International 20 point grading scale for wine

This is my first attempt at this online database application.  I'm curious to see how or if the results appear.

Online wine scoresheet

Later on, I'll add a search feature to query submitted scores. 

The Historical Significance of My Best Photo

At the Texas Relays in 1985, I was on the infield of the stadium at UT.  I took this picture of Freddie Williams (ACU) with my old Canon AV-1 (aperture controlled SLR, iso 400 film).  I have long said it was one of the best pictures I ever took.

On the 4x400 meter relay, the first leg runs in their own lane.  The second leg runs the first curve in their lane and then breaks to the inside as soon as they come out of the curve.  This is where I was standing and this is what they were doing.  I like the picture because Freddie is in perfect focus and perfect pose in the center, the background is blurred, the other runners are slightly out of focus, and everyone's school name is hidden.  (You can just barely make out Texas A&M on the right.)  It's almost like it was staged, but I actually took this live action shot.

Baylor won that year in a meet record time of 3:00.88.  That record stood for 26 years.  It got broken this year by Texas A&M.

http://www.iaaf.org/news/kind=100/newsid=59717.html

Memories of Texas Relays

On my first trip to Texas Relays, I watched a teammate run in the finals of the University Women's 400m hurdles. Lisa Owens was the only white girl in the race and, at 5'4" was the shortest. I remember she got 5th but as soon as the race was over, she walked to the infield, pulled her long blond hair to one side and threw up into a drain on the field. I told her later that I had wanted to go down there with some water, but couldn't cross the track. She replied in that honey-sweet southern accent, "oh that's alright. I always throw up."

On my second trip to Texas Relays, we were scheduled to run the University Distance Medley Relay. It was hot, so we stayed under the stadium as long as possible. There's some debate about who was misinformed, but I remember Coach Groll telling Greg and me that the meet was 20 minutes behind schedule, so we should avoid going down to the track too soon. In any case, as we were walking down the steps to the track, the gun for our race went off. We had missed it. Doug Glover said he had thought about running the first leg anyway and see if anyone else showed up. As I stood there watching them finish the first lap, I looked over and saw the Martin twins from New Orleans in the stands. I sat with them and, maybe because of the mixed emotions of pre-race anxiety and shame, I started crying. Suddenly, Greg came to find me and told me that Coach Groseclose wanted to see me. Grose told me in that raspy drawl of his, "the meet director's a personal friend of mine and I've got you into the invitational mile. I told him you wouldn't let us down. So, you're with the big boys now - but you're one of them." I did OK, but had been warming up for almost 2 hours and had lost most of my kick. I finished 5th in 4:04.

On my third trip to Texas Relays, I learned one of the most valuable lessons of my life. I was anchoring the Distance Medley Relay, which meant I had to wait for the 1200, 400, and 800 meter legs to finish. During the time we were milling around waiting to run, I had a chance to size up the competition. Running for Arkansas was Doug Consiglio, who had won NCAA 1500 indoors that year. Running for Rice was Gawain Guy, who was on the Jamacain Olympic team the year before for 1500m. Running for Stanford was Jeff Atkinson, who would end up winning the U.S. Olympic Trials in the 1500m in 1988. I managed to convince myself that there was no way I could beat these three. None of the others I recognized. Sure enough, we got 4th place. Well, actually, we got 3rd place because Arkansas got disqualified for a lane violation, but those three were the only ones to finish ahead of me. The lesson was this: if you believe you can't do something, your brain will work to prove you right.

Warming down after that race, I caught up with Atkinson on the side track that used to be there. He was warming down, too, so we had at least something to talk about. As we were running along, his teammate Ceci Hopp came bounding up. Ceci was the beauty darling of the running world (Lauri Young had the same distinction in the high jump and the heptathlon).

On my last trip to Texas Relays, I ran, among other things, the 1500m and got out-kicked by perhaps the ugliest dude in track. I won't say where he was from (German Fernandez goes there) - this guy had a head too big for his distrance runner's body, had white white skin but really bad acne on his face, back, and head. You knew he had it on his head because he had a wide mohawk. Whew.

Xiamen Teas

When I went to China in 2009, I found a type of tea that I and everyone I served it to loves. Someone had told me the name of it was (loosely translated) Drunken Susie. So, on my trip back last week, it was imperative that I find some more.

There are, of course, many types of tea there. I learned more about tea this time than I ever knew before. For your edification, here is a rough list of the factors involved in the various classifications.

• The tree variety
• The soil, altitude, and cultivation
• The leaf selection
• Fermentation
• Roasting or drying
• Aging
• Water temperature
• Brewing time

Beyond the first 3 factors, there are essentially three types of tea - black, green & Oolong. These three varieties of tea are distinguished by the amount of fermentation that takes place in processing them.

• Black Tea is fermented, then roasted to produce a dark reddish-brown brew.
• Green Tea is unfermented to leave a greenish, slightly bitter taste.
• Oolong Tea is semi-fermented and produces a milder brew with characteristics of both black and green tea.

Fermentation changes the chemical structure of the tea leaf, allowing key flavor characteristics to emerge. The tea leaves are first withered to remove about 1/3 of their weight through evaporation. They are then rolled and spread on cement or tile floors and tables in a cool, humid room to ferment from 1 to 5 hours. The leaves are then roasted in hot pans or modern dryers to remove almost all of their moisture and stop the fermentation process. They are then rolled and fired. Oolong is withered and fermented in one shorter stage then fired which halts the fermentation when it is about half complete. It is the extent of both the fermentation and the roasting that produce the wide variety of Oolong.  There is also a kind of tea that is intended to be aged - Pu'erh tea.  It is fully fermented, fully roasted, then compacted into a ball or brick and kept in stable condition for years.  (I got to drink a 17-year old Pu-erh tea.  The aroma is much more powerful than the taste).

 

My favorite is a modern style of a semi-fermented, lightly roasted Oolong known as (no joke) Om Bhuddism. As it turns out, Drunken Susie is actually a brand name of a Xiamen tea company - Cha Shway Tsee Tsuh (Cha being the Chinese word for tea and the rest being the company name). So, I was able to score some more of my favorite tea (Om Bhuddism), this time from a Xiamen company called Sea Dyke (Hi-Dee in Chinese). I also bought a box of Cheng Bay Woda, which is the traditional preparation of the semi-fermented, lightly roasted Oolong.

A Brief History of the Rise of Memes - and why I left Facebook

From Howard Bloom's "The Lucifer Principle"
The Nose of a Rat and the Human Mind

Rats are obsessed with genes. They absolutely love their relatives. In their nests, fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles and children crawl over, under and around each other, seeking constant body contact. But the kindness of rats only extends to family. Rats will mercilessly hunt down members of a rival clan. And if a non-relative accidentally stumbles into their nest, the homey little creatures who a moment before were hugging one another will turn on the guest with the foreign genes and tear him limb from limb.

How do rats know who's kin and who's not? How can they tell who shares their genes? Those guesstimates are based on smell. Each rat household has its own tell-tale odor. And every inhabitant wears that living room perfume. Chances are that if two rats are sporting the same aroma, they're carrying the same genes, since the pair were raised in the same spot--probably by the same mother and father. One scientist removed a rat from his nest, washed the complaining creature off, then rubbed it thoroughly in the shavings of another nest...giving it the smell of a stranger. Then the experimenter put the innocent beast back in its own home, where it should have been safe among its brothers and sisters. Unfortunately, he'd returned home wearing the wrong cologne. His loving family, blind to his familiar physical appearance, bared their teeth and lunged. When the experiment was over, the unwitting animal was dead, killed by those who had always hugged and nuzzled him. Smell had told the brood that their brother was carrying the wrong set of genes.

Rats use smells to determine whom they love and whom they must hate.  Humans use something else - we use memes.  From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme: 
 

Memes spread through the behaviors that they generate in their hosts. Memes that propagate less prolifically may become extinct, while others may survive, spread, and (for better or for worse) mutate. Theorists point out that memes which replicate the most effectively spread best, and some memes may replicate effectively even when they prove detrimental to the welfare of their hosts.

A population has arisen within the U.S. which self-identifies its members via shared memes.  This population is, not to put too fine a word on it - Conservatives.  Conservatives have a complex collection of memes, which they share.  Like Bloom's rats, Conservatives wallow in their own memes, which combine to produce an identifiable 'aroma' about them.  The more memes they share with others, the more they know they are in the company of a kindred fellow.  Much of what constitutes communication consists of a series of clicks and grunts, with the expectation of a/the correct corresponding grunts and clicks.  Like rats sniffing each other's butts, conservatives will sniff out each other's memes.

One of the reasons I left Facebook was because I saw it had it had become a method for the rats to propagate memes. I found myself encountering old friends and began to notice a change in them.  Since I did not share the memes in which they were wallowing, I became viewed as "an Other" - a non-rat.  I had become the enemy of the rats.

Most rats make the mistake of assuming that all non-rats are united against them.  The rats need to perpetuate this meme in order to justify the actions they are planning.  It is important for them to feel threatened - actually, physically frightened of all non-rats (who are, of course, ALL against them), so that their actions can be rationalized as merely defensive.  They're simply reacting to the perceived threat from everything else in the world. 

Rats don't want to discuss or debate.  They don't even want to be understood.  What they want is agreement.  Rats have to know who's with them and who's not (because "if you're not with us, you're against us").  If you don't agree, you are a non-rat and are therefore one of the others who are, of course, all united against the rats.  It doesn't matter whether or not the meme has any basis in reality or fact.  It truly doesn't.  In fact, the further removed from reality the meme is, the more tenaciously it is believed and defended against the onslaught of any contradicting evidence.

Facebook is still a big petri dish for the spreading of memes and it stinks like a fully infected microbiology project.  I say leave the rats to their own stench.

The truth is a very big picture

I'm stuggling with how to begin this. I don't intend to begin by trying to offend anyone, but at the same time there are some who will manage to be offended no matter what I write here. And that is, in fact, the problem I want to write about.

To begin with, I need to establish a level of understanding of what I'm actually talking about. I'm talking about the frameworks by which we have ccome to view the world and how we understand what we see.

• A piece of information can be true, but it alone is not "the truth".
• What do we call a piece of information that is not true?
• What do we call an incomplete collection of true information?
• What do we call a collection that includes both true and untrue piece of information?
• What do we call someone who spreads information he or she knows to be untrue? (That, in fact, is the definition of a liar.)
• But what do we call someone who unknowingly spreads information that is untrue?
• What do we call someone who has an incomplete collection of true information? Conversely, what do we call someone who has a collection that includes true and untrue information?
• What do we call someone who continues to cling to erroneous information in spite of being presented with evidence that it is false?
• What do we call someone who accepts as true information they receive from a source they have come to trust, even when that source has been proven false?

In his book "Idiot America", Charles Pierce summarizes his conclusions like this:

• In Idiot America, "facts" are what enough people believe.
• "Truth" is how fervently they believe it.
• Anything said often enough and loudly enough can come to be believed.
• The worst thing to be in Idiot America is an expert.

One of the reasons I deactivated my Facebook account was that I noticed it had become a platform for the spreading of untrue and emotionally charged information. People's apparent vested interest in posting information that is unrelated to them personally is really a quest for concensus.

They post their "facts" not as a basis for discussion or debate, but rather in the hope of having others agree with them. The more "facts" they post, the smarter they believe they are. The more people they find to agree with them, the smarter they believe they are perceived. For these people, disagreement is taken personally. It is a threat to their self-perceived standing in a community they have created out of like-minded individuals.

These people believe they are smart. They believe this because they know certain things. The mistake they make is in assuming that their collection of facts constitutes "the truth". They believe they are right. They also dismiss the very idea that they could be wrong. As far as they're concerned, what they know is the truth. What they don't know or don't believe is not the truth for them.

These people will also practice a form of selective ignorance. If someone presents them with information that is inconsistent with or is not in their collection (their basis for truth), they are entirely capable of rejecting it. They do this by 1) simply failing to remember or 2) failing to believe it. If they don't know it or don't believe it, it's simply not true.

The Facebook apps I could ignore. "Facts" posted as personal updates I found harder to ignore, especially when I believed them to be untrue, either partly or wholly. It was troubling to see people I know consistently posting bogus information. I found myself unable to ignore it and needed to refute or correct it. Doing so simply made me a threat to their well-being. It was more troubling to see people I know accepting the bogus information being posted by others.

I committed Facebook suicide

...And nobody noticed.

Over the next couple of postings here, I hope to explain why. When one deactivates one’s FB account, there is a questionnaire asking why and offering a list of options to choose from (“I am spending too much time on FB” or “There are too many apps” or “I have a duplicate account” or “I didn’t find the happiness I was looking for”). None of these come close to my reasons.

Reason #1A– John Poindexter had 5 felony convictions
Who's John Poindexter?
John Poindexter was National Security Adviser under Ronald Reagan, and was convicted of 5 felonies for his involvement in the Iran Contra scandal (one count of conspiracy (obstruction of inquiries and proceedings, false statements, falsification, destruction and removal of documents); two counts of obstruction of Congress and two counts of false statements).
Poindexter was brought back by the Bush Administration to work his magic for them, and didn't even get fired for this crazy idea. He was allowed to resign.

Reason #1B – The Patriot Act, Operation TIPS, The Homeland Security Act, H.R. 1528
In 2002, the Bush administration tried to implement a “Terrorism Information and Prevention System”. The goal of the program was to establish a reliable and comprehensive national system for reporting suspicious, and potentially terrorist-related, activity. Operation TIPS was going to be phased in across the country to enable the system to build its capacity to receive an increasing volume of tips.

Reason #1C – TIA
The Information Awareness Office (IAO) was established by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in January 2002 to bring together several DARPA projects focused on applying surveillance and information technology to track and monitor "terrorists" and other asymmetric threats to national security, by achieving Total Information Awareness (TIA). This would be achieved by creating enormous computer databases to gather and store the personal information of everyone in the United States, including personal e-mails, social network analysis, credit card records, phone calls, medical records, and numerous other sources, without any requirement for a search warrant. This information would then be analyzed to look for suspicious activities, connections between individuals, and "threats". Additionally, the program included funding for biometric surveillance technologies that could identify and track individuals using surveillance cameras, and other methods.
Following public criticism that the development and deployment of these technologies could potentially lead to a mass surveillance system, the IAO was defunded by Congress in 2003. However, several IAO projects continued to be funded, and merely run under different names.

Reason #1D – Facebook was Poindexter's Wet Dream