Profile
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Why Gen Y Is Going to Change the Web
252 days ago | Comment
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Independence for the Modern Wine Drinker
253 days ago | Comment
Happy Independence Day from the United States, where we're celebrating the historical casting off of the "chains" in which our "colonial rulers" bound us. As the fireworks burst and crackle unseen through the fog here in San Francisco and I catch up on my reading from around the blogosphere, I've been musing on whether the average wine drinker has anything to celebrate in the way of independence these days.
The first and most dear form of independence for me as you might imagine is the freedom from dependence on the Powers That Be for information, opinion, and insight when it comes to wine. While Tom Wark, in a fit of bourbon-addled self-loathing, may have decided that Wine Blogs Dont Matter, in point of fact, never before in history have there been so many great places to read to your hearts content about wine for free. From the blogs of the world, to the tasting notes available online, to the zany antics of my buddy Gary and his legions of imitators, a new generation of wine lovers finds itself honestly unshackled from the ParkTator for the first time.
We all have an extra $49.95 a year to spend on wine, and a way to waste thousands of hours that should be spent drinking instead of surfing. Oh well. It's a start.
Intellectual liberation is just the start however. Psychotic state legislatures and dumb-ass circuit courts of appeal notwithstanding, we are entering an age where wine lovers have better access to the wines of the world than ever before in history. While I am no doubt waaaay premature in declaring independence from the yokes of corrupt, parochial, and/or moralistic government and judicial influence over how and where we buy our wine, as a wise man once said, "The times they are a-changin'."
Interstate shipping aside, we U.S. wine lovers would do well to celebrate our independence from monotony and monopoly when it comes to the selection of wines available between our shores. The sheer diversity (and volume) of different wines from different regions of the world that are now at our fingertips, thanks to the efforts of importers, is staggeringly awesome in comparison to even 30 years ago. To give you some perspective, I was recently reminded that 30 years ago you could count on two hands the number of restaurants in this country that had Spanish wines on their wine list. Being a wine importer has suddenly become a fashionable and fun thing to do in the last decade, and there are hundreds of people eagerly following in the footsteps of pioneers like Kermit Lynch and Terry Theise to seek out great new wines and producers and bring them to us to enjoy.
All that said, we could do with a few more manifestos against, and independence from, a bunch of things that still continue to oppress us in the wine world. So in keeping with the principles of the founding fathers, here is a Declaration of Further Independence for the enlightened wine lover.
When in the course of our evolution as wine loving people, it becomes not only necessary but natural to throw off the bonds of ignorance, precedence, class, and the wisdom of the Establishment, in order to forge a more perfect relationship with our chosen beverage, a decent respect for history and tradition requires that we declare the reasons for our rebellion.
We hold these truths to be self evident: that every adult, 21 years of age or older, is endowed with the capacity to appreciate and enjoy wine and should have every opportunity to do so, free from the abuses and oppressions of an Establishment that seeks to impose the traditions of the past on a changed world. The history of this Establishment is one of privilege, prejudice, and a smug propriety that terrorizes new wine lovers into conforming with its demands rather than choosing a natural path to their own enjoyment.It is with necessity, then, that we submit that the following fallacies and prescriptions, ideologies and traditions, fears and insecurities, shall no longer bind our actions and dictate our fates as wine lovers:
We will drink wine out of whatever damn vessel we choose, and refuse to purchase, own, or believe that we need different shapes of wine glasses in order to enjoy different kinds of wine.
We will stop believing that just because a wine received less than 90 points from Someone Whose Name We Have Heard of, we will not fully enjoy, even love it.
We will stop thinking that we need to know anything about wine to enjoy it or drink it on a regular basis.
We will no longer live in fear of being asked to choose a wine from a wine list, and will instead ask questions, like rational human beings, of the restaurant staff if we need help selecting a wine for dinner that is in our price range.
We will stop believing that there is an Ideal Wine Pairing for every kind of food and that the matching of wine and food is an art that requires deep knowledge and experience unpossessed by the average wine drinker.
We will no longer be afraid to buy wines that don't have the name of a grape that we recognize on the label, or have words that we cannot possibly pronounce on them.
We will cease our misguided historical beliefs that wines closed with a screwcap must be inferior, and that a wine which is organic must taste vile.
And we will, above all, refuse to entertain the idea that wine, especially Champagne, is a drink for special occasions and will instead drink more and more often of all manner of wines -- so that we may enjoy our lives, our meals, and our friends with greater pleasure and health.
We, therefore, the representatives of a new generation of wine lovers, do solemnly publish and declare ourselves separated, independent, and divorced from these oppressions of the past and the Establishment which perpetrated them. As free and independent wine lovers we have the power to forge our own paths in the world of wine, seeking our enjoyment and education however, whenever, and wherever we see fit, as free men and women ought to do with wine glass in hand.
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If you agree, put your John Hancock here _________________.
Great. Now go out, blow some shit up, and then sit down and have a nice glass of wine with friends and toast your independence. I'm toasting mine right now.
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Richard Dawkins funds atheist children's summer camp
251 days ago | Comment
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You can’t make a baby in a month by getting nine women pregnant :)
258 days ago | Comment
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The Disease of Me
273 days ago | Comment
"The force of selfishness is as inevitable and as calculable as the force of gravitation"
—HailliardPat Riley argues that whether we know it or not, all of us are team players and it is through the team that we find significance. Yet the team can be undermined by the Disease of Me. In The Winner Within, he describes it as the overpowering belief in the importance of oneself. “The most difficult thing for individuals to do when they’re part of the team is to sacrifice. It is so easy to become selfish in a team environment.” The Disease of Me is ever present, but it can be anticipated and overcome. Riley lists the following symptoms of the disease:
- Inexperience in dealing with sudden success
- Chronic feelings of underappreciation
- Paranoia over being cheated out of one's rightful share
- Resentment against the competence of partners
- Personal effort mustered solely to outshine a teammate
- A leadership vacuum resulting from the formation of cliques and rivalries
- Feelings of frustration even when the team performs successfully
What about the teams in your life? Are they due for a checkup? -
Twitter helps Dell rake in sales | Technology | Reuters
276 days ago | Comment
But the PC maker has become one of the first public examples of how companies might profit from Twitter.
Twitter does not charge companies for such benefits, but does not rule out doing so in the future.
"For now, monetization of this type of activity remains unknown," Twitter spokeswoman Jenna Sampson said in a statement. "However, as the network grows, the company will be committing more resources toward profitability."
Gartner analyst Allen Weiner said such financial success could provide a model for Twitter, itself, to make money.
"Certainly one of the ways Twitter can begin to think of itself as a money-making operation is to facilitate a lot of these things, build it as part of the infrastructure. So if you're a company, you can pay Twitter a certain amount of money and they can directly distribute coupons on your behalf, or clear transactions," Weiner said.
Twitter is building add-on tools and services for businesses and professional users, co-founder Biz Stone told the Reuters Global Technology Summit last month.
Dell said it posts 6 to 10 times a week to its DellOutlet account, which is where the majority of Twitter-based sales have come from. Stephanie Nelson, who manages the account, said almost every post includes a coupon or a link to a sale, and about half of the posts are Twitter-exclusive deals.
The PC maker, which has about 600,000 followers, is one of the Top 100 most-followed accounts on Twitter, according to private trackers TwitterCounter and Twitterholic.
Other non-media companies ranked in the Top 100 include Whole Foods Market Inc, Woot.com, Zappos.com, JetBlue Airways Corp.
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what passion and a critical mass can do..
284 days ago | Comment
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Seth Godin on TED
281 days ago | Comment
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How to Motivate Programmers
296 days ago | Comment
There's an inherent paradox in motivating programmers. I think this Geek Hero Comic illustrates it perfectly:
It's a phenomenon I've noticed even in myself. Nothing motivates like having another programmer tell you they're rewriting your code because it sucks. Dave Thomas has talked about this for years in his classic Developing Expertise presentation, supported by the following quote:
Interestingly enough, a friend of mine (who is a quality control manager in a hospital) often makes identical statements in reference to doctors: Polite requests, coercion, etc. are useless at best and often detrimental. Peer pressure and competition are the key.
Don't try to race sheep,
Don't try to herd race horsesYes, the use of the term sheep is mildly derogatory, but the general principle is sound: use motivational techniques that are appropriate to the level of developers you're working with. If you have neophyte developers, herd them with maxims, guidelines and static rules. If you have experienced developers, rules are less useful. Instead, encourage them to race: engage in a little friendly competition and show off how good they are to their peers.
[advertisement] Improve Your Source Code Management using Atlassian Fisheye - Monitor. Search. Share. Analyze. Try it for free! -
Agile, Waterfall, Something else?
297 days ago | Comment
There are people arguing the agile case and there are people that deride it and say stick with the status quo of the waterfall method. There are people who say outsource everything you aren't an expert at.I have yet to be convinced of any one way, but I have put together this matrix as a talking point. Right or wrong I would like feedback from people who know more than me.Anyone want to start? -
Ernest Gallo, behavioral economist
281 days ago | Comment
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Let the Good Wine Take a Back Seat
282 days ago | Comment
Last night I went out for dinner with a couple of colleagues from a business strategy course that I've been taking for a while. One of them has taught me an awful lot in the past couple months, and I've been working with them both to create a presentation that we successfully delivered to a group of 34 of our fellow students today.
Naturally, I brought a good bottle of wine to dinner, and we drank it while getting to know each other better, and talking about the challenges and opportunities we each face in our businesses. The conversation was animated and engaging and just flowed, to the point that the waiter had to remind us a couple of times to look at the menu so we could order. And we were some of the last patrons in the restaurant when we left a few hours later, still engaged in conversation.
As we hopped into the car, one of my dining companions offered the first comment about the wine that had been made all evening since I asked the sommelier to cool down the bottle a little bit for us before he poured.
"That was a really great wine tonight," said my friend. He was right. So good in fact, that it simply did what great wine should do: become part of the fabric of the evening.
While I derive great pleasure from the intellectual aspects of wine, and enjoy talking about it, I also enjoy just being able to ignore it.
But ignore is not quite the right word. In these situaiotns I enjoy every sip from my glass and appreciate the changing character of the wine as it warms slightly and aerates through the evening. But this enjoyment takes place in the background, slightly receded from conscious thought, and distant from the conversation. Like a pleasing background melody from faint speakers we find ourselves humming after a while, wine can be immensely pleasurable when it isn't in the spotlight of conscious thought.
Like a movie critic that has a hard time turning off the analytics even when he takes his daughter to the latest animated film, I'll admit that such moments aren't nearly as frequent in my life as they used to be. But I do know the formula to produce them (good food + good conversation + good timing + good wine, all with people who love wine but don't geek out about it), and I always jump at the chance to enjoy them.
Sometimes wine makes for a better dinner when it's not the dinner-table conversation.
