Your Mom’s A Blog

Wine is nearly as old as beer.  To make wine really possible humans had to develop a better container.  Beer will ferment in anything that will hold water; wine requires something a little more genteel, in this instance pottery.  Once pottery was discovered (aside from the fact that it made it much easier to keep water out of things,) it allowed men to hold and ferment grape juice.

The grapes found throughout Europe and Asia are not the grapes American’s would general snack on (known as table grapes.)  Wine grapes that make the varietals we know today (pinot, merlot, etc.) are vitus vinifera.

In ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt grains were more widely cultivated so beer was more widely available.  As Mesopotamian empires grew in wealth and expanded, areas ideal for viticulture (growing of vines) came under their control or influence. 

The earliest viticulture was very different from the viticulture of today.  The farmer would grow an orchard of some sort of fruit tree then cultivate the grape vines on the tree.  (To grow and cultivate grapes the vines need to climb something.  Today we build artificial trellises, in the past they used trees.)  Wine is more temperamental than beer.  It takes less grain to make X amount of beer than it takes to make the same amount of wine.  Wine needs to be stored more carefully and in ancient times an acre of land could yield more grain because vines had to grow on trees which were separated by greater distances.  Because grapes are less hearty than grain, they can only be grown under certain climactic conditions so transportation becomes an issue.  As a result of all these factors wine in Mesopotamia and Egypt was generally much more expensive.

All the previously mentioned factors helped make wine a more “civilized” beverage and marker of wealth and status in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt.  As trade spread around the Mediterranean other cultures, specifically the Greeks, came into contact with other wine drinking cultures.  The Greeks thought themselves superior indeed and began distinguishing themselves from the “barbarians” by their wine drinking habits.  (They were distinct in many other ways, thought, dress, manner, etc., but wine and beer drinking were universal and offered the Greeks a way to distinguish themselves on ground held in common with all other cultures.)

The Greeks had a very distinctive culture.  They were fond of intellectual pursuits such as philosophy and rhetoric.  They were also fond of drinking parties called symposia.  The Greeks had a love hate relationship with wine.  They thought it was a tasty and safe drink, but they believed over indulgence could cause insanity.  For this reason the Greeks generally mixed water with their wine, anywhere from 2 parts water to 1 part wine all the way up to 20 parts water to one part wine (this was for their concentrated wines.)  Wine mixed 1:1 with water was still thought of as strong wine and should be avoided.

As the Greeks expanded their colonies across the Mediterranean they spread wine culture with them.  For the first time wines became known for their region of production (the wine from Lesbos was particularly popular.)  After the Romans came to power Greek wine culture became ubiquitous.  The primary difference was that the availability of wine made good wine a status symbol.  Roman culture became stratified by the type of wine consumed.  More over, the expansionist nature of the Romans brought wine culture as far north as Britain, south into Saharan Africa and east to the Indus valley in India.  Retired soldiers, politicians, merchants and almost anyone else dreamed of cultivating vineyards for the production of wine.  Even after the western portion of the Roman Empire fell to the “barbarians” the new kingdoms that arose maintained the vineyards and expanded where they could.

The spread of Christianity and the development of the concept of Christendom solidified the importance of wine in Euro-Christian culture, especially as a way of drawing a distinction between Christians and Muslims.  Wine played a central role in the traditions of the Catholic Church as being one half of the Eucharist.  Christ’s first miracle of turning water into wine, as well as repeated references to wine in the New Testament made wine a point of religious pride.  In contrast wine and beer were, if not expressly forbidden, strongly discouraged in Islam.  Though the particular warning says nothing of beverages made from anything beside grapes and grains, a general prohibition was established for all Islam (even if it wasn’t widely enforced as it was Arab scientists who perfected the distillation of wine into brandy.)

Wine continued to grow and thrive throughout Europe with the notable exception of the British Isles.  When colonization of the New World began, England tried to establish viticulture in their colonies.  Unfortunately vitus vinifera would not thrive in such a harsh climate as Virginia and northward.  Furthermore, native American vines, vitus lubrusca, did not (and many still think so) produce palatable wine.  By a strange twist however, vitus lubrusca saved vitus vinifera wine in the 19^th century.  An outbreak of phylloxera decimated European vineyards.  A hybrid with vitus lubrusca root stock (which is naturally phylloxera resistant) was grafted onto the roots of vitus vinifera all over Europe to save the wine industry there.

Though there has always been a wine industry in the United States, the best wine producing regions (save for a few good New England locations) weren’t sufficiently settled until the 1850’s through the 1890’s.  Even then it took along time before the American wine making industry came into its own and was well regarded by the rest of the world.  Not until the early 1970’s did west coast wine makers start producing wines that were considered excellent on the world stage.  Today all 50 states (including Alaska apparently) produce wine.  Within the last decade or so, the preference for wine has matched or started to outpace the preference for beer and spirits.  This has a few major benefits:  More wine of a high quality will be produced locally which will be cheaper and easier to acquire.  The health benefits of wine (in moderation) have been proven, especially in helping to prevent heart disease.

Data, information and knowledge are the most important resources to many businesses today.  Though often used interchangeably, they are distinct and separate.  More importantly, the distinctions between these are subjective, based upon business requirements.

Data are raw facts; they are not useful in making decisions.  They are the numbers that make up sales, metrics, etc.  The addition of some meta-data (data about the data) can make them easier to use and comprehend, but for them to be useful they must be converted into information.

Information is collected data, organized and interpreted into something that can aide in the decision making process.  A chart comparing sales data from multiple regions across time could be a type of information used to make a decision.  A chart showing overall unit test coverage per line of code might be another example of data.

Knowledge is the ability to turn data into information and apply said information.  An individual may be presented with data showing the performance metrics for a piece of software.  They cannot transform that data into information for a decision maker if they do not know what GHz represents.  More over information is useless if a decision maker cannot apply it to a real situation.

As previously noted, these terms are subjective.  Data for one person may be perfectly valid information for someone with a higher degree of expertise.  Knowledge may allow two individuals to extrapolate two completely different sets of information for the same data.

Example:

Data = 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34…

For some people this may mean nothing at all.  In case you are one of those people, here is some knowledge.  This is the Fibonacci sequence and it is made by adding one number to the next number, i.e., 1 + 1 = 2 + 1 = 3 + 2 = 5 + 3 = 8, etc.  Two different people might extrapolate the following information from this data.

Person 1:  The ratio of each successive pair of numbers in the series quickly converges on 1.61804. . . , as 5 divided by 3 is 1.666…, and 8 divided by 5 is 1.60.  This value is called phi.

Person 2: This pattern shows the ideal growth of a population in gendered reproduction with one living offspring per gestational cycle.  An example of this is rabbit populations.

The first piece of information might be useful to a mathematician and the second to a farmer, though the average person may still think of the information as data without more knowledge.

What does this ultimately mean?  Using this knowledge about data, information and knowledge a person can begin analyzing the data being collected by an organization to determine what information is needed, what data supports that information and what knowledge is required to coordinate data and information.  Form there IS is born in the realm of data management.

The history of western civilization is a history closely related to beer.  What?

While there are no written documents chronicling the discovery of beer, it was highly significant to the creation of western society as we know it.  So here is a quick history of beer in hopefully less than a page, no fluff, just facts.

Pre-literate humans were probably hunter-gathers for the majority of their history.  In Mesopotamia they followed wild game and harvested wild fruits, nuts and grains that grew abundantly in the Fertile Crescent.  Grains have the happy property that when they are dried they can be stored for a long time (years.)  For the average person to successfully eat and process grain it needs to be ground down.  Some people harvested grain and between harvest and drying the grain got wet and began to sprout.  What they discovered after drying grain that had sprouted was that the grain was sweeter than before.  This is because a diastase enzyme is released that breaks up the complex carbohydrates in grain into simple sugars.  (This process is still necessary to make beer today from whole grain.)  It wasn’t long before people were making a sort of gruel or porridge from the grain.  Adding more water and boiling heat has several benefits.  Virtually all bacteria will die after 4 minutes boil.  Boiled grains are easier to consume because they get softer (easier on the teeth.)  Boiling breaks down even more of the complex carbohydrates into simple sugars.  This process is the basis of all beer.

The gruel or porridge would have been stored in woven baskets or animal skins.  If allowed to stand open, wild yeasts (which are practically omnipresent in temperate environs) will infiltrate the gruel.  In a few days the gruel will become frothy and pleasantly intoxicating.  (Suspensions of yeast are also one of the best sources for Vitamin B in the Neolithic period.)  Over time, using the same vessels to make beer improved the quality.  This made people believe that there was something magical about beer.  In reality heartier yeasts survived and multiplied in the vessel and got stuck in cracks, nooks, crannies etc.  The next time liquid was added these yeasts would colonize the beer first preventing too many wild yeasts from imparting an off taste.  So that is how beer was discovered.  What is its significance to society?

In Mesopotamia and Egypt, settled agriculture led to the development of cities.  For the first time some people did not have to be involved in food production, which allowed for the rise of a class of priests who took payments to appease the gods in the form of bread and beer.  The priests started public works projects and paid the workers in bread and beer.  The need to maintain records of who was paid and how much was one of the key factors in the development of writing.  Water supplies usually became fouled very quickly near human settlements, beer it generally much safer to drink.  In Egypt and Mesopotamia bread and beer were euphemisms for good health, wealth and happiness.  In the Epic of Gilgamesh (one of the oldest pieces of recorded literature) the warrior Enkidu was not considered a man (though he could speak and was formed like a really hairy man) until he’d had sex and drank beer and eaten bread.  Once he had done those things he “became” a man in the eyes of the Mesopotamians.  In Egypt, Osiris saved mankind from the wrath of Hathor by getting her drunk and making her forget her mission to destroy all mankind.

Hooray Beer!

Source:  Mostly from the first two chapters of A History of the World in Six Glasses, by Tom Standage

I had this crazy idea that I think will really bake your noodle.  I’ve been reading about quantum mechanics lately.  One of the things about quantum mechanics is that it is almost completely counterintuitive.  In out macro world generally things are just that thing, or so the appear.  Your desk is a desk, your car keys are your car keys.  Rarely, however, is your bowling ball a bowling ball and some radio waves.  This is the case in the quantum physics.  Photons are particles and waves, electrons are particles and waves.  Some people may read this and think, “That’s stupid.”  I totally agree, but experimentation has more or less proved it to be the case.

So here are a few quantum mechanical principles I need to quickly introduce before going on with my noodle bake.  I already talked about particle wave duality; there is also entanglement, superposition and multiple dimensions.

Entanglement is when two particles are connected irrespective of space.  In short two particles are created.  When they are created they have certain properties, one such property is called spin.  No matter how far apart they are the spin of one particle is linked to the spin of its entangled particle.  If we have control of one particle and do something to change its state the other entangled particle immediately changes.  Even if these particles are hundreds, thousands, millions of miles separated, the change happens immediately.  This means that what ever device causes these two particles to be entangled can move faster than light.  Einstein just got p0wnd.

Superposition is when one particle exists wholly in one place and wholly in another at the same time.  What!  Yeah, build yourself an interferometer you can see it in action.  Or give IBM a call, their quantum computer works on superposition.

Multiple dimensions are, as one might suspect, dimensions besides the four in which we live.  There is some speculation that may soon be proved by the particle accelerator at CERN that there could be 10 or 11 dimensions.  Physicists suspect that gravitons, if they exist escape very quickly into other dimensions, thus the comparatively low effect of gravitons on matter.

Here comes the switch up.  What is a ghost?  As a quick disclaimer I’m not factoring in any explanations that can’t be tested with current science.  I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes or give preference to any particular explanation; this is just a random idea I had and decided to blog about it.

So dig on the following scenario.  The human eye is little more than a fancy photon detector, more than that it can only pick up photons at a very specific wavelength.  So, if a human sees a ghost, they are detecting either photons being reflected from the ghost, or photons being emitted from the ghost.  Because ghosts are reported to be visible in the dark, let us assume that the ghost is emitting photons.  In order to make this really scientific we need multiple independent observers, and if one of those observers where something like a video camera, without imagination, emotion or agenda, more the better.

So here is the theory.  Ghosts could be energy sources that are passing back through our dimension from another dimension.  I’m making a fairly big leap here but assume some person walked through a room some time in the past.  As they walked through the room light was absorbed and excited some atoms in the individual’s body.  These excited atoms re-emitted some of this radiation as photons.  Typically this wouldn’t happen, but for whatever reason these photons escaped into another dimension.  These dimensions are strange things that can warp and loop back on one another.  Anywho, sometime in the future these particles come back into our dimension and are absorbed by our eyes and camera.  Because they appear to take the form of a human who is probably dead, we freak out.  Or maybe the individual emits an entangled pair of photons, one of which escapes into another dimension and the other stays in the current dimension.  Because time is different in these other dimensions some effect on the photon in the past causes a change that forces the photon in the future back into our dimension and…  instant ghost.  OR…  Ghosts are superpositions of photons coming of a person in the past that aren’t located in two places at the same time, but instead are located in two times at the same place.

I don’t know, what do you think?

• Reading other people’s poetry can be fun. It can stir up emotions and cause people to feel connected with the writer, society or nature. Reading other people’s code sucks. It usually elicits squinty looks at your monitor mumbling about the need to comment this trash code and thinking the writer is a moron.
• Poetry uses literary devices like metaphor, simile and hyperbole, code doesn’t. Example: “I wandered lonely as a cloud…” is an acceptable beginning of a poem. These opening line seems to lack a certain poetic nature.


import com.weather.nebulous
import com.travel.modes


public class I extends Cloud {
public static void main( String[] args )
{
Wander wandered = new Wander( lonely );
JOptionPane.showMessageDialog( null, wandered.toString );


System.exit( 0 );
}
}

• Poetry can use every aspect of spoken/written language. Code uses a highly specified sub-set of written language only. Included in spoken languages are verb tenses, adverbs, prepositions, interjections, pronouns, conjunctions, etc. What is wrong with chunk of code?

quickly import com.parts_of_speech
boldy import com.where.no.man.has.gone.before


public class Foo will extend Bar {


public static void main ( Them[] args )!
{
int x = 10;
int i = 0;
if ( x > i )
{
Test test = new Test;
i++
however if ( x < it )
{
system.out.println test.wasString;
it next to x, but !above || below;
}
}
}
}

I could think of some other reasons, but for now I think the “code poetasters” have been sufficiently p0wn’d.

Many people who are products (victims) of the United States’ compulsory education system have had a similar experience. When asked “What was your high school history teacher’s name?” A lot of people reply with the same answer. “Coach.” I’m not certain what draws athletics and history together in the public school system, but I suspect it is a profound misunderstanding of history as a scholarly pursuit. What follows is a clear, and hopefully concise, explanation of the study of history for those who are or were disinclined toward this particular art.

It is helpful to briefly say what history is not. History is not the memorization of dates, significant events, and famous people. Knowing these facts is useful but more accurately belong to historiography (The principles, theories, or methodology of scholarly historical research and presentation.)

History is the study of primary sources for the purpose of understanding how, when and why something happened. For those unfamiliar with the study of history, a primary source is something (usually in written form, but pictures, music, objects d’art and other medium are acceptable for study) created by a person with firsthand knowledge of the events being studied. There are also secondary sources. Secondary sources are what seem to be studied most often in high school. A secondary sources is something created by a person with indirect knowledge of an event. The most common example is a history text book. These are written and compiled by historians who did not witness the actual events, but instead studied the events and presented a synopsis.

Given the previous definition, a good study of history can’t be accomplished without the corresponding primary sources. It is possible to gain an understanding of the events, but a true study of history is impossible. This is not to say that an understanding of the events is bad. A good historian should know the current scholarship on any period or event he might be studying. It is also important to understand that nothing happens in a vacuum. Secondary source information can be used to gain an understanding of the socio-political/cultural milieu.

Here are some examples of primary source documents that might be interesting in general. Carlo Levi’s Christ Stopped at Eboli, is the account of a communist sympathizer sent into “internal exile” in southern Italy during the rise of the fascists. Julius Caesar’s The Conquest of Gaul, is Caesar’s account of his successful campaigns against the Gauls. Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s The Motorcycle Diaries. These are all narratives and should be easier to read. For the braver souls consider the following: The Federalist Papers, The Long Telegram, Magna Charta and Summa Theologica.

Of course there are some great secondary sources that present both the facts and the authors’ interpretation. Here are some of the classics. Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, is an epic whose name says it all. I don’t recommend reading this from cover to cover but it is great as a reference or for random Roman tidbits. Tom Standage’s The History of the World in 6 Glasses, recounts world history and how it was changed by the discovery/invention of beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and cola.

One final note; there are more and less scholarly works. Good scholarly works will cite sources and usually contain footnotes/endnotes and a bibliography. Scholarly work should focus on objective realities as opposed to subjectively judging people, events, cultures, etc.