Microserfs

by Douglas Coupland

“And once again, work is providing us with a comforting sense of normalcy – living and working inside of coding’s predictably segmented time/space. Simply grinding away at something makes life feel stable, even though the external particulars of life (like our paychecks, our office, and so forth) are, at best, random.”
pg. 135

“The industry is made up of either gifted techies or smart generalists – the people whop were bored with high school — the sort of people the teacher was always telling, “Now, Abe, you could get As if you really wanted to. Why don’t you just apply yourself?” Look for these people — the talented generalists. They’re good as project and product managers. They’re the same people who would have gone into advertising in 1973.”

I thought I had posted something about this topic when I first heard about the “alert” over the summer. Apparently I didn’t so here goes:

Over the recent holidays I overheard someone in my synagogue talking to the Rabbi about whiskey that had not been sold for Pesach (I’m not going to go into the details of why that is bad, out of scope of this post). It may have been a reprise of an OU/AKO announcement[1][2], but with an added wrinkle that specifically Irish whiskey was owned by Jews and therefore would require sale over Pesach. My BS meter immediately rang because unlike Scotland I know that there are only four Irish distilleries and the odds that the majority are owned by Jews is extremely small. In fact the majority are owned by publicly traded companies which do not need to sell chametz for Pesach. There are four Irish distilleries[3].

My comment on this post

“Sourcing and blending are real skills " Indeed they are, and in Scotland they have a name for people who specialize in those skills: Independent Bottlers. I don’t understand why companies are insisting on the Micro Distiller label over the Independent Bottler label. It isn’t as if they are mutually exclusive. At least then awards and tastings can categorize the whiskeys correctly.

Does the US have an Independent Bottling tradition?

Very interesting post. Is he calling out Mark?

In Whiskey Cast 236 Mark Gillespie leads a panel discussion which begins by lamenting that there are some really good whiskeys out there that no one knows about. Without disagreeing with any of the reasons provided to the panel here is my own take.

Whiskey is a luxury product, combined with the huge selection it is only natural that the connoisseurs who taste everything will find diamonds in the rough. But for the average consumer they either aren’t available or they simply don’t have the time or the inclination to find them.

From the I got to get myself one of these department: Whisky Menorah. Of course I don’t know that I would fill it with Scotch. I think a “Fiery” Rye would do nicely.

Is it just me or were there no American whiskeys on the Malt Maniacs awards? Based on the interview on Whiskey Cast they had Chinese, Japanese, Indian, and Australian whiskeys. Looking at the list I didn’t recognize any American companies. Do they not submit, are they not eligible or are they not good enough to crack an 80 score? The person being interviewed did talk about how Whiskeys from Australia are getting better and taste less like “Australian whiskey” than “whiskey”

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations

Clay Shirky

“It is easier to understand that you face competition than obsolescence.”
pg. 59

“Two things have to happen for someone to become famous, neither of them related to technology. The first is scale, he or she has to have some minimum amount of attention, an audience in the thousands or more, and second he or she has to be unable to reciprocate.”
pg. 91<

A Team of Rivals
Doris Kearns Goodwin

Lincoln: “Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound judgement, is not the sole question…A universal feeling, whether well or ill founded, can not be safely disregarded.”
pg. 206

“When he advised temperance advocates to refrain from denouncing drinkers in “thundering tones of anathema and denunciation,” for denunciation would inevitably be met with denunciation “crimination with crimination and anathema with anathema”
pg. 168

Meatball Sundae

by Seth Gudin

“Oprah is a superstar because she has the power (the right? the expectation?) of regularly putting new ideas in front of people who weren’t looking for that particular thing.”
pg. 65

“Your job will be to convert that momentary attention into long term permission and then into action. The question, then, isn’t how you get Dugg. The question is how do you make stuff worth Digging.” pg. 82