if you want to get away from it all
"After the Storm" Vinalhaven Maine 1938-9 Marsden Hartley
speaking of malicious gossip...
psst...did you hear about...
"We'd pass her in the hall and Brad would say 'Heyyy, Jenna, wanna beer? I got one in the truck'" -- Jennifer Aniston, on teasing Jenna Bush, who worked at her and her husband's management agency this summer (US Weekly).
aka cafe
from abuddha memes Esoteric Info on Electromagnetic Weapons.

"Human Tolerances to whole body sinusodal vibration: Head Pain 13-30Hz, Impaired Speech 13-20Hz, Jaw Pain 6-8Hz, Chest Pain 5-7Hz, Abdominal Pain 4.5 - 10 Hz, Lombotacral Pain 8-12Hz, Urge to defecate 10.5 to 16 Hz, Urge to urinate 10 to 18 Hz."

"Possible effects include instantaneous death, heart seizure, severe emotional disruption, loss of control of internal functions, diseases, disabling of the immune system, and even implantation of thoughts, emotions, and ideas which are interpreted by the subjects as their own."
a friend of joe dressner

NO SPOOFALATION PLEASE

August 26, 2001
NYTimes

For Better or Worse, Winemakers Go High Tech

By ALICE FEIRING

inemakers like to say wine is grown in the vineyard. But more and more of the wine produced in the United States is grown in the lab.

In the last five years, new treatments and additives ranging from smoky oak chips to tropical-flavored fermenting yeasts have spread through the 500-million-gallon-a- year American wine industry, whose epicenter is California. They have enabled winemakers to adjust the taste and texture of their products in response to consumer demand, obscuring the line between what is natural and what is not.

While these changes have helped minimize the wine industry's risks of a bad vintage and contributed to a 25 percent increase in annual domestic wine production over the last decade, they have also inflamed an emotional debate about whether winemakers are erasing the mystique of regional differences in wine.

"Anytime I taste a wine that has nothing distinctive about the place or the climate, I call that deception," said Roger B. Boulton, professor emeritus of viticulture and enology at the University of California at Davis, who opposes what he calls a creeping homogeneity in wine. "When everything becomes the same because of winemaking practices, that's a pretty sad day."

Nearly 90 percent of wine produced in the United States originates in California, and the state's wineries have good reasons to produce wines that they know will sell. The volume of imports has nearly doubled over the last decade and now accounts for more than 20 percent of all wine sold in the country, according to Impact, a trade publication of M. Shanken Communications. Many of those imports, particularly Australian wines, are also produced with the new techniques.

The Wine Institute, a trade group in San Francisco, estimated that the retail value of all wine sold in the United States was $19 billion last year, up 5 percent from 1999.

A trend toward homogeneity in wine may be driven in part by a perception that influential wine critics like Robert M. Parker Jr. and magazines like Wine Spectator prefer particular flavors and aromas. Winemakers seeking good reviews may be exploiting new technologies not only for damage control, but also to shape their wines from birth.

There is nothing illegal about human intervention in the natural fermentation of wine. But the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which regulates the industry, does impose some limits. It is not permissible, for example, to use food coloring to perfect a wine's color. And artificial flavoring cannot be added to replicate a particular taste, like that of blackberries.

What is allowed, however, is the use of oak, either raw or charred to varying degrees, which can impart flavors reminiscent of coconut, vanilla and coffee, for example. But while winemakers still use oak barrels, oak chips are increasingly used to save money on lesser wines — the chips are sprinkled into stainless steel vats to flavor a wine and give it an "oak flavor profile."

Adjustments are also permitted in the level of carbon dioxide in fermenting wine, which affects a wine's acidity and fruitiness. Adding unfermented grape juice sweetens the wine. Enzymes lock in color. Yeasts control the level of fermentation. Tannins, naturally occurring chemical compounds in grape skins and wood, are used in powdered form to further enhance a wine's taste and feel in the mouth.

Advances in yeast cultivation have now made it an ingredient for taste as well. Chardonnay producers looking for a toasty, buttery taste use a special yeast that enhances those qualities. Another example is a yeast that gives a banana flavor and aroma, originally introduced 10 years ago in Beaujolais.

Marty Bannister, the founder of Vinquiry, a wine analysis and consulting firm in Sonoma, Calif., said yeast was "the essential fermentation tool." But now, she added, "people also look toward it for flavor."

Diana Burnett, fermentation products manager at Scott Laboratories in Petaluma, Calif., a leading distributor of wine yeasts, said that in the past, winemakers relied on nature, soil and skill to make the best wine they could. Now, she said, they decide in advance what flavor they want, then choose the materials and tools they need.

California's wine industry has embraced the technology of wine enhancement partly because ripened California grapes often have a higher sugar content than grapes grown elsewhere. Until recent years, the sugar was a chronic source of production problems for many winemakers — it contributes to high levels of alcohol in fermentation, which can kill the yeast prematurely and produce acetic acid, turning wine to vinegar. Wines with more than 14 percent alcohol, the normal amount, can taste hot and harsh.

High alcohol levels also raise the price to the consumer. A federal excise tax of $1.07 a gallon is levied on wine sold in the United States that is no more than 14 percent alcohol. The tax is $1.57 a gallon when the alcohol content exceeds 14 percent.

But now a technique called reverse osmosis, in which high pressure is used to separate the alcohol and acid from the wine, has helped many winemakers salvage crops that nature might have ruined. Use of the technique, originally intended to make nonalcoholic wine, has spread in recent years.

"The only thing to do with a batch of wine with acetic acid is to use reverse osmosis," said Lisa Van de Water, the founder and owner of Wine Lab, a consulting company in Napa, Calif., that specializes in emergency rescues of wines. "It's a godsend."

Many winemakers will not acknowledge using reverse osmosis, fearing that they will be perceived as having tampered with the wine. But even the best of them acknowledge that the technique is an important advance that has helped avoid calamities.

Steve Doerner, the winemaker at the Cristom Winery in Salem, Ore., known in the industry for his dedication to natural wine making, said he once had to resort to reverse osmosis. But he said such technologies should be used for disaster control, not for fine-tuning taste and texture.

"Whenever you take something out of the wine, you're changing it," he said. "And not necessarily for the best."

Vinovation, a Sebastopol, Calif., consulting and production services company that introduced reverse osmosis, disagrees, saying the technique's application is much wider than just emergency use. Clark Smith, the president of the company, said it could produce "a better wine than you would have in the first place."

In 1997, Vinovation introduced micro-oxygenation, in which bubbles of oxygen are released into oak barrels used to store wine. This eliminates the need for a labor-intensive practice called racking, in which the wine is pumped out of one barrel into another to separate it from residue and yeasts.

Vinovation sold about 100 micro-oxygenation systems last year at $2,000 each and said it expects to double sales this year. Michael Havens, owner and winemaker of Havens Wine Cellars in the Napa Valley, who produces one of California's most sought-after merlots, said he started using micro-oxygenation in 1996 after hurting his back during racking.

Mr. Havens defended the use of micro- oxygenation as just another part of modern winemaking. He said it helped to minimize the weather uncertainties that can make the difference between a good year and a bad year. "It is better to make conscious rather than random choices," he said.

Others, however, say the interventions have compromised the ethics of the industry, creating tastes and textures in wines that otherwise would not have them.

"People now think toasty oak is synonymous with a wine's taste," Professor Boulton said. "That is wrong. Should you add grape tannins as an adjustment? Maybe. But wood tannins? I have trouble with that." Techniques like reverse osmosis and micro- oxygenation "can make a good wine, but not a great wine," he said.

"If you have to resort to these methods," he added, "what does that say about your winemaking and grape growing?"

Winemakers say privately that the industry's effort to manipulate the taste and texture in wine reflects the influence of leading critics like Mr. Parker, whose rating scores can mean the difference between success and failure. Mr. Parker said he advocates minimal intervention in winemaking and does not consider himself responsible for homogeneity in wine.

"My scores have led to higher quality at all price levels, as well as to more informed wine customers," he said.

Enologix, another Sonoma company that caters to the wine industry, has developed computer software that predicts how a wine will score in reviews even while it is still juice. Enologix's founder, Leo McCloskey, said the software offered a noninvasive way to let winemakers know early if they have a potential hit. Mr. McCloskey said 65 wineries had bought his software, including leading boutique wineries like Diamond Creek, Ridge and WillaKenzie.

The ability of new technologies to create critically acclaimed wines is evident in the prosperity of E.& J. Gallo Winery. The privately owned company does not disclose financial information, but with an estimated $1.5 billion in annual sales, it is the nation's biggest winemaker.

After mastering the supermarket brand of wines, it has segued into the fine-wine category. Its highly rated 1996 and 1997 Estate Cabernets, for example, retail at $70 a bottle.

Terry Lee, vice president for research and development at Gallo, said a successful winemaker now creates a focus group and finds what flavors the public wants, then produces them. Wine critics, in Mr. Lee's view, "are gatekeepers who have an influence on the buying public."

"I've heard the complaints that all wine is tasting the same," he said, "But that's because most people don't understand what wine is about and don't understand what a good winemaker is trying to do. People who make those comments are ignorant of the facts."

That assertion angers those who believe that fine wine is about the land and not about the laboratory. Mary Ewing Mulligan, co- author of "Wine for Dummies," said a result was a loss of distinctiveness.

"There should be a distinction between a beverage and fine wine," Ms. Mulligan said. "From the beverage viewpoint, it is easy to buy a technologically sound wine, just as it is orange juice. That's great. However, with fine wine it's terribly misguided."
jim holds the unoffical universal record 4:19 minutes--from 4 seas ice cream shop in centerville mass to rivington st nyc
TRUE??

On May 23rd 2001 the Taleban authorities in Afghanistan confirmed that all Hindus will be required to wear a strip of yellow cloth sewn onto a shirt pocket in order to identify themselves. They claim that the measure is for their "protection".
anybody want to chime in?
A few weeks back I lost a bet over whether AT&T owned Excite@Home, which provides Internet services to Comcast cable. Excite@Home's been floundering lately--its own auditor expressed doubts about its survival, the auditor got fired, and so on--so I'm wondering, will AT&T step in to save its property, or will it say "life's tough"? The only reason I care is because it looks like I'm involuntarily about to change email (third time in a year because of companies tanking) and will possibly have to move my website (how much notice will I get? a month? a week?). Also, what hideous entity will Comcast partner with when E@H goes down? AOL? Microsoft?
were back
MARS

Year: 2176

Terraforming: 80% complete

Population: 640,000

Society: Matriarchal

"There's a thin line between a cop and a crook. You just got the Woman behind your bullshit."

--Ice Cube to Natasha Henstridge in John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars, currently splattering theatres everywhere.
A grasshopper walks into a bar and the bartender says, ''Hey, we have a drink
named after you!'' The grasshopper looks surprised and says, ''You have a drink named Steve?''
anybody catch any of the High School documentary on pbs last night? hey, werent you old codgers just about in hs by 1968? some of us were just as busy searching for the light at the end of the birth canal. (actually, i couldnt find it and was extricated by other means. no wonder im still in the dark.)
Say it ain't so, Rolando Paulino.
i have been to india two times, and this is not unusual as sad as it is, its so closed, when i was there in 1990 there was murder by caste (sp), i was one one street where murder (in my opinion) took place--i will try to dig out my notes
Trillin on Crawford
PORANDO REPORT : Neck Brace Appreciation Klub
POWELL, Wyoming (AP) -- An artist from the Big Apple is working out the final details of his plan to cover a house -- inside and out -- with melted cheese. Cosimo Cavallaro of New York City says he's working with a cheese packaging company to get the five tons of cheese from Wisconsin to Powell, Wyoming.

The artist says it'll be a mix of different types of cheese. He's looking for local industrial-sized microwaves or tar melting machines with which to melt the cheese. The cheese coating is set to begin September 15. The house will remain standing for one month.
They're baaaack…
The Post's clueless Dan Aquilante reviews the new Butthole Surfers recording. He must've missed "Pepper" with that head wound.
From the band's site.
all right to the Danish parliament for starting a green tax on product packaging--more you waste more it costs you, very biodegradable no tax--COOL
last night penne w/ melon in a gorganzola sauce--sounds funny but tasted yummy @ ribollita 260 park ave south--food was simple ok but a friend let us byob so :>):>)--he told me of a hot new brooklyn spot on 5th ave in the slope and spoke of lots of chef's thinking that brooklyn is the future, i ran into the wine buyer from aureole whom with another couple chaps i know opened a 70 seat spot on flatbush near 6th ave...maybe i need to move to brooklyn...
a spam?? or truth?

-----Original Message-----

ARKANSAS CITY (EPA) A Little Rock woman was killed yesterday after leaping through her moving car's sun roof during an incident best described as "a mistaken rapture" by dozens of eye witnesses. Thirteen other people were injured after a twenty car pile up resulted from people trying to avoid hitting the woman who was apparently convinced that the rapture was occurring when she saw twelve people floating up into the air, and then passed a man on the side of the road who she claimed was Jesus. "She started screaming "He's back, He's back" and climbed right out of the sunroof and jumped off the roof of the car," said Everet Williams, husband of 28-year-old Georgann Williams who was pronounced dead at the scene. "I was slowing down but she wouldn't wait till I stopped," Williams said. She thought the rapture was happening and was convinced that Jesus was gonna lift her up into the sky," he went on to say. "This is the strangest thing I've seen since I've been on the force, said Paul Madison, first officer on the scene. Madison questioned the man who looked like Jesus and discovered that he was dressed up as Jesus and was on his way to a toga costume party when the tarp covering the bed of his pickup truck came loose and released twelve blow up sex dolls filled with helium which floated up into the air. Ernie Jenkins, 32, of Fort Smith, who's been told by several of his friends that he looks like Jesus, pulled over and lifted his arms into the air in frustration, and said "Come back here," just as the Williams'
car passed him, and Mrs. Williams was sure that it was Jesus lifting people up into the sky as they passed by him, according to her husband, who says his wife loved Jesus more than anything else. When asked for comments about the twelve sex dolls, Jenkins replied "This is all just too weird for me. I never expected anything like this to happen."