May 2006 - Posts

Wine Nose

A while ago, I bought Le Nez du Vin in order to sharpen my (and my wife's) wine scent / flavor idenfitication skills.  This thing is pretty cool.  It contains all these little vials of fluids which are, basically, the essence of smells that you will run into when drinking wines.  I bought the Master Kit, which contains Red & White scents and the Faults in order to detect bad things like cork and sulphur.  It is a really neat concept.

Unfortunately, we have not put it to good use yet.  So, as a new resolution, I am going to attempt to use it at any time we are tasting a new wine to help identify smells that I can't recognize.

I will post any new observations and see how this goes while I post about wines, in general. 

Here's hoping it helps.
posted by Tom with 45 Comments

New engine design -- Savior of the planet?

OK... this interview with an inventor (found it on Digg), is really cool.  Supposedly, he's invented what seems like an almost perfect engine.  If it was close to April 1st, I would call total bullshit on this, but it's not. 

If any decent percentage of it is close to truth, I want one now.  Not because I am sick of paying so much for gas (I think prices should be forced higher to stop waste), but because it is a cool gadget, and I'm all about cool gadgets :)

It does get a little creepy with the New Age-ish "this will save the world" type statements from the guy, but he's got a dream; I can't fault him for that!
posted by Tom with 466 Comments