Thank you, sir, for worrying about the right things:

John Williams has been making wine in California’s Napa Valley for nearly 30 years, and he farms so ecologically that his peers call him Mr. Green. But if you ask him how climate change will affect Napa’s world-famous wines, he gets irritated, almost insulted. “You know, I’ve been getting that question a lot recently, and I feel we need to keep this issue in perspective,” he told me. “When I hear about global warming in the news, I hear that it’s going to melt the Arctic, inundate coastal cities, displace millions and millions of people, spread tropical diseases and bring lots of other horrible effects. Then I get calls from wine writers and all they want to know is, ‘How is the character of cabernet sauvignon going to change under global warming?’ I worry about global warming, but I worry about it at the humanity scale, not the vineyard scale.”

…

“We have no idea what effects global warming will have on the conditions that affect Napa Valley wines, so to prepare for those changes seems to me to be whistling past the cemetery,” he says, a note of irritation in his voice. “All I know is, there are things I can do to stop, or at least slow down, global warming, and those are things I should do.”

Quotation of the Day for February 27, 2010

“Extroverts are energized by people, and wilt or fade when alone,” writes Jonathan Rauch in The Atlantic. “In contrast, after an hour or two of being socially `on,’ we introverts need to turn off and recharge. This isn’t antisocial. It isn’t a sign of depression. It does not call for medication. For introverts, to be alone with our thoughts is as restorative as sleeping, as nourishing as eating. Our motto: `I’m okay, you’re okay – in small doses.”‘

- Wendy Dennis, in House and Home magazine, December 2009.

I feel a bit sorry for the writer, who is clearly stuck in potty-training hell with his kid, but this review did make me snort:

Safety 1st Jack Potty ($33.65)

Just as I was set to love the Boon, I was ready to despise Jack Potty—a potty chair that looks like a slot machine? Has there ever been a worse concept for a children’s product? Excluding lawn darts and candy cigarettes?

The Jack Potty has multiple colored lights and a spinning display that features guitar-playing bananas. When the potty has been used successfully, lights flash, buzzers buzz, and a voice offers congratulations. For additional verisimilitude, the potty plays the sound of cascading coins, though no actual money pours out (Version 2.0?). The Jack Potty is the only addiction-themed potty I ran across in my research, and I half-worry that my son will, as an adult, find himself inextricably drawn to casinos, sitting there day after day, glassy eyed, wearing diapers so he doesn’t have to leave his machine. Oh, the irony.

Quotation of the Day for January 13, 2010

“But the main idea is the first one: hanging on, staying alive. Canadians are forever taking the national pulse like doctors at a sickbed: the aim is not to see whether the patient will live well but simply whether he will live at all. Our central idea is one which generates, not the excitement and sense of adventure or danger which The Frontier holds out, not the smugness and/or sense of security, of everything in its place, which The Island can offer, but an almost intolerable anxiety. Our stories are likely to be tales not of those who made it but of those who made it back, from the awful experience — the North, the snowstorm, the sinking ship — that killed everyone else. The survivor has no triumph or victory but the fact of his survival; he has little after his ordeal that he did not have before, except gratitude for having escaped with his life.”

- Margaret Atwood, writer, in her book Survival, comparing the dominant symbols of the literatures of the United States (The Frontier), England (The Island), and Canada (Survival).

Case in point, Alden Nowlan’s poem, which had a nice run in the Toronto subways a decade ago:

Canadian January Night

Ice storm: the hill
a pyramid of black crystal
down which the cars
slide like phosphorescent beetles
while I, walking backwards in obedience
to the wind, am possessed
of the fearful knowledge
my compatriots share
but almost never utter:
this is a country
where a man can die
             simply from being
caught outside

—Alden Nowlan, Selected Poems

Quotation of the Day for December 3, 2009

“She wondered why someone would bother to write that; but then, ‘Why bother’ was never a question you could ask about more or less anything on the Internet, otherwise the whole bunch of them shriveled to a cotton-candy nothing.”

- Nick Hornby, in his novel Juliet, Naked.

Quotation of the Day for September 3, 2009

“Thank heavens we caught the robbers before they grated it.”

- William Bizzarri, on the theft and recovery of 570 wheels of Parmesan cheese held as collateral by the Credito Emiliano bank in Italy. Bizzarri manages the cheese vaults of the bank.

[http://www.financialpost.com/m/story.html?id=1884766]

A brief movie review on BoingBoing raises a fashion issue I had not previously considered:

…when you dress yourself in the morning, please take note that this outfit could possibly be the one in which you spend eternity as a reanimated corpse.

Lesson 397 - Wrinkles

(Surviving the World)

Well, you know, it’s very interesting. Since this book came out, where I argue don’t buy high-fructose corn syrup and don’t buy products with more than five ingredients, suddenly the industry is—you know, they’re so clever. I have to hand it to them. But now they’re arguing that their products are simpler, and there’s new Haagen-Dazs 5, which is a five-ingredient Haagen-Dazs product. You know, it’s still ice cream. Ice cream is wonderful, but we shouldn’t treat it as health food because it now has only five ingredients. … Frito-Lay potato chips now is arguing that they’re local. Now, you have to remember, any product is local somewhere. Right? This food doesn’t come from Mars. But to think that Frito-Lay as a local potato chip is really a stretch.

…

So, I’ve had to update my rules. And with all this new marketing based on these ideas, my new suggestion is, if you want to avoid all this, simply don’t buy any food you’ve ever seen advertised. Ninety-four percent of ad budgets for food go to processed food. I mean, the broccoli growers don’t have money for ad budgets. So the real food is not being advertised. And that’s really all you need to know.

More on AlterNet

Quotation of the Day for March 8, 2009

“If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.”

- Anatole France.

12 things to throw at Bush

Best line:

12. Reality
…

He will merely blink a few times and get that look on his face like he almost had a thought, then it passed, like a bit of gas.

Heh.

Quotation of the Day for August 8, 2008

“Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil.”

- Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago.

A poem:

CONSOLATION

How agreeable it is not to be touring Italy this summer,
wandering her cities and ascending her torrid hill towns.
How much better to cruise these local, familiar streets,
fully grasping the meaning of every road sign and billboard
and all the sudden hand gestures of my compatriots.
There are no abbeys here, no crumbling frescoes or famous
domes and there is no need to memorize a succession
of kings or tour the dripping corners of a dungeon.
No need to stand around a sarcophagus, see Napoleon’s
little bed on Elba, or view the bones of a saint under glass.
How much better to command the simple precinct of home
Than be dwarfed by pillar, arch, and basilica.
Why hide my head in phrase books and wrinkled maps?
Why feed scenery into a hungry, one-eyed camera
eager to eat the world one monument at a time?
Instead of slouching in a cafe ignorant of the word for ice,
I will head down to the coffee shop and the waitress
known as Dot. I will slide in the flow of the morning
paper, all language barriers down,
rivers of idiom running freely, eggs over easy on the way.

- Billy Collins, poet, from ‘Sailing Alone Around the Room’.

(Quotation of the Day for August 29, 2008)

I may not leave the house tomorrow either. Rain, cold, rain, cold… weather for hibernating, baking, and (of an evening) taking occasional sips of liqueur.

Drive: A road trip through our complicated affair with the automobile
by Tim Falconer

Falconer talks about the history of automobiles, Detroit then and now, car culture, the quirks of traffic, urban sprawl, and much more, all structured around a long road trip of his own. Somehow he manages to treat all the various viewpoints with great sympathy and doesn’t shy away from that word complicated in the title.

His topics range from the expected:

Most people equate automobiles with freedom, and the more they have, the greater the independence, but the executive director of DU’s Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute doesn’t see it that way. “Owning three cars is enslavement,” he told me, citing all the time and money needed to maintain vehicles. “If we walk or bike, we can be free. That, in fact, is more freedom than being forced to buy three cars.” (p.211)

to thought-provoking side-effects of urban sprawl:

it dawned on me that sprawl encourages impaired driving. People heading out for a night on the town, or even a dinner that includes a bottle of wine, don’t want to take a cab because they can’t flag one at the end of the night — and they have to travel so far they couldn’t afford the fare anyway. So they drink and drive. (p. 141)

In an appendix it contains an amusing playlist of car tunes, which is really an indispensable part of any road trip. Nicely done.

Quotation of the Day for November 3, 2007

“Beware of those who argue the loudest. The truth does not care if it is questioned; the truth can always stand up to questioning. I have found that only the false fights back, retaliates, and attacks. The truth might defend itself, though it does not really need to. But liars trying to defend their lies get mean and dirty.”

- Larry Winget, “Shut Up, Stop Whining, and Get a Life”.

On that note, GO VOTE. Questions about where and how? Elections Canada. Questions about who? Vote your conscience.

Quotation of the Day for October 10, 2008

“You can clean files and other equipment, but there is just no way to sanitize live fish.”

- Christine Anthony, spokeswoman for the Washington State Department of Licensing explaining why “pedicures by fish” are now illegal in the state.

[http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/381596_FishFeet03.html]

Quotation of the Day for September 24, 2008

“Why then, if not to steal food, would a cat go up on the counter? Why did George Mallory try to go up on Mount Everest, which was quite a lot more trouble? Because it is there. Because of the view from the kitchen window. To lick the drips from the tap in the sink. To try to pry open the cupboards and see what’s inside them, maybe to squeeze among the glassware. Or, on a rainy day, to look for small objects to knock onto the floor and see if they roll.”

- Barbara Holland

“What, us? We NEVER go on the counter.

…um, when you’re watching, anyway, but never mind that. See how cute we are?”

Sarah Palin was de-witched by nutball pastor? What a shame

As for Palin, turns out Muthee laid on some hands, delivered a garbled serpents n’ brimstone prayer designed not merely to help her leap from Mayor of Nowheresville to perky gubernatorial fireplug … but also to protect her from that same silly/terrifying witchcraft I imagined in my youth.

…

Really, the irony of this whole affair is just too tasty to pass up. Because real witches are, of course, all about self-determination, complete spiritual freedom, and are often practiced in the innate magic of the earth, the body, the self. Most follow no particular deity or dogma, though that’s entirely optional (you can be a witch and a Christian, for example). Truth is, it’s too bad Palin’s not a witch herself. She’d be so much more interesting. And, you know, useful.

Hell, I know a number of happy, accomplished, practicing witches at work and play in the normal world right this very minute, running errands and playing with their kids and texting their boyfriends, not a single one of whom is currently indulging in a ritualistic blood-drenched sex orgy at the feet of Lucifer. Wait, let me check Facebook … nope, all normal.

I should always read Mark Morford first thing in the morning instead of letting my RSS feed randomly insert his columns in the middle of my scan. The bit about Facebook made me giggle hopelessly.

Quotation of the Day for September 8, 2008

“Bicycling is a big part of the future. It has to be. There’s something wrong with a society that drives a car to workout in a gym.”

- Bill Nye, the Science Guy.

In honour of our most-likely-imminent election:

Quotation of the Day for August 30, 2008

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.”

- Sir Ernest Benn