Climate change benefits English wine growers now producing high quality sparkling wine

British winemakers credit climate change for boom in bubbly sales

By Anthony Faiola, Published: April 28, 2013

CUCKMERE VALLEY, England — Blessed with soil similar to France’s Champagne region, vineyards in England nevertheless produced decades of low-grade goop that caused nary a Frenchman to tremble. But a Great British fizz boom is underway, with winemakers crediting climate change for the warmer weather that has seemed to improve their bubbly.

Sparkling wine undergoes an early fermentation process at the Ridgeview Wine Estate in East Sussex, England. Warmer summers are producing wines competitive with some from France.
- GRAHAM BARCLAY/BLOOMBERG NEWS

Increasingly hospitable temperatures have helped transplanted champagne grapes such as chardonnay and pinot noir thrive in the microclimates of southern England, touching off a wine rush by investors banking on climate change. Once considered an oxymoron, fine English sparkling wine is now retailing for champagne prices of $45 to $70 a pop. In recent years, dozens of vineyards have

Sparsebundle problems with Apple’s Time Machine & Time Capsule? Here’s an easy fix!

Time Capsule offers automatic backup for your Mac. And it’s a full-featured 802.11n Wi-Fi base station with simultaneous dual-band support in the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands simultaneously. It delivers great performance and range. And it’s easy to set up from your iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, or Mac.

If you’re like me, enjoying the benefits of Apple’s Time Capsule and Time Machine are among the best, of the many wonderful things Apple has done with computer programming.

However, like all things electronic, or computing, not everything always works 100% properly, 100% of the time.

And, while Apple’s OSX is as good, robust and simple an operating system as it is, it’s not without problems.

One of the problems that occurs is with TimeCapsule’s sparsebundles.

The sparsebundle is the name given to the disk image file that is the backup.

Instead of a single big file, a sparse bundle is a bundle (directory) containing

Alabama Striped Bass may set new World Record

Striped bass weighed 70 pounds, and may set new world record.

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Alabama angler’s monstrous striped bass is one for the record books

Wednesday, March 6, 2013 2:07pm PST

By: Pete Thomas, GrindTV.com

Image showing James R. Bramlett and his record striped bass is courtesy of AL.com/Joe Songer

An Alabama resident has reeled in a 70-pound striped bass that shattered a 54-year-old state record and could land the angler in the book of world records for the heaviest striper ever caught in a landlocked fishery.

James R. Bramlett, 65, reeled in the behemoth on the Black Warrior River on Feb. 28.

Bramlett told Joe Songer of AL.com that he credits his wife, Janice, for urging him to go fishing. She was scheduled to

What does Unified Info mean on iPhone?

Among the standard WordPress offerings are statistics on each blog, and corresponding search terms that were used to discover any particular entry. Those are very powerful tools, and in the proper hands, can be effectively utilized.

It’s interesting to read the search terms that often lead to this blog, and to this point, though I have considered opining on some of the more “fascinating” or “peculiar” entries, I shall share something a wee bit less salacious.

In fact, it’s not salacious at all.

One such entry was “what does unified info mean on iPhone“?

First, consider what the word “unified” means.

“Unified” means “to make, or become united, uniform or whole.”

The prefix “uni” means “one.”

By implication, unity, unification, or unified means that exactness is present. There is no variation, or difference.

Things are as one. They are made into one. To unify is to make into one.

New Contact on iPhone – Note the data fields.

New Contact in “Contacts” address book on OSX
Note the data fields.

Sample Contact entry in “Contacts” address book on OSX.

Quite simply put, “Unified Info” on the iPhone means

What do you do just to get over the hump?

This is my 1000th post.

Yaay!

Now, on

Ronald Reagan wrote Op-Ed supporting Gun Control Law the Brady Bill

Why I’m for the Brady Bill

By Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan, in announcing support for the Brady bill yesterday, reminded his audience he is a member of the National Rifle Association

Published: March 29, 1991

“Anniversary” is a word we usually associate with happy events that we like to remember: birthdays, weddings, the first job. March 30, however, marks an anniversary I would just as soon forget, but cannot.

It was on that day 10 years ago that a deranged young man standing among reporters and photographers shot a policeman, a Secret Service agent, my press secretary and me on a Washington sidewalk.

I was lucky. The bullet that hit me bounced off a rib and lodged in my lung, an inch from my heart. It was a very close call. Twice they could not find my pulse. But the bullet’s missing my heart, the skill of the doctors and nurses at George Washington University Hospital and the steadfast support of my wife, Nancy, saved my life.

Jim Brady, my press secretary, who was standing next to me, wasn’t as lucky. A bullet entered the left side of his forehead, near his eye, and passed through the right side of his brain before it exited. The skills of the George Washington University medical team, plus his amazing determination and the grit and spirit of his wife, Sarah, pulled Jim through. His recovery has been remarkable, but he still lives with physical pain every day and must spend much of his time in a wheelchair.

Thomas Delahanty, a Washington police officer, took a bullet in his neck. It ricocheted off his spinal cord. Nerve damage to his left arm forced his retirement in November 1981.

Tim McCarthy, a Secret Service agent, was shot in the chest and suffered a lacerated liver. He recovered and returned to duty.

Still, four lives were changed forever, and all by a Saturday-night special — a cheaply made .22 caliber pistol — purchased in a Dallas pawnshop by a young man with a history of mental disturbance.

This nightmare might never have happened if legislation that is before Congress now — the Brady bill — had been law back in 1981.

Named for Jim Brady, this legislation would establish

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell: “I”m still a Republican,” but “birther” movement “looks down on minorities.”

Honestly, does this surprise anyone?

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Powell slams GOP for ‘dark vein of intolerance’

by Morgan Whitaker
1:48 pm on 01/13/2013

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday that the Republican party is suffering from a “dark vein of intolerance” and that some in the party seem to “look down on minorities.”

Powell pointed to former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s use of the “shuck and jive” phrase in reference to President Obama, calling it a “racial era slave term,” and took on Romney surrogate John Sununu for calling President Obama “lazy.”

“When I see another former governor after the president’s first debate where

Jobs! Jobs! Jobs! Wyoming has plenty. But, where do you live? So homelessness has increased statewide.

Can you say “quixotic”?

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January 12, 2013

In Wyoming, Many Jobs but No Place to Call Home

By JACK HEALY

On a recent night, Tiffany Kipp cooked dinner at the shelter where she and her family are staying. There is a surprising downside to Wyoming’s economic resilience and its 5.1 percent unemployment rate: a sharp rise in homelessness. Tiffany Kipp and her family moved to Wyoming from Southern California, looking for a fresh start. Her husband, Justin, found a job, but they could not afford the high rents in Casper, which has a low vacancy rate. They landed in a shelter. Left, Ms. Kipp cooked dinner on a recent night.
Credit: Matthew Staver for The New York Times

CASPER, Wyo. — After losing everything last year to Southern California’s soured economy, Tiffany Kipp and her family packed up three boxes and a diaper bag and caught a Greyhound bus to Wyoming, their best chance at a fresh start.

They were drawn to Wyoming, where Ms. Kipp has family, by the promise of plentiful jobs and a booming energy sector, and a thin hope of rebuilding their futures on the High Plains. But like a growing number of people here, they ended up on the underside of the boom.

Unable to scrape together enough money for an apartment, the Kipps, who once rented a four-bedroom house north of Los Angeles, bounced from motel rooms to friends’ couches. They ended up in a single room at a shelter run by a local nonprofit organization.

“We lost everything,” said Ms. Kipp, 25, whose husband works for an oil services company. “We needed somewhere to go.”

“We lost everything,” said Ms. Kipp, 25, whose husband works for an oil services company. “We needed somewhere to go.” Left, she and Mr. Kipp prepare their two children, Emily and Payton, for bed in their room at the shelter.
Credit: Matthew Staver for The New York Times

There is a surprising downside to Wyoming’s economic resilience and its 5.1 percent unemployment rate: a sharp rise in homelessness.

As another winter settles in, many people who moved here fleeing foreclosures and chasing jobs in the oil, gas and coal industries now find themselves without a place to live. Apartments are scarce and expensive, and the economy, while strong, is

Corvette: It’s your Daddy’s car

“Hey Dad… can I borrow the ‘Vette?” say few young men.

And the headline is atrocious.

Try instead “Corvette’s New Design Not Just for Successful Plumbers,” or
“Newly Designed Corvette Not Just for Successful Plumbers.”

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Corvette Not Just for Successful Plumbers With New Design

The Chevrolet Corvette, once the coolest of cool rides on Route 66 and the rest of America’s roads, has suffered the cruelest of fates: It’s known as an old man’s toy. Even the head of Chevy marketing acknowledges that too many people see it as the car of “the successful plumber.”

General Motors Co. (GM) is determined to change that.

In two days, Chevrolet will unveil the new Corvette, which so far GM has teased as having a sleeker exterior, a bigger engine and a dramatically improved interior.

GM design chief Ed Welburn this week unfurled a poster on a table at his office in suburban Detroit showing images of the remodeled Corvette along with Stingrays from 1959 and 1963.

“I want this image on every kid’s wall,” he said in advance of the Jan. 13 unveiling of the new car on the eve of the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.

The redesigned Corvette, code-named C7, arrives as

Fit for Human Consumption, or Rat Poison? High Fructose Corn Syrup Continually Indicted in Obesity Epidemic.

Fit for Human Consumption, or Rat Poison? How many foods use High Fructose Corn Syrup? The answer might surprise you. Or, it may not. Originally uploaded by SouthernBreeze

In the last several years, obesity has become a rampant epidemic in the United States. While there are doubtless many causes, it is my opinion that a wholesale change in our dietary practices – and I specifically do not mean to refer to increased portion sizes, consumption or intake – but rather to an ingredient which has become all too common in commercially prepared food… which, if we were honest with ourselves, is most of what we consume.

For example, the majority of Americans do NOT grow their own vegetables, raise their own groceries (meat, dairy, poultry, eggs, pork, etc.), nor do they eat homegrown, locally grown, or even “freshly prepared” vegetables, even if those vegetables were imported to the United States. Consider even pineapples, for example. Once, the exceeding majority of the world’s supply of pineapples were grown in Hawaii. The highest quality pineapples are sold to Japanese markets, where they pay top price for the highest quality fruit. Not so in the United States, where American customers balk at high prices, even if it’s associated with higher quality.

Historically, Hawaii was the world’s largest pineapple producer and source for pineapples. Relatively recently however, rapacious corporate profit seekers abandoned Hawaii for cheaper production (translate “cheap labor” & “no health & safety regulation”), and there now remain only two fresh pineapple operations remaining in Hawaii: one on Maui, and another on Oahu. And that quandary is an entirely separate, yet related, problematic issue.

However, much of what we eat has been commercially processed in volume. And I mean in HUGE volumes! In America’s factory food processors, a fairly common ingredient is