As those of us who’ve seen the movie Somm or the TV series Uncorked will attest, there is an organization called the Court of Master Sommeliers which offers restaurant wine stewards a number of ranks leading up to Master Sommelier, a rank which will guarantee the winners a well-paid job at a posh restaurant. The only hurdle is […]

NASA— or maybe just a coupla scientists staying up late drinking— have looked at a new map of gamma-ray sources discovered by the Fermi Gamma-Ray Telescope and begun plotting new constellations based on popular culture.  The list includes the Hulk and Godzilla, as well as Einstein and the Eiffel Tower. This is particularly appropriate for the […]

One of the joys of reading contemporary literary fiction is enjoying the wealth of close observation that literary fiction demands.  Close observation, done right, is delightful, but you have to hope that whatever is being observed is worth the effort, and so often it isn’t, as (for example) when the subject is adultery among the […]

Last autumn we decided to install solar panels on our home.  We got bids from three solar companies, but SolarCity’s bid was so much lower than the others that I never even went back to the others to see if they could put in a competing bid. Installation was delayed because we needed to replace […]