Instapundit

Archive for 2005

December 1, 2005

IN THE MAIL: Robert Bruegman’s Sprawl : A Compact History. A very interesting book, reporting that people have been worrying about “sprawl” for centuries, and that most efforts to reduce it make things worse — though they do tend to enrich incumbent landowners.

DE VILLEPIN: The riots in France weren’t riots! They were merely “social unrest.”

WHY AREN’T UNIVERSITIES BOYCOTTING CONGRESS over “don’t ask, don’t tell?”

Because that’s where the money comes from!

N.Z. BEAR HAS questions for Russ Feingold.

I’M GUESSING THAT PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE won’t think much of this development:

The next big thing for the wine industry could be small, screw-capped and shatterproof.

Single-serve plastic bottles are starting to show up on supermarket shelves in a bid to win over new customers by moving wine beyond posh white-tablecloth dinners to the informal ease of a picnic.

I haven’t ever bought a plastic bottle, but I usually keep some of the single-serving airplane bottles of merlot, shiraz, etc. around. I often have a glass of wine at night, but it’s usually just one, and I hate to open a bottle for that — especially as the resveratrol and other beneficial antioxidants go bad within 24 hours of opening. And hey, if Bainbridge is open-minded about box wines, maybe he won’t be upset after all.

UPDATE: A reader in the wine business emails:

Wine in non traditional containers is growing rapidly and will continue to grow. I see it changing year by year. Many people have the same issues you do with opening a bottle during the week and having it go bad before it’s consumed. Smaller containers and 3L boxed wine are filling the need. A 3L boxed wine can last 5-6 weeks without degradation and contains like 18-20 servings. Many of these offerings are vintage dated Napa and Sonoma wine like Black Box. It’s not all cheap valley plonk anymore.

Convenience will win over many converts. Cork became a tradition by default because there was no other viable closure solution for many decades. That is changing now, and there’s no going back.

Another advantage of plastic bottles/boxes if they ever get more widely adopted, is the weight advantage over glass. Most wine loads are shipped by truck or intermodal and are maxed out first by weight not by cube. You would need fewer trucks and consume less fuel per liter of wine shipped with either plastic or boxed wine vs traditional glass bottles.

Cool. Now if I could just order it over the Internet. Meanwhile, another reader emails:

I was alarmed to read your comment that wine loses all this good stuff after 24 hours. Here’s a quote that I found on the Web that indicates all is not lost after opening:

Resveratrol is available in pill form, but it is reported to be unstable because the resveratrol molecule is destroyed by contact with air. However, Creasy’s [Dr. Leroy Creasy, professor emeritus in the department of horticulture at Cornell University] tests show that resveratrol is preserved even in open wine, with only a 3 percent reduction after 17 days sitting open on a counter at about 70 degrees or refrigerated at about 35 degrees. He believes that resveratrol lasts longer in wine than in pill form because of the anti-oxidant properties in wine. However, wine will lose its resveratrol if it is exposed to light, so keep an opened bottle away from a window.

From:
Link

Please get to bottom of this.

Anybody know more?

BRYAN PRESTON OF JUNKYARDBLOG looks back on four years of blogging.

NANOTECHNOLOGY’S LEGAL RISKS: The actual risks are probably exaggerated, as I’ve reported before (read this, too), but the litigation risks may not be.

JIM HOFT LOOKS AT POLLS IN AMERICA, while Ed Morrissey looks at somewhat more immediately relevant polls in Canada: “A new poll by AP-Ipsos, based on a survey done during the debate over the no-confidence motion, shows that the Liberals have dropped into a dead heat with the Conservatives on a national basis. This data has not received wide release — in fact, I had to buy a membership at Ipsos in order to see the data.”

KATE MCMILLAN: “Why does mainstream media continue to stereotype political bloggers and our readers as ‘tech savvy’ twenty year olds?”

THE TANGLED BANK, a science blog carnival, is up.

VIRGINIA POSTREL has lots of new stuff. Just keep scrolling.

I’M A BIG FAN OF ROBERT FOGEL’S BOOK, The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death: 1700-2100, and I’ve written about it myself a time or two. Now Nick Schulz has a very interesting interview with Fogel, which is worth reading in full.

A FEMALE BELGIAN SUICIDE BOMBER in Iraq: “Mireille was a 38-year old woman born into a white, Christian family in the Southern Belgian town of Charleroi; she married to a Moroccan, converted to a radical form of Islam, and went to Iraq where she blew herself up in a suicide attack targeted against a US military convoy; she killed only herself.”

Hmm. Does this mean that Al Qaeda has entered the Symbionese Liberation Army phase?

November 30, 2005

MY EARLIER POST ON THE POTATO GUN produced this email from reader George Putnam:

Minor comment on today’s entry that you want a potato gun for Christmas…What is REALLY fun is a potato cannon. You can find directions to build one here:

I built one a couple of years ago based on this book, and it is a blast! Who knew that hair spray was such an effective propellant?

(I have one of the potato guns, too. They’re OK, but not nearly as much fun as a potato cannon.)

Okay, now I know what I really want for Christmas.

KOS COMPLAINS that Kerry stole the limelight after Bush’s speech, screwing up the Democrats’ PR plans. Soxblog observes: “haven’t I been telling you all that everyone who knows him dislikes him?”

UPDATE: More problems with Kerry’s response here. And others’!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Still more, here.

SOME INTERESTING THOUGHTS on different styles of blogging.