Nepenthe

  We had this on sale here.                         From The New Yorker : A few months ago, while watching Instagram stories, I came across a provocative advertisement. A man with scruffy brown hair said, “What if I told you alcohol is not actually bad for you?” He explained that our livers convert alcohol into acetaldehyde, a toxic molecule that he described as a main cause of hangovers. His brief chemistry lesson, which used glass beakers filled with colorful liquids as props, was accompanied by a link to a product: a supplement that promised to neutralize acetaldehyde more quickly than my body could on its own. Eliminating acetaldehyde, the ad claimed, would help conquer hangovers. One reviewer of the supplement said that she’d drunk more than five glasses of wine and felt fine the next day. I usually have a strong aversion to the science-y veneer of supplement marketing, yet I stuck with the ad to the end...

by Brian Bilston

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How to host a Downton Abbey dinner party by Terrys Fabrics .

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In 1831, Pyotr Smirnov was born to illiterate Russian serfs in a village so remote that walking at night required clanking metal sticks together to scare off the wolves lurking at forest's edge. But he had ambition and intelligence. As a teenage apprentice to an innkeeper- uncle in a nearby town, he observed the mechanics of pricing and supply. In his 30s he set up shop himself as a small-time liquor peddler. By 1886, he was selling two-thirds of Moscow's vodka. Soon he was purveyor to the czar, presiding over a company whose product saturated the vast Russian empire. In "The King of Vodka," Linda Himelstein shows how Smirnov pulled off his commercial coup and founded a company that, in one form or another, exists to this day. Force of personality had something to do with it -- Smirnov was a "tall, dashing man with a commanding presence." Before his death in 1898 he demanded that, upon his burial, prayers be said for him in 40 churches for 40 da...

From The Guardian series on Maps of the British Library

photo: Shane Murphy m Can there ever have been a more appropriate memorial to a writer than the new Samuel Beckett bridge that opened in Dublin on 10 December? The several thousand tons of steel deck and pylon were fabricated in a factory in Rotterdam, then carried across the sea by a barge labouring in the churning swell. A stately bridge carried over the turbulent water by a boat? Here's a conceit so surreal it makes Waiting for Godot read like a cereal packet. The designer was Santiago Calatrava, the Valencian architect who has made expressionist bridges and weirdly torqued structures a trademark. Never mind that Beckett made a virtue of muted understatement. The writer once said "Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness". Calatrava does not think that way. He's in the landmark business. This is Calatrava's second bridge in Dublin – the first was dedicated to James Joyce and opened in 2003. The new Beckett Bridge is technically...

Kraken Rum , pics courtesy of NotCot

Primeiríssimas Impressões (de um festival a que não vou poder ir ;( O logótipo, o cartaz, os nomes das categorias... Hic! PDF do programa das festas ;)

In 1831, Pyotr Smirnov was born to illiterate Russian serfs in a village so remote that walking at night required clanking metal sticks together to scare off the wolves lurking at forest's edge. But he had ambition and intelligence. As a teenage apprentice to an innkeeper- uncle in a nearby town, he observed the mechanics of pricing and supply. In his 30s he set up shop himself as a small-time liquor peddler. By 1886, he was selling two-thirds of Moscow's vodka. Soon he was purveyor to the czar, presiding over a company whose product saturated the vast Russian empire. In "The King of Vodka," Linda Himelstein shows how Smirnov pulled off his commercial coup and founded a company that, in one form or another, exists to this day. Force of personality had something to do with it -- Smirnov was a "tall, dashing man with a commanding presence." Before his death in 1898 he demanded that, upon his burial, prayers be said for him in 40 churches for 40...

Savour the moment: Rajah, a colour lithograph by Henri Meunier, 1897 We Brits have a way of feeling guilty about our pleasures, as if there were something morally dubious, or beyond the merely vulgar, in the pursuit of happiness enshrined in the constitution of our more overtly fun‑loving American cousins. This is not an issue addressed by Paul Martin in his extensive survey of the pros and cons of pleasure, and its bittersweet role in all our lives. Mercifully, however, he does seem to conclude that pleasure-seeking is, on balance, a good thing, for all the efforts of religious and (often) socio-political forces to persuade us otherwise. But pleasure is also, as he insists from the outset, “a slippery beast”. Plato argued that it was “the greatest incentive to evil”, Aristotle the opposite, and so it has confusingly continued ever since, via the likes of Nero and Casanova to Schopenhauer, Freud and beyond. For Martin, a behavio...

Touriga nacional is vigorous and robust, but it produces notoriously low yields and small grapes. This has made it unpopular with growers, and nearly led to its extinction in the mid-20th century. Since then, however, much effort has been spent on clonal selection of the variety so that newer cuttings are slightly more productive and sugar levels even higher. Port is made from a blend of grapes - more than 80 varieties are planted in almost 100,000 acres in Portugal - but touriga nacional stands as the most famous and revered. Portugal As well as making port, touriga nacional is now also grown to produce extremely concentrated, dark, tannic table wines both in the Douro Valley and elsewhere in Portugal, notably Dão. In the same way that cabernet sauvignon is softened by blending with another grape, touriga can be partnered with local versions of tempranillo. Another grape classified as one of the best port varieties is touriga franca (which, despite the name, has no proven connection w...

The Wines Reportage dal Malawi, dicembre 2007 Il mese di dicembre è stato un mese intenso in Malawi. Siamo a poco più di due anni dall’apertura del primo centro per il trattamento dei malati di AIDS e le attività di DREAM continuano a crescere a ritmi veloci. I laboratori di biologia molecolare presenti nel paese sono attualmente due, uno a Blantyre che serve la regione sud del paese, ed uno nei pressi di Lilongwe per la regione centrale. Il 14 dicembre una delegazione del governo guidata dal vicedirettore del ministero della salute e responsabile per la diagnostica ha visitato il laboratorio di Blantyre complimentandosi per la qualità dei servizi diagnostici offerti. Il 18 dicembre è stata effettuata una missione insieme allo stesso vicedirettore per la diagnostica e ad altri rappresentanti istituzionali all’ospedale di Mzimba, nel nord del paese, luogo individuato per la collocazione del terzo laboratorio di biologia molecolare previsto dal programma DREAM. Ne...