Category Archives: Uncategorized

Nobel Vintage

Fundamental Physics Prize Co-Winner Sells No Wine Before Its Time

Brian Schmidt is the world’s only vintner with a Nobel Prize in physics, specializing in pinot noir because the climate and soil (or terroir) is especially well suited for that varietal. He and is wife own a four-star winery called Maipenrai (Thai for “It’s all right”) in Sutton, New South Wales, near Canberra.

Fascism and capital punishment

Mussolini’s Secret Weapon: Castor Oil is an interesting sidelight on history. It includes something in particular for modern Americans to think about:

In the years from the March of Rome, 1922 to Italy’s foolish entry into WW2 10 June 1940 sixty five men were executed in Fascist Italy (there were also a dozen or so extra legal killings). In modern Texas (with a population over half the size of 1930s Italy) twenty to thirty individuals are executed a year.