Irish whiskey resources

A few:

Sláinte: The Irish Whiskey Blog

Irish Whiskey Notes

The Irish Whiskey Society. Not much on that home page, but some discussion in the forums. Those of us who do not get to Ireland regularly can only dream of tasting the essences discussed there.

What Does John Know? I hope he does not know anything about me. He knows plenty about whiskey.

St Patrick's Day approaches, and my thoughts turn to booze and stepdancing.

Which way to Skid Road?

Or, In praise of slumlords. Qualified praise, you understand.

A post at American Digest (No More Bums in America: Noted in Passing on the Streets) reminded me of a song, Larimer Street by Bruce "U. Utah" Phillips. Sorry, no Youtube, but you can hear it at Rhapsody. And a little about it, too. Now go read and listen, and come back when you're done. Van der Leun is in Swiftian satirical mode in this one, so mind the sharp edges.

OK then, we're back here now.

"Urban renewal" and "blight eradication" sound like good ideas. But what they amount to, usually, is the destruction of cheap places to live. That would be unsubsidized, free enterprise cheap, not officially designated "affordable." Old people on pensions need cheap places to live. Young people starting out need cheap places to live. Misers need cheap places to live. The demolition is usually done by city governments under the influence of developers. So the government tears down acres of slums, cheap houses owned by many different individuals, which then are gentrified into luxury housing or shopping malls, and might build a housing project, which will be run by the government, presumably for the benefit of the people who were displaced. But it's a government project, so there will be restrictions and regulations about who can live there, and what the residents can do there, and if it's one of those high-rise projects it will probably be taken over by criminal gangs. Everybody has the same landlord, and the landlord's not even a person, but a bureaucracy.

An analogy comes to mind. Think of a forest, call it Hundred-Acre Wood. Every creature that lives there has worked out its own individual modus vivendi. Now the local government has been persuaded that this area would be better used as luxury condos, so the Wood is declared "blighted." After all, it contains no fine homes, though the residents may like their nests and burrows well enough. So the government and the developer will build a clean, modern zoo for them, with all the amenities. (I'm not comparing slum-dwellers to animals in any real sense, any more than Orwell was comparing citizens to animals in Animal Farm. Don't get distracted.) But that distressing hunny habit that Pooh Bear has … it leads him to do all sorts of foolish and dangerous things. Bears suffering from hunny addiction certainly should not be permitted in this clean, modern facility. That stuff is sticky. It will mess up the tile-work. He muddled along all right when he was living under the name of "Sanders," but this sort of thing is right out, now. And by the way, what's with the alias? Register under your real name and social security number, Mr. Bear, or go live in the street. No, you can't live in the woods any more, there are no woods, where the woods were there are condos.

I won't beat that to death, you get the idea.

[Sidenote on Bruce "U. Utah" Phillips: He was a great storyteller and songwriter, a social activist, anarcho-pacifist, and one of the last of the "Wobblies" (the IWW has been effectively out of business for a long time). He did considerable good by writing beautiful songs, and towards the end of his life ran a homeless shelter. Like all adherents of the labor theory of value, he failed to consciously understand the importance of capital.]

One reason why Van der Leun can say

Nowhere in today's brighter and more-caring American cities will you see those terrible social wrecks on the streets. Yes, no longer will you find "Bums," "Junkies," "Drunks," "Bull-Goose Raving Lunatics," or "The Hard Core Unemployed" on our sidewalks. They are all gone, a fading memory.

is that the city of Seattle has public housing for drunks. Only for 75 of them, though. Better than nothing, but compared to a living Skid Road, not so much. Ain't it great? Back when there was a skid road, these guys could have worked sweeping out a bar, and found a $20 a week room somewhere nearby. Now, they are housed at the public expense, and

benefit from 24-hour, seven day a week supportive services including:

• State-licensed mental health and chemical dependency treatment
• On-site health care services
  
• Daily meals and weekly outings to food banks
• Case management and payee services
• Medication monitoring
• Weekly community building activities

Sort of like what happened to Pooh, in the zoo. Of course there are more than 75 homeless drunks in the city of Seattle. And what about the homeless non-drunks? They can't find those $20 a week rooms any more, and employers are forbidden by law from paying less than the minimum wage. There was a time when poverty did not mean being dependent on government. Now it seems that sleeping on the sidewalk is the only alternative to welfare for the drunks or those who would be called eccentric if they had money. Or for ones who can't make it in the 9-to-5 world, but are too proud, have too much self-respect, to take a dole. It almost looks like the government is trying to create a dependent class.

I'm veering, as Horace Larkin would say, and haven't managed to make my point. When the cheap parts of town disappear, what happens to the people who lived there? No more boarding houses, flophouses, SRO hotels. From Phillips's lyric, "Where will I go, and where will I stay? You've knocked down the skid road and hauled it away."

(Did you find the chicken in this post? The bear was easy.)

Quick hits

Glenn Reynolds links to Jules Crittenden: "What are we on, Day 103? I think that Change shark just officially got jumped." Seems that Obama will be reviving the military tribunals for Gitmo inmates, the ones he had previously condemned. That is, for the inmates he does not plan to release onto the streets of the US, with assistance (which would mean cash and what else?) to help them get settled.

Via the Crittenden link above, Gateway Pundit: "Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Omar al-Baghdadi has close ties to the Saddam regime. [… much else …] Remember this the next time you see a mainstream media report claiming there was no links between Saddam and Al-Qaeda."

Fox News: "The Obama administration has asked a federal judge to throw out a lawsuit against Iran filed by Americans held hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran 30 years ago."

Peter W. Huber: Bound to Burn. TigerHawk calls it "[t]he best article you will read on why it is not merely futile, but counterproductive, for rich countries to struggle to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide," and has comments.

Stages of Denial: Take pity on the left as it grapples with the tea party revolt.

Putting MADD in Charge of America's Highways: President Obama's troubling nominee to head the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. To go with that, The Dangers Of The Drinking Age: The government pressured states to raise it to 21. So why didn't the move save lives?

Obama says, "I would love to get the U.S. government out of the auto -- auto business as quickly as possible.… I don't want to run auto companies." Meanwhile, the government is moving even deeper into the auto business: 'Cash for clunkers' kicks in gear. Subsidies at both ends, the sellers and the buyers. That ought to do it! Inline update: Katherine Mangu-Ward at Hit & Run points to a NY Times item on this with a lot of smart comments.

Barney Frank is messing with the money again, with The Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act of 2009. Nick Gillespie says, "Frank is nothing less than a trickster figure in American politics." There's a great graphic, oh, what the heck, here:



Some history: The Assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem, by Peter Kross.

More disgusting lefties, indulging in ad feminam about Carrie Prejean: Reynolds links to Hot Air. TigerHawk links to GayPatriot. These videos are not safe for anyone. Partial transcription, and commentary, at the Daily Howler. Did Michael Musto actually compare Carrie Prejean to a "Klaus Barbie doll?" Good grief. Meanwhile — could Perez Hilton possibly be embarrassed? If not why this copyright fight with Patterico?

Feats of Strength at the Cocktail Competition: Tasting 150 liquors in two days (via)

Gleanings

More on the Antikythera Mechanism, including a working model. The 76-year cycle sounds like Halley's Comet. Or can you think of something else with that periodicity?

The Modern Drunkard interview with Gary Shteyngart. Lotsa vodka, a little caviar, some reflections on the condition of Russia, literature and the writing life (via).

Frozen bubbles. Via Althouse, who calls it a "cool photography stunt." Cool? Below freezing, I'd say!

Self-handicapping excuse artisans. "I coulda been a contenda." If all the if-only's were laid end to end … (via)

Wreck of the bark Trajan discovered in Newport harbor.

Faggots in the raw. (SFW!)

UFO sighting in Cumbria, UK. Turns out to be Chinese lantern balloons, released at a wedding at this hotel. Nice hotel!

Morris dancing in danger of extinction? Probably not just yet.

Speaking of dancing, in Finland they spell YMCA with a NMKY (via Althouse commenter jdeeripper).

A new use for limericks

Thanks to Barbara Wallraff at The Atlantic for the pointer to the Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form, or OEDILF.

"Can you use it in a sentence?"
"How about in a limerick?"

Which has nothing to do with a lime rickey.

I think if I just had the skill for it
And somehow could muster the will for it
I'd rhyme "global warming"
With something alarming
And find room in the O-E-D-ILF for it.

I enjoy occasional blogging
But regular posting's just slogging.
So I'll post on a day
When I've something to say
Or have some idea that I'm flogging.

I'll give this a "poetry" tag simply to avoid having to deal with different tags for poetry, verse, light verse, and doggerel.

Update: I see from the year-end roundup at Making Light that the OEDILF was mentioned there back in July, occasioning a comment thread rich in varied versification: am-phi-brach (n) + am-phi-brach (n) + i-amb (n).

Historical research could be fun

Working on my life list. I know I've had drinks in at least three of these places, and have been employed at one of them, but I'm a little … vague … about a couple of the others.

The 10 Oldest Bars in the U.S.

Thanks to Theo Spark for linking to this.

Gleanings

A few more.

Compare and contrast.

Wherever the UN "peacekeepers" go, sex crimes follow: "Children as young as six are being sexually abused by peacekeepers and aid workers, says a leading UK charity. Children in post-conflict areas are being abused by the very people drafted into such zones to help look after them, says Save the Children." Thanks, I guess, Charles. I have mentioned this pattern of abuse here before.

Starship Troopers, here we come: the Berkeley Bionics robotic exoskeleton. (via)

J.F. Beck: "Arguing matters of fact with Tim Lambert is pretty silly; even though Lambert's often wrong, he steadfastly refuses to admit it." Beck goes on to provide a handy listing of some of Lambert's errors. Updated: Lambert has attacked, of course; and Beck has a followup post. (via)

Analyzing antique absinthe: it was all about the alcohol, all along.

States of consciousness

Have you ever wondered: What Does Your Drink Say About You? If I ever hear my drink talking about me, I'm going to obliterate it so fast… The link in this article to "Ten Drinks Men Should Never Order" doesn't work, go here instead. The link to "Ten Things Your Bartender Won't Tell You" is still good. And a commenter there links to Top Ten Myths About Bartenders, which includes

Myth 3: You can out-drink the bartender.

A more wrong statement has never been uttered; you can't, so don't even try. But, if you're buying, I'll certainly entertain the challenge. I don't care how much you think you can drink—any bartender anytime, anywhere can put you under the table, period.

Words to remember.

But then, some bartenders may take a different approach:

Strict Wildness

Music so poignant it wakes the dead,
We passion poets eke it from wine, not bread;
From wonder, not logic; heart, not head,—
But need clear heads to mix your heady brew.
We kitsch it if we swig it too.
Inspired insanity won't do.
Nor thin-lipped sane respectability.
Rigor lone is rigor mortis.
Rigor-plus-wild is the right-bank tortoise
That beats the chic hare of Rive Gaucherie.
Are poems magic? Sure. Till magic
Believes itself. Then it's bunk.
Art, being bartender, is never drunk.

— Peter Viereck

Before I Google'd up that poem, I had remembered that last line as "Art, like the bartender, is never drunk." Now I suppose I'll be the only source for that quote on the whole darn Interweb. Is that actually a different line, from another work? Anyone who can set me straight on this, please do.

All this brings to mind the ancient Persian custom of considering decisions in different states of consciousness:

It is also their general practice to deliberate upon affairs of weight when they are drunk; and then on the morrow, when they are sober, the decision to which they came the night before is put before them by the master of the house in which it was made; and if it is then approved of, they act on it; if not, they set it aside. Sometimes, however, they are sober at their first deliberation, but in this case they always reconsider the matter under the influence of wine.

If Iranians would still do this today, they might have a more sensible take on the world. Do MADD and their prohibitionist fellow-travelers ever notice how toxic becomes the worldview of whole societies where drink is prohibited? I suspect not.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden recently linked to a description of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. She was intending to say that Internet trolls display this syndrome, and I'm sure that many of them do. But as I look through the document, I see Arafat and Ahmadinejad in every paragraph. I wonder if an entire culture can suffer from a personality disorder.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Update, Nov. 2009: Aha! It was Fritz Leiber who misquoted the Viereck line, in The Pale Brown Thing, which appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in January


and February of 1977. That's where I would have read it. The longer, full version of the novel was later published as Our Lady of Darkness. Cover image swiped from SciFi Buys, an amazing (!) source of vintage magazines, to which I shall be returning, now that I've found it.

Happy New Year

In case we want to sing this, later:

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to min'?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And days o' auld lang syne?

Chorus:
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

We twa hae run about the braes,
And pou'd the gowans fine;
But we've wander'd mony a weary foot,
Sin auld lang syne.

We twa hae paidl't i' the burn,
Frae morning sun till dine,
But seas between us braid hae roar'd
Sin auld lang syne.

And there's a hand, my trusty fiere,
And gie's a hand o' thine,
And we'll tak a right guid willie waught,
For auld lang syne.

And surely ye'll be your pint-stowp,
And surely I'll be mine;
And we'll tak a cup o' kindness yet
For auld lang syne.

Robert Burns World Federation offers this side-by-side.

To your health!

Another wowser heard from

Why am I not surprised that someone writing in the NY Times wants to raise taxes? This time on booze. David Leonhardt cites a load of specious reasons for raising taxes on the anodyne of the poor in his mendaciously titled Let’s Raise a Glass to Fairness, inspired by a book, Paying the Tab, by Peter Cook, a Duke University economist. This economist can't tell the difference between a tax and a subsidy:

Each of the three taxes is now effectively 33 percent lower than it was in 1992. Since 1970, the federal beer tax has plummeted 63 percent. Many states taxes have also been falling.

At first blush, this sounds like good news: who likes to pay taxes, right? But taxes serve a purpose beyond merely raising general government revenue. Taxes on a given activity are also supposed to pay the costs that activity imposes on society. And for all that is wonderful about wine, beer and liquor, they clearly bring some heavy costs.

Right now, the patchwork of alcohol taxes isn’t coming close to covering those costs — the costs of drunken-driving checkpoints, of hospital bills for alcohol-related accidents and child abuse, and of the economic loss caused by death and injury. Last year, some 17,000 Americans, or almost 50 a day, died in alcohol-related car accidents. An additional 65,000 people a year die from other accidents, assaults or illnesses in which alcohol plays a major role.

Mr. Cook, besides being a wine lover, has been thinking about the costs and benefits of alcohol for much of his career, and he has come up with a blunt way of describing the problem. “Do you think we should be subsidizing alcohol?” he asks. “Because that’s what we’re doing.”

"We" subsidize drunkenness to the extent that some recipients of disability payments spend the money on booze. To say that not taxing something is the same as subsidizing it is to fall into the same sort of Newspeakery that makes it a "budget cut" when a government agency's budget is increased less than someone (administrator, legislator) had asked for. A smaller increase is still an increase. If you can pass through Sherwood Forest without being robbed, Robin Hood has not given you a subsidy. Low taxes do not "cost" the government money that it never had to begin with.

I'll dissect this phony "reasoning" further in a while; right now I need a couple of drinks. In the meantime, go read what Glenn Reynolds has to say about it.

Later: The call for an increase in taxes sounds to me like "Let them eat cake." The Times writer, the Duke professor, what is a couple of dollars increase in the price of a bottle of Champagne to them? I am reminded of the sort of billionaire Democrats who think everyone's taxes should be increased. There's another post in that: in the days of ancient Rome, as now, wealthy politicians ran for office, promising everything under the sun to the voters; but in those days, if elected, they paid for the bread and circuses themselves!

The article, like the book, is a call for a regressive taxation scheme, based on phony numbers, with social engineering as its goal.
• Regressive: Good booze is too good for the poor; if the manufacturers won't raise the prices enough to keep the stuff the writer likes out of the hands of those not in his socio-economic class, well then, the tax power of the government can be used for that purpose.
• Phony numbers: Old stuff, but the MADD propaganda machine doesn't quit. The expression "alcohol-related" is the tip-off. If a passenger in the car not at fault was tipsy, that counts as alcohol-related. Links: National Motorists Association. Responsibility In DUI Laws. (Ugly formatting, interesting numbers:) GetMADD: Real Numbers. A business writer ought to have better grasp of numbers … oh never mind, it's the Times.
• "Taxes on a given activity are supposed to pay the costs …" Supposed to? Where is that in the Constitution? Taxes are "supposed to" raise revenue. How about a tax on newspapers to pay for recycling? The Times is in a bad place to be talking about tax fairness, considering the combination of eminent domain abuse and tax breaks involved in clearing the ground for its new HQ.

This is the Times' business section. If this is the kind of wisdom they can muster over there, it's no wonder the paper's own stock is down as far as it is.

Update: Bill Quick has a post on this.
More on wowsers, with quotes from Candace Lightner, founder of MADD, who does not like what that organization has become: Prohibition Returns!

Happy Repeal Day!

It is the anniversary of December 5, 1933, happy ending of an unhappy experiment. The evils inflicted upon the nation, and the world for that matter, by Prohibition, continue, but now our gangsters, politicians and G-Men quarrel over different kinds of contraband. We know from history that anodynes need not be outlawed; there is just too much profit in misery for the current version of Prohibition to be ended. Volstead and Anslinger have worked much evil in the world. Thanks to The Wine Commonsewer at Hit & Run for this lovely bit of nostalgia: But today let us be joyful, within the limits imposed by the current bunch of wowsers.

More on biofuels

Glenn Reynolds, linking to George Monbiot at the Grauniad, says "BIOFUELS are now officially evil." Monbiot (rhymes with moonbat), a leader among the global warmingists, has been writing to this effect about biofuels for a while. A few months, anyway. Which shows that a stopped clock, and so on.

Now Jerry Pournelle's readers enter the fray. Dr. Pournelle says, "We don't need the ethanol in the first place. Better we produce gallons and gallons and make every Senator and Member of Congress drink two quarts a day of absolute alcohol diluted however they like. They couldn't do worse, could they?"

Sounds like a plan.

It's starting to get confusing: since pollution cools the Earth, the Greens ought to be in favor of burning more stuff, but they don't want to burn stuff, since that liberates carbon, making more CO2, which warms the Earth, which is bad; but pollution is bad, and so is drilling for oil, which results in burning stuff, which would cool the Earth, which would alleviate Global Warming™, which would be good, except for the pollution, which defiles Mother Gaia. Maybe I'll try to diagram this. Not right now. It's important (isn't it?) to avoid the Fallen Angels scenario.

By the way, I'm seriously tired of seeing Walt Kelly's line "We have met the enemy, and he is us" used about all kinds of things that have nothing to do with littering! Pogo the possum was talking about littering! Tires in the creek, and that sort of thing. Dammit. Carelessness, not evil or subversion.

Here previously: Biofuel problems, Progress on biofuels, Ethanol scam at Rolling Stone.

Clear vision and chain reactions, and a sip of wine

From P.J. Doland, a NY Times Magazine article on highway signage and how a typeface evolves; and a pleasant timewaster, Boomshine. Also: how having more advice makes it worse, not better: How to Ruin a Web Design. Aaand furthermore, something significant about wine, and the making thereof: Two Buck Chuck takes a bite out of Napa.

Booze in spaaaace!

Once again, Modern Drunkard magazine comes through with what we need to know, this time about drinking in the world of Star Trek.

Top Ten Signs Your Starship Captain is a Drunkard

10.) When Spock mind probes him, Spock gets hammered.
9.) Wakes up next to a Klingon chick at least once a week.
8.) Starts the ship’s self-destruct sequence just to fsck with the yeoman who blew him off in the officer’s lounge.
7.) Each time you discover a new planet he tells Spock to scan the surface for cheap scotch and loose females.
6.) The first thing he says when negotiating with Romulans is, “So, what’s the ale situation?”
5.) McCoy tells him, “I’m a doctor, Jim, not a bartender!”
4.) He keeps slipping down to the engineering room to “discuss ancient Scottish traditions” with Scotty.
3.) Giggles every time Spock says they should launch a “deep space probe.”
2.) Whenever a female yeoman brings him a clipboard he tries to open a tab.
1.) Is willing to make beer runs into the neutral zone.

Go read the rest, it's funny.

Ted Kennedy sings, in Spanish

Oh, the panderage! I wish I had not listened to this. But I want to be able to find it again. "I thank you for your soul, and your heart." They look so tasty!

More at the link.

Update, Feb 22 2008: This post has been receiving an inordinate amount of hits in the last couple of days. I finally figured out why; he's done it again. The same song, at an Obama rally. Well, all right, here it is, with live video this time:

Far be it from me to discourage anyone seeking a new career in music. I can let others do that. Simon, what did you think?

Pinko Irish

is the the title of this from Moxie. I just love the first comment: "Commie Irish are the worst. They drink all the booze, and try to redistribute wealth to get more."