice.

2. Make a good exit
Restaurants may be the only place on earth where the last impression is the most important. Admit it: Your opinion can be swayed, or at least rescued, by excellent desserts. Similarly, it's true for the house, and if you make a strong exit, they'll remember you next time on the way in. So, in addition to the aforementioned good tip, this means a few things: When you sense the restaurant wants the table back, give it to them (once you're a Regular, you'll have the corner booth for as long as you need it). Thank your server by name if he or she is in earshot when you get up to leave. And also thank — and tip ($20 minimum) — the maître'd or manager. Let us emphasize here, you're doing this on the way out. And do tell him or her what you liked and what you didn't — feedback at this point is always appreciated. Finally, the best time to book a table for next time is on the way out, in person. If you're coming back, make it known before you walk out the door.

3. Lubricate the staff
If you've been treated well or had an exceptional meal — or both — send a round of drinks to the kitchen. Procedurally, this is as easy as saying to your server, "Hey, I thought the food tonight was exceptional. I'd like to buy the kitchen a round." Also, if you've ordered a bottle of wine, make sure you offer your server a taste of it if she asks if you like it. Always offer a taste of any bottle over $80 to the sommelier. If you're finishing your meal after 10 p.m., offer to buy your server a round. To kick this move up a notch and consider yourself an advanced would-be Regular: At a new restaurant, bringing in a congratulatory bottle of good, hard liquor will always be appreciated. Remember that chefs tend to like the brown stuff — rye, whiskey, bourbon, Scotch, or the like.

4. Have a good memory
Or, if you don't, write things down. (A tip, for the serious: Create contacts in your BlackBerry for your favorite restaurants and use the notes field.) Remember the number of a table you like, so you can put in a gentle request for it next time. Remember the names of the staffers you met — the front men, especially. Remember a dish you liked, and, when you order it again, you might mention how much you enjoyed it last time.

5. Be a local
The smaller the restaurant, the more this holds true. Restaurants — any one worth becoming a Regular at, anyhow — reward their local customers above all others. If you live in the area, make sure the house knows (something you can casually mention to the maître'd on the way out); if you eat out in the area consistently, that's good to mention, too: "It's been a long time since the West Village had a steak tartare this good," for example. The house knows that after the place cools down and the restaurant hunters move on, you're the key to their longevity.

http://newyork.grubstreet.com/2009/07/how_to_be_a_regular.html

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July 22, 2009

Are Wine Critics Born or Made?

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I have heard of the UC Davis sensory test more than once but never read about it. I agree with its accuracy on a general sense. What I was taught myself is that 10% of people are "supertasters" and 10% are "non-tasters" and the rest fall in between. I have a good example. I had lunch with a friend from years back a few days ago and one thing I have always remembered about him is how as a serious wine drinker he has zero ability to taste. He is 100% non-taster. I found out by accident when I gave him a sip of a very nice wine just as token of friendship. He tried it but instead of sharing my enthusiasm said "it's okay." I realized something is wrong with him. How could he not appreciate the wine. I tested him again later with some of the worst wines you can taste and they were "okay." My theory was confirmed that I had met someone who just cannot taste. On the other hand, I can taste wine better than average and I have done tastings myself at which the results were recorded and mine are almost always the opposite of lay drinkers. I don't know about wine critics but wine tasting in general has a little bit to do with nature. Won't you agree?

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rom Good Wine Under $20 by noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Debs)

I've always blamed it on UC Davis. I took their "Introduction to the Sensory Evaluation of Wine" course and I came out of it smelling green pepper in Cabernet Sauvignon and talking endlessly about currants and gooseberries.

Now I'm starting to wonder if it's genetic. ("Beaujolais Nouveau, Baby Nouveau," by bhollar)

My dad puts me to shame when he describes a wine. He smells all kinds of things--rhubarb, for instance--that elude me.

And I think my niece is going to put me to shame, too. She's thirteen. We were visiting friends in Paris and they--in true French fashion--offered her a taste of the delicious Chenin Blanc we were having with dinner. She refused, but did allow as how she'd like to smell it. I handed her my glass, expecting her to twist up her face and say "blech." Instead, she lowered her nose into the glass and made an appreciative sound.

I asked her what it smelled like, and braced myself for the response "wine." Her grandmother frequently has this response, and the child is, after all, thirteen and eats mostly white meat chicken and rice. What does she know of gooseberries?

"Citrus and meadowlands," was her reply.

I almost fell off the sofa. She pretty much nailed the aromas in the wine--and it's not because we text message each other about wine. Her parents drink wine but I think both would admit that they enjoy sipping it more than talking about it. And I see my niece once every few years--so I haven't contaminated her with winespeak.

I've been thinking about her response ever since and wondering if wine appreciation has a genetic component. That's not to say that education means nothing--I think it means a lot. But I do wonder now if both an interest in wine and the ability to taste and smell a wide range of flavors and aromas in wine also depends on your DNA.

I'm sure there's a scientific study somewhere that talks about this, but I want to know what you think. How do your sensory abilities with respect to wine stack up to your parents and grandparents? What about your kids? And if you have kids who smell wine, I wonder if they are less inhibited and more intuitive in their descriptions. As we age, do our minds tell us "there's no raspberry in that," whereas once our noses were screaming "berries, yum, berries"?

http://goodwineunder20.blogspot.com/2009/07/are-wine-critics-born-or-made.html

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July 22, 2009

Beautiful people are more intelligent

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The first time I came across the idea was in a literature class and the essay was by Stephen J. Gould. He is dead now but it is hard to forget his unusual point that humans in groups select the most attractive person to serve as the leader! If a dangerous or difficult situation arises, they have a tendency to line up behind this person and push the one to the front. That is just talk for most of us but what Gould says next is very interesting. Gould says animals do the same thing. In a laboratory environment, a group of animals demonstrate the exact same approach. The idea has been around and I assume some additional intelligence is implied but this research is the first time I have come across the argument as being scientifically valid. I hope my IQ is more 100.

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March 29, 2009, Evolutionary Psychology

Sociologists and social psychologists have long known that there is a widespread perception shared by many people that physically attractive people are moreintelligent and competent, as well as hold many other desirable characteristics. A large number of experiments over the years have shown that, when asked to rate the intelligence or competence of unknown others, people tend to rate attractive others as more intelligent and competent than unattractive others. This sentiment is captured in an old aphorism “What is beautiful is good.” But why is this? Why do people believe that physically attractive people are more intelligent and competent?

While physical attractiveness is an integral part of mate selection, the evidence suggests that concerns for mate selection are not the reason people think that beautiful people are more intelligent. First, children as young as kindergarteners share the perception that beautiful people are more competent. Asked to choose between two teachers, one more physically attractive than the other, many kindergarteners prefer the more attractive teacher because they believe she is more competent and nicer. Second, more importantly, among adults, the common perception holds both within and between the sexes. Not only do men believe that more attractive women are more intelligent and women believe more attractive men are more intelligent, but men also believe that more attractive men are more intelligent and women also believe that more attractive women are more intelligent. Since 5-year-olds are typically not concerned with mate selection, and since most people are heterosexual, these two pieces of evidence suggest that there is more going on than concerns of mate selection.

Facial beauty Sociologists and social psychologists, convinced (and politically predisposed to believe) that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” and “beauty is only skin-deep,” dismiss this widespread perception as “bias,”stereotype,” or “halo effect,” with the implicit assumption that the perception is not accurate and has no factual basis. It is a stereotype that beautiful people are more intelligent. But, as I explain in an earlier post, virtually all stereotypes are empirically true; if they were not true, they would not be stereotypes in the first place. And it turns out that this one is no exception. People believe beautiful people are more intelligent, because they in fact are.

The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), conducted by a team of researchers at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, is one of the very few social science datasets that take biological and genetic influences on human behavior seriously. As a result, Add Health routinely measures both the intelligence and physical attractiveness of its respondents.

In the Wave III of Add Health, conducted in 2000-2001, respondents take an IQ test called the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. And then their physical attractiveness is measured objectively by an interviewer, who is unaware of their IQ test scores, on a 5-point scale (1 = Very unattractive, 2 = Unattractive, 3 = About average, 4 = Attractive, and 5 = Very attractive). The following graph shows the association between Add Health respondents’ physical attractiveness and their intelligence. The data come from a large (n = 15,197) nationally representative sample of young Americans (mean age = 22).

Beauty and intelligence

As you can see, there is a clear monotonic positive association between physical attractiveness and intelligence. The more physically attractive Add Health respondents are, the more intelligent they are. The mean IQ is 94.2 for those rated “very unattractive,” 94.9 for those rated “unattractive,” 97.1 for those rated “about average,” 100.3 for those rated “attractive,” and 100.7 for those rated “very attractive.” Due partly to the large sample size, the association is highly statistically significant.

As I explain in earlier posts, both intelligence and physical attractiveness are correlated with sex; men on average are slightly more intelligent than women, and women on average are physically more attractive than men. So it is important to see what the association between physical attractiveness and intelligence looks like within each sex. The following two graphs reproduce the association separately for each sex.

Beauty and intelligence - female

Beauty and intelligence - male

The graphs show that the association is no longer monotonic among either women or men, but the general positive association still holds for both sexes. “Very attractive” women are on average more intelligent than “very unattractive” women by about 6 IQ points. Similarly, “very attractive” men are on average more intelligent than “very unattractive” men by about 8 IQ points.

So it appears that the “stereotype” that beautiful people are more intelligent appears to be true empirically, just as virtually all “stereotypes” are.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/200903/beautiful-people-are-more-intelligent-i

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