Solon Economou

What kind of wine is this?

What kind of wine is this?  Here's what it says on the label:

Classically balanced, vibrant, and complex with a splash of fruit.

That's a trick question, and I'll get to it later.  But right now I want to talk about the pretentiousness of those who call themselves, and are accepted as, wine connoisseurs.  Now I don't purport to know one wine from the other when I smell it, but I can smell "pretentious" and "phony" from a mile away.

There was a time when the "connoisseurs" put their snouts in the air (after putting them in the wine goblets) and unanimously agreed that only French wines were good.  At that time, many moons ago, I used to say that this California wine or that New York State wine was pretty good, too.  Now, of course, these same connoisseurs put California wines right up there with French wines, and justifiably so, but generalizations are bad. 

Every wine is different.  Quality of wine depends on a number of things, only a few of them being the region in its country of origin, the composition of the earth the vines came from, the rainfall that year, when the rain came, the temperature fluctuations that year, etc. etc., and last, but not least, the knowledge and experience of the wine maker.

So once upon a time I put some snooty acquaintances to a test.  I brought out a decanter of wine, poured some for everyone and swirled the goblet under my nose.  Using terms I've heard, but don't fully comprehend, I said, "It has an interesting nose, with a hint of citrus."  Most around me nodded in assent.

Then I swirled a little around in my mouth.  "An exciting palate, with notes of berries and chocolate."  They nodded in assent.  Notes?  Is this music or wine?  Chocolate?  I didn't know chocolate came from grapevines.

Finally, I said, "It has a mellow and satisfying follow."  They agreed. 

Of course, we were swigging Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill.  I brought out the bottle and said, "And it's quite reasonable at about a buck ninety-eight a bottle!"  None of them put on airs after that--at least not around me.

Now to get to my "mystery wine," classically balanced, vibrant, and complex with a splash of fruit.  You can buy it at Shaw's or the Stop & Shop.  It's not wine.  The hype is from a package of Green Mountain Colombian Coffee K-Cups.

What a load of beans!  Good coffee, pretentious copywriter.

I guess what I'm saying is that, with wine or coffee, as with art, go with what you like.  Forget the "experts."  They exist only in their own puffed up imaginations.

8 comments »

Just when is it "cold"?

Below zero isn't what you think it i

We New Englanders are so used to cold weather that many of us have fallen into the trap of not thinking it's "cold" till the temperature is "below zero."  We can thank German physicist Daniel Fahrenheit for that, who proposed his screwy Fahrenheit temperature scale back in 1724.

I call this a "screwy" scale--I won't even get into how he devised it, but if Rube Goldberg delved into chemistry, this was it.  In Fahrenheit's scale, the freezing point of water comes out to 32 degrees Fahrenheit, and the boiling point at 212 degrees, a total of 180 planned degrees between the two.   Therefore, zero degrees Fahrenheit is actually 32 degrees below freezing.  It is actually pretty damn cold at "below zero."

I have nothing against screwy scales as long as they make some kind of sense.  I love the English system of measurement, where we think in terms of inches and feet and yards and miles, while most of the world thinks in terms of the metric system of centimeters and meters and kilometers, etc. 

The metric system is based on actual measurements of the Earth and has a very rational basis.  The English system--well, I loved teaching that in physics class.  Traditionally, the foot was based on the length of the king's foot.  As my physics students used to say, "Of course.  They got it from a ruler."  The inch was purportedly based on the length of the king's thumb from the middle joint to the tip.  And so it went for the rest of English metrics.  For a little bit of fun, I would occasionally have my physics students calculate speed in "furlongs per fortnight."

In the temperature category, Fahrenheit got the jump on things in 1724, and his screwy system was in vogue before Andre Celsius, a Swedish astronomer, came up with the centigrade scale in 1742.  The centigrade scale, as the name implies, divides the temperature range into 100 degrees between the freezing and boiling points of water, zero being the freezing point and 100 being the boiling point, making a very rational temperature scale.  Degrees in this scale are called "degrees centigrade" or "degrees Celsius," in honor of old Andre.

A fact that very few people know (the number now includes you) is that Celsius developed the scale backward, from 100 degrees freezing to 0 degrees boiling.  In 1744, a Swedish botanist, Carolus Linnaeus, said "That's nuts, Andre," and reversed it so that freezing was at zero and boiling was at 100.

In Europe, when the temperature is zero, they know it's cold.  In America, we practically think it's warm at 32, which is the same temperature.

Let's see how the two scales compare:

Degrees F          Degrees C

212                       100              (boiling point of water)

72                         22

40                         4

32                         0                   (freezing point of water)

0                          -18

-10                       -23

I'd just as soon drop Herr Fahrenheit's misleading scale altogether and forever.  When the water turns to ice, I want that to be at zero, not 32.

Now did I mention there are also two more temperature scales, both used in science, the Kelvin and Rankine scales?  Can I expound on those?  Do you have time?  Let's get some coffee...

16 comments »

Lord Wedgewood: a Cape Codder remembers

You've probably all read the headlines by now.  The historic and world-famous producers of Wedgewood ceramic ware and Waterford crystal have just this week joined the hundreds of other firms worldwide which have been hit by the current business slowdown:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Waterford Wedgewood goes into administration

The latest luxury company to hit trouble is Waterford Wedgewood.  The Dublin-based company announced on Monday that 10 British units and four businesses in Ireland have been placed into administration after running out of money and failing to find a buyer.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wedgewood, the British ceramics company, was founded in 1759 by Josiah Wedgewood.  Waterford, the Irish crystal company, was founded in 1783.

A while ago I had the pleasure of meeting the current Lord Wedgewood in Colonial Williamsburg (CW), Virginia.  CW was opening a grand exhibit of their collection of Wedgewood ceramic ware, dating from colonial days to the present.  Lord Wedgewood and his guests were invited from across the pond.  So was I.  I had been a volunteer at CW when I lived there and was active in helping with visitors to the Dewitt-Wallace Gallery, where the event was being held.

The reception was a black tie affair, and, yes, I actually wore my tux.  And there was Lord Wedgewood, resplendent in his tux and...and...magenta velvet slippers.  We were introduced and talked, and I had a hell of a time keeping my eyes off his feet. 

I later learned that the British upper crust had taken to wearing fancy slippers with their fancy dress and that it was sort of de rigeur. 

After some small talk and a little escargot and a lot of champagne, an elegant elderly lady came up to me and took my arm.  She was wearing a magnificent dress and magnificent pearls, and the only thing missing was one of those magnificent long eyeglass holders in her hand.  But one hand held champagne, the other held me.

"I say," she whispered, "I understand you're Greek."

"Yes," I said.

"I have a Greek joke for you," she said.

When she began, I did not have the heart to tell her I had already heard the joke and wondered if this prim and proper octogenarian would actually come through with the rather ribald punchline amongst this gathering of nobility and grand houhahs.

So she told me about the Greek who walked into a diner and got a Chinese waiter.

"How may I help you?" asked the waiter.

"Eggs and fried rice," replied the Greek.

The waiter turned toward the kitchen and yelled, "EGGS AND FLIED LICE!"

The next day the Greek returned and took the same booth in order to get the Chinese waiter.

"How may I help you" asked the waiter.

"Eggs and flied lice," chortled the Greek.

This went on for a month, the Greek continuously taunting the Chinese waiter.  One day the Greek went off on vacation, and the Chinese waiter hurried down to his nearest Berlitz language school to learn how to pronounce English properly.

When the Greek returned, the waiter asked, "How may I help you?"

"Eggs and flied lice," chortled the Greek.

The waiter looked at him calmly and said, "Sir, that's 'eggs and fried rice'...YOU FL------ GLEEK PL---!"

What I remember most were Lord Wedgewood's velvet slippers and that elegant octogenarian, without hesitation, blurting out the punchline.

Now whoever said the Brits were stodgy?

I hate to see Wedgewood go under.  You who own Wedgewood or Waterford pieces will soon be holding a piece of history.  From 1759 to today has been a long time, and it seems like another era passing.

3 comments »

Forget marijuana--now it's about national security

Okay, I've given you potheads enough flak about the new marijuana law.  Personally, I don't care if you smoke.  Just don't smoke and drive.  Endangering other people is verboten, whether it's liquor, drugs, or being old and blind and non compos mentis behind the wheel.

This is about national security.  The new marijuana law has brought up some points about our law enforcement system--or lack of it--that apparently even prevent us from protecting America against terrorists.

According to the Boston Globe, officers have no way of determining the identity of people they stop on the street for smoking marijuana. Before the law was changed, officers could arrest them, or threaten them with arrest to force them to show identification. Now, they say they cannot force users to show IDs, and cannot arrest them if they refuse to identify themselves. And they say there is no penalty if a marijuana user gives a false name to a police officer.

"Cannot force users to show IDs?"  In what other country in the world is a person not required to show ID to a police officer?  "No penalty if a [person] gives a false name to a police officer?"  In what other country in the world is this allowed?   Go to Europe or anywhere else and you had better have your passport handy.

I can see a cop stopping Osama bin Laden.  "Excuse me, sir, but you look like Osama bin Laden.  May I see your ID?"

"You know what you can do with my ID and that blue-and-white camel you rode in on, infidel!  I am peacefully smoking marijuana.  I don't have to show you ID!"

"Then, what is your name?"

"Mother Teresa, infidel.  What's yours?"  (Osama's cohorts with AK-47s hidden in their pants legs laugh.)

They jump into their car, Osama floors it and pulls away.  "America, what a country," he says.  "Hey, maybe we should move here.  Can get away with all kinds of  camel poop!"

For a country where 3,000 people were murdered by terrorists and which is constantly under threat of even more horrifying attacks, we don't have to show police our IDs or give them our real names?  What's wrong with this picture? 

Merely identifying oneself to authorities of the nation you happen to have your feet planted in at the time does not in any way infringe on one's civil liberties.  But blowing up Americans infringes on mine and yours.  And, worse, ticks me off beyond description.

America, what a country.  For its enemies.  We need some serious rethinking of our most basic laws before we foolishly drive ourselves into extinction.

61 comments »

"Take that, you dirty rat!"

It's been years since I've heard James Cagney say that on the silver screen.  But where is he now when Nantucket needs him?

Nantucket is ending its long-running, thirty-year, rodenticide program for a number of reasons, two being:

1) It will save dollars (lousy reason)

2) It's not working (good reason)

It seems the rats are becoming immune to the poison and breeding immune rats.  When the dose is increased, the cycle repeats.  Darwin was right after all.  Now Nantucket's super-rats are immune to anything short of a nuclear blast.

I never liked poisoning them anyway.  Sometimes poison can get a family pet or an animal that just ate a poisoned super-rat.  I like a direct approach.  But firing guns in the house can get messy.

I use these electronic thing-a-ma-jigs that plug into your electrical sockets and purportedly send a pulse through your house wires that critters don't like.  They make them for insects and rodents, and I believe some of the newer ones are dual-purpose.  They cost anywhere from $18 to $35 for a pack of two or three and are available at practically any hardware store.

I didn't believe they worked till I installed them in Kathy's house in Arizona.  Creepy crawly things like scorpions, poisonous spiders, little snakies and rodents are common out there and can flatten out and crawl under even a closed door and get into a house. Our neighbors, who were also skeptical, tried them and vowed they worked.  So I got  five, three for insects and two for rodents, and installed them throughout the house.  Nary a single undesirable creature was ever seen in the house again.

So I did the same for my house in Dennis.  First I made sure neither type affected my cat, Sheena, as advertised, and they didn't.

For some reason a few spiders showed up after I installed them in Dennis.  One spider was from outer space.  I heard Kathy yell "Help!" from the bathroom and immediately thought there was an intruder.  I got into my Kung Fu-Twae Kan D0-Ju Jitsu death position and leaped into the bathroom.  It was a hairy spider about 2 inches across that looked like a small tarantula.  Neither Kathy nor I had ever seen one like this before.  But I bravely dispatched it.  Now Kathy is after me to fill in the machine-gun holes in the wall.

I would recommend trying these electronic plug-ins for pests.  I don't know if they work only against little mice and not rats, but they do seem to help. 

Or you can try the Pied Piper.  But don't forget to pay him.

2 comments »

Ten biggest headlines of 2009

You know you get your news here first -
Well, here is a scoop--the news a year ahead of time.  Enjoy.

The New England Patriots chose "Racy Stacey" Monponsett of Bourne as their first woman player.

At the Vatican the College of Cardinals elected Walter "Kiss my finger" Brooks as its first American Pope.

10.  Cape Cod freezes over!  "Imagine how much worse it would have been without global warming," say United Nations 'experts.'

9.    Bill Delahunt endorses Cape Wind!  "But only if it's built off Patagonia," says the Congressman.

8.    Cape Cod Commission dissolves itself.  In a rare display of public spirit, the members of the Cape Cod Commission committed communal ceremonial seppuku at their meeting today.  Film at 11.

7.    Hurricane misses Cape Cod... again... by 3,000 miles.  Yet insurance rates continue to mysteriously skyrocket in The People's Republic.      

6.    Lewis-Turner room tax bill passed.  Ninety-year-old woman arrested and beaten for not collecting tax on dog house in backyard.

5.    Patriots choose blogger as first woman player.  The New England Patriots chose capecodtoday.com blogger "Racy Stacey," so called presumably because of her speed, as their first woman player.  "I can't wait for those huddles.  Is my lipstick on straight?" exclaimed Stacey.

4.    Sonntag's "Paris Hilton" sells for $1,000,000!  Local artist Ned Sonntag says, "I've been painting buxom babes all my life.  Now I paint one skinny broad and get rich overnight!  Why didn't I do it sooner?"

3.   Alliance fossil fuel barons to build "clean coal" powerplant on shores of Nantucket Sound.  "Just think," said a spokesman, "with our air pollution you won't even be able to see those damn windmills!"

2.   Murdoch picks former columnist to head Cape Cod Times.  When asked if  the paper will have a "new look," Economou replied, "Don't bother me now.  I'm auditioning...er...interviewing...the Page Three girls."

1.   Walter Brooks becomes Pope!  Employees and bloggers alike rejoice, "Now all we'll have to kiss will be his ring!"

11 comments »

Cuisinart of the crazies

Some time ago a friend of the "Alliance" dubbed renewable-power-generating wind turbines "bird Cuisinarts."  The bird-kill propaganda is the biggest hoax the Alliance has ever perpetrated and continues to perpetrate.  I guess they are taking the advice of Hitler and Goebbels that if you repeat a lie enough times people will believe it.

I have maintained many times in my writings that more birds will be killed in one year crashing into the buildings of the Kennedy compound than would be killed by Cape Wind in the next twenty years.  I didn't know how right I was!

As the permitting process for Cape Wind is coming down to the wire, let's put that little bit of bird-kill nonsense to rest once and for all.  According to the Summary of Anthropogenic Causes of Bird Mortality, Erickson et al, the following, from least to most, are the causes of bird fatalities:

Wind turbines:  Less than 1%

Communications towers:   2.5%

Pesticides:   7%

Vehicles:   7%         

High-tension lines:   8%

Cats:   10%

Other:   10%

Buildings/windows:   55%              

The facts quite eloquently speak for themselves.

It saddens me to see otherwise sensible, but gullible, people swallowing and even repeating the bird-kill drivel long after it has been thoroughly discredited.  When blind idealogy trumps facts, it's time to schedule a psychological evaluation.   If you are still among the Cuisinart crazies, make your appointment today.   

As a tag-along here, a study by the U.S. Department of Energy states that wind, coal, gas, and hydropower give you the biggest bang for your buck on your monthly electric bill.  Two of those pollute, two of those don't.  Really, which two would you choose?

When you take a breath of relatively clean air today, remember, it may not always be there unless we do something about it.

15 comments »

The best companies that support our troops

Read this before you order that next beer or soda or spend your hard-earned money on companies that may not mean any more to you than names on TV commercials.  With such a large contingent of Reservists and National Guard from the Cape on active duty these days, some of it extended, you may want to support companies that support our troops and their families.

I am naming some of the best ones here.  They are all on the Fortune 500 list and have been polled by the Reserve Officers Association.  Not all on the Fortune 500 make the cut, because only 53 companies have had the fortitude to respond this year.  But, American businesses have come a long way since I was a Reservist and you practically had to go to the US Supreme Court just to get your job back after an active duty tour.

Coca-Cola, General Electric and USAA offer a combination of full, then differential salary (the difference between your company pay and your military pay) for various periods of time.  They also offer health benefits for the employee and dependents during that period. 

Sears, New York  Life, State Farm, Ford Motor Company and Anheuser-Busch offer differential pay plus health benefits for employee and family for the duration of activation.  Dominion Resources, the energy company from which you occasionally get mail, offers differential pay for up to five years cumulative service, plus health benefits.

Mass Mutual and Humana offer differential pay for 12 to 18 months.  Best Buy, Hertz, and Universal Health Services offer differential pay ranging from 3 to 12 months.

Dominion's human resources team states that offering these benefits helps with employee retention and that the employees/soldiers appreciate the health coverage in that spouses and children don't have to change doctors, which is a very important issue and potential problem in today's health care market.

Most of these companies state they prefer to hire military people if possible because they have learned how to work as part of a team, how to adapt to changing circumstances, and how to keep plugging away till the job is done. 

Of course, quality of product or service should be your first concern when making any business transaction, but it's nice to know which companies are backing our troops and their families in these very difficult times.  Of the 14 companies I've mentioned, I do business with seven.  How about you?

7 comments »

Movie Review--Plan 9 from Outer Space--See it again!

Far be it from me to review a movie like Quantum Solace starring that ruggedly handsome Daniel Craig (I'm so jealous!).  No, I'm bringing you a review of the 1959 cult classic, Plan 9 from Outer Space, written and directed by Ed Wood.

Why am I reviewing this?  Well, who else would?  It has been called the worst movie ever made and Ed Wood the worst director.  But I love this movie, and if you have never seen it, you've missed the cinematic treat of a lifetime.

The plot is straightforward.  Aliens from outer space resurrect dead humans as zombies and vampires to do their bidding.  They must be stopped.

It stars Bela Lugosi creeping in and out of mausoleums and some chick named Vampira who plays a hissing vampire  (What else?) in what was hopefully her only movie role.

This picture had problems from the beginning.  Its original title was Grave Robbers from Outer Space.  But Ed Wood's shoestring financial backing came from a consortium of Baptist churches with which he would share the profits, and they said the title was sacrilegious, that he would have to change it.  Hence Plan 9.  What did it mean?  Nothing, but it represented change.  (Hmm, where have we heard that lately?)

The cockpit of the airliner which first spotted the flying saucers consisted of two guys sitting in chairs with a shower curtain behind them, which was the "partition" separating them from the "cabin."

The crosses and tombstones in the cemetery where the zombies and vampires roamed were made of cardboard.  You could see them sway or fall over when one of the actors brushed against them.  But Ed Wood did not know the meaning of a "second take."

To make matters worse, Bela Lugosi, Wood's friend and by now a serious heroin addict, died during the filming.  So they used Bela Lugosi stock footage plus some younger guy with his cloak drawn across his face in Lugosi-type fashion making believe he was Bela Lugosi.

Probably the best (or worst) part--and you have to wonder if Ed Wood was playing with the movie audience--was when the cops rushed to the nearby cemetery.  They raced off in a black 1953 Ford.  In nighttime.  On the way to the cemetery, they were driving on the highway in a 1957 Ford.  In daylight.  When they got there, they arrived in a black-and-white 1956 Ford.  In nightime again.

Oh, and be sure to get a good look at the flying saucers...er...paper plates...when they were destroyed, hanging from a string and set on fire.

This is a movie so full of unintended laughs that you have to watch it over and over to catch all the details.  I used to hold "Ed Wood" parties, where one of the guests would bring an Ed Wood video for the evening's entertainment.  Wood also made the movie Glen or Glenda? about a transvestite, which Wood was himself.  He loved the feel of angora sweaters.  I know some of you guys do, too.  Don't lie to me.  He also made Bride of the Monster and a few others.

But I think Plan 9 from Outer Space was his crowning achievement.

In 1994 a bio was produced, Ed Wood, starring Johnny Depp as Wood, and Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi.  It was surprisingly accurate.  You didn't have to add any bizarre Hollywood stuff to make it bizarre.  Landau won an Oscar for his performance.  Others in it were Bill Murray and Sarah Jessica Parker.

I recommend both flicks.  But, believe me, if you have never seen it, you don't want to miss Plan 9 from Outer Space.  Rent it today.  Oh, by the way, some spoilers have colorized a DVD version.  What was in their minds, ruining a classic?  See it in black and white.  It's the right thing to do.

Leave a comment »

Book Review--The Lost Tomb--David Gibbens delivers

Just when you thought every writer in the world has written about the secrets of Jesus, following Dan Brown's blockbuster,  The Da Vinci Code, David Gibbins has come up with one that actually delivers.  By that I mean nothing is left hanging in the air--there really is a compelling reason for the Church to stop, at all costs, the protagonists of this novel, which has just come of the presses in paperback.

In The Lost Tomb, Marine archaeologist Jack Howard and his crew are diving off the coast of Sicily and believe they have found the remains of a ship that actually carried St. Paul, acknowledged by many as the founder of the Roman Catholic Church.  The usual vague clues and arcane references take them to the ruins of Herculaneum, which was destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, on the bay of Naples.

They find clues to the true location of the tomb of Jesus and possible references to the "Gospel of Jesus."  Soon they find mysterious--and deadly--enemies are trying to stop them and beat them to their goal.  Gibbens uses an artifice here that is forgiveable, given the overall context of his story.  He has the emporer Claudius secretly living out his days in Herculaneum as a scholar, occasionally visited by Pliny the Elder, who was completing his famous Natural History.

Claudius actually died in AD 54, probably by poison.  In this book Gibbens has Claudius faking his own death to escape the horrors and decay of the Roman Empire.  Don't forget, Claudius as emperor was sandwiched in between the two most horrible personages of his time, Caligula and Nero.  Who wouldn't want to disappear to a quiet seacoast town (if only to be done in by Mount Vesuvius)?

Gibbens needed the intellect of Claudius, who he has traveling to Judea and meeting the fisherman, the carpenter, the man from Galilee, Jesus, to make the story work.  The New Testament was written well after the death of Jesus, by people who did not know him.  Also, St. Paul, as far as we know, had never met Jesus.  What if these people had it all wrong?

Jesus explains to Claudius his "ministry," and Claudius asks for his writings.  Jesus tells him there are none, because his people cannot read.  So he writes a testament for Claudius, and that is what is at the core of this story.

Soon the concilium, a secret band of three "protectors" of the Church from the Vatican, are closing in on Howard.  The concilium uses mafiosi as their killers and interrogators, so they are truly a nasty lot.

What could be so earth-shattering to cause the Church to want to stop this discovery at all costs?  Most writers have left such a question hanging or have used a reason such as Jesus being married to Mary Magdalene, Jesus running off to the Languedoc in the south of France where the heretics abounded, Mary Magdalene having borne Jesus' child, etc.  These, to me, were all weak cop-outs. 

But Gibbens goes way beyond that.  In just a few sentences of Jesus' testament, he reveals something so simple it could literally bring down the Vatican and the Catholic Church...and the Greek Orthodox Church...and the Anglican Church, etc.  Maybe the Unitarians would be spared.

It's a worthy read.  Trust me on this.

3 comments »