I think AC is immune to all pressure effects.... don't you remember the time that AC escaped from the nazis by scuba diving out of a torpedo tube at 180 meters depth?
Europeans also get taxed into oblivion and have to pay tons for a million different little licenses and fees before they can pick their own noses, so it all evens out.
Did you know in Belgium you need a license to golf? I shit you not.
Knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom are all different things. You can be intelligent about math without knowledge or wisdom because it's a pure abstraction. You can be knowledgeable about geology and have no idea what to do when you get in a voting booth. Being 'bright' does not, as you infer and inveigh, make a good citizen.
The only way to get there is with a serious and objective education in the humanities, which no longer occurs outside of some private and home schools. That too is in some degree only a stopgap for the wisdom that must be gained through life experience, which is currently undermined if not end-run by state-schools' self-esteem for its own sake nonsense and minimization of the ethics of competition etc.
Momokawa's domestics are... serviceable. Have you had any of Momokawa's imports though? They make a nigori genshu that will blow your mind... though it can be an acquired taste since it's so yeasty it's almost like liquid bread.
Granted I've never been to the ATL, but I've been to Savannah and if I can find decent nihonshu and mead there, Atlanta must have something... Google-fu:
Apparently there is a local meadery that has a fair amount of distribution in Atlanta: Monk's Mead. I've never heard of them before let alone had any, but that's how you build experience. I'm from the Seattle area (though I don't live there anymore sadly) and one of my favorite meaderies turned out to be a couple hours drive to the north, Sky River Mead in Skykomish.
There are couple stores that have nihonshu selection that I can find (based on this), namely Buford Farmer's Market and Tower Wines and Spirits. I can't tell anything about their selection from their sites, but *shrug*.
Also there is apparently a sushi place with a sake menu more expansive than 'generic hot sake': Starfish. They have Rihaku's dreamy clouds which I would definitely recommend as a refined introduction to nigorizake.
OMG mead is indeed awesome... what's your favorite meadery? You ever had Die Hochland Imker single-source lime flower mead from Austria? Hard to find, but wow... sublimely delicate citrus-y ambrosia.
As far as finding Nihonshu... if you're anywhere near Seattle Uwajimaya is a good place, as is Sake Nomi (and for mead and cider you can't beat Full Throttle Bottles). San Francisco has TrueSake run by Beau Timken (who's probably the foremost gaijin Nihonshu expert after John Gautner). Other parts of the country... meh, I don't know other than you might get lucky at an H-Mart. (At the very least H-Marts are really into umeshu whether mixed with Nihonshu or 100% fermented ume.)
Online there is SakeSocial (which partnered with Beau Timken), but I don't really like their selection. There are other more general online alcohol purveyors that do Nihonshu but I haven't used them so cannot provide any meaningful recommendation.
I said I thought Takara's US product was mediocre, hardly a ringing endorsement.
Shipping is rather important, especially during the summer. If it goes unrefrigerated through high temps it can be damaged. So, you do probably get the "best" US Gekkeikan has to offer...
But you talk of a price effect? You simply lack experience. I've had dozens if not more than hundred different brews, and I know the history and methodologies behind the brewing. If you're not interested in taking advice from somebody with broader experience and deeper knowledge, it's your loss.
You only drink it hot? Are you aware that WW2 and rice rationing are over no longer necessitating a practice that is Chinese in origin? (Though it came originally from a mindset that hot things were healthier than cold things, in WW2 it was a common practice because rice rationing decreased Nihonshu quality and the only way it could be tolerated was through increasing the temperature to mask the flaws.)
Granted, not all Nihonshu is intended to be consumed cold either, and usually the brewer will include a recommendation on serving temperature to achieve the specific flavor profile he designed. So I have to ask, have you ever even had a good cold kimoto or yamahai? That's some smooth complexity...
Although it doesn't really add anything to say so, as a 'sake geek' I have to say it's pathetic that the discussion on this topic so far is more than half about how the summary was worded and less than half about, you know, sake! (Nihonshu)
I guess if you're just a hipsterish yuppie maybe. I drink good things because they're good. If I knew a US producer who was as good as Bunraku or Rihaku or something, I'd buy all the time.
Domestic Gekkeikan and SCB are crap. Takara USA is mediocre. It's all personal taste, so if you can float your boat on the cheapest, most generic and readily available domestically produced Nihonshu, in some strange way I envy you.
However 100% of the people I've talked to who've tried "sake" and left with an impression that ranged from unimpressed to disgusted were those exposed to those domestic products. I've given people who thought they hated sake some awesome imports (like Bunraku's Nihonjin no Wasuremono, sweet jesus), and they completely flipped opinions. Americans are not going to develop a love of Nihonshu when the first things they're given are the equivalents of Budweiser and Coors.
Also, though it's a tad ironic to mention in a thread spawned by a 'kura' in Texas, don't buy domestic. A lot of the mass produced crap from Gekkeikan, Sho Chiku Bai, etc. (the Budweiser and Coors et al of Nihonshu) is made in the US and even their own employees admit they'd never serve what they make in the US to Japanese people. Now maybe this Texan company is inspired enough to worth trying, but in general, buy imported.
ALSO: Nihonshu is not wine! It doesn't age well (by and large, there are special exceptions), so if it's older than ~18 months do not buy (imports sometimes are dated in the Japanese imperial calendar which is annoying and I still haven't learned it). If you see somebody who doesn't know what they're doing selling namazake off a shelf at room temperature (I've seen this!) DO NOT BUY! Namazake is unpastuerized, must be refridgerated at all times, and should be consumed within 3 months.
While I think he gave himself an out in the specification/qualification of 'first year student', there's a degree of hypocrisy in that vs. this. (Specifically after the 4 minute mark where he basically says you can't properly explain certain things in physics through intuitive metaphors.)
What the article discusses is the age of a rock formation that appears to have been caused by bacterial activity, not any direct structural remnant of the bacteria themselves.
I was going to say more or less the same thing. Modern bacteria have completely different metabolisms, internal and external structures and materials from early anaerobic prokaryotes. To say that bacteria stopped evolving from that state would be deliberately ignorant/obtuse (since you'd essentially have to argue that animal life doesn't exist).
It's not really a good analogy because the steps taken by the DoD following Pearl were substantive to addressing what actually happened. The US military is exceedingly better prepared to handle a preemptive strike than before Pearl, but the National Security infrastructure is an empty gesture. It doesn't substantively prepare for future attacks, but it does act as a power grab disenfranchising the simple citizenry.
One man's perspective, tinged with his own political bias. Never mind that there were others who served right alongside him who drew different conclusions from the same experiences.
Besides which, you're grossly missing the point. We're not talking about what any given person thinks about US foreign policy, but about why the US military has kept higher force numbers and more modern equipment. The military from the end of the Civil War to World War 2 was pretty low key in both equipment and numbers (with a brief exception on the latter during WWI for obvious reasons). It was this weakness that was targeted at Pearl Harbor, and it was a weakness recognized and never forgotten by successive strategists. As such, the US is probably the most prepared nation on earth to react against a preemptive strike. You can argue the value of that, or collateral matters (as you attempted to do) such as what all that infrastructure is kept busy doing waiting for the next Pearl, but I think the supremacy of US preparedness is inarguable.
The difference being Eisenhower knew what he was doing. His restraint with regard to DoD policies/procurement etc. were based on a lifetime of deep knowledge and experience. This is quite a different thing from somebody who has an ideological position against the military who has no idea what it needs and what it doesn't, but they're sure they need less of it, you know, because... reasons.
I would love it if somebody with Eisenhower's abilities were in charge again and could intelligently make the armed forces leaner without gutting them. DoD could really use that.
The US military has been shaped by paranoia about a preemptive strike ever since Pearl Harbor. They don't want to be caught a decade behind and short on forces ever again, especially just to salve the conscience of some whiny hippies.
Except that deanklear was largely correct. Post-Vietnam War East Asian geopolitics have been largely about maintaining the status quo at any cost. China needs DPRK to stay afloat because otherwise they're virtually guaranteed to clean up the mess and lose their buffer (a lot of Western pundits don't realize that Korea as a buffer for China is not a Cold War phenomenon, it's been the case since at least Ming/Chosun relations and the Imjin War in the late 16th century). The US wants the Korean peninsula situation to stay the same because they don't want NK to become a full-on Chinese protectorate/territory (ironically the same thing China wants, but for different reasons). Even though both countries want the status quo, they can't be seen to want it. Because both the US and China have been using SK and NK as proxies for over half a century, they must be seen to, at some level, continue to desire the original goals of the arrangement ('unified "free" Korea'). This has been mere theater for something like three decades, and actually both sides have more contingencies for preventing the "goal" than anything else.
"Control" and "power" are not the same things. Really the most the US wants is leverage in developing situations in Asia. A lot of nations in East Asia are very interested in close-ish ties with the US as a counterbalance to Chinese influence/intimidation, and this has largely been successful in averting crises in the region and/or Chinese aggression in the South China Sea or the Taiwan Straight. (Though occasionally you'd have political players who didn't really get the dynamic like Chen Shui-bian who tried to use US support as a skirt to hide behind while he would repeatedly poke China with a metaphorical stick. Even though personally I'm pro-Taiwan independence and more or less pro-DPP, President Chen was really reckless and ultimately not productive.)
Being in one or another major nation's sphere of influence has consequences (both good and bad) for their respective trade relationships. However these remain rational actors and as such believe they are making net positive (or least negative) gains in whatever relationships they are pursuing, so I'm not laying awake at night.
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Internet Explorer? You mean that browser that statistically/demographically most people don't even use anymore?
I think AC is immune to all pressure effects.... don't you remember the time that AC escaped from the nazis by scuba diving out of a torpedo tube at 180 meters depth?
Europeans also get taxed into oblivion and have to pay tons for a million different little licenses and fees before they can pick their own noses, so it all evens out.
Did you know in Belgium you need a license to golf? I shit you not.
Knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom are all different things. You can be intelligent about math without knowledge or wisdom because it's a pure abstraction. You can be knowledgeable about geology and have no idea what to do when you get in a voting booth. Being 'bright' does not, as you infer and inveigh, make a good citizen.
The only way to get there is with a serious and objective education in the humanities, which no longer occurs outside of some private and home schools. That too is in some degree only a stopgap for the wisdom that must be gained through life experience, which is currently undermined if not end-run by state-schools' self-esteem for its own sake nonsense and minimization of the ethics of competition etc.
Momokawa's domestics are... serviceable. Have you had any of Momokawa's imports though? They make a nigori genshu that will blow your mind... though it can be an acquired taste since it's so yeasty it's almost like liquid bread.
You've probably never even had good sake, especially since all you've had is the mass-produced swill they sling at strip mall sushi holes.
I could probably out oenophile you too.
Apparently I messed up a tag, I meant to parenthetically link to this as a source.
Granted I've never been to the ATL, but I've been to Savannah and if I can find decent nihonshu and mead there, Atlanta must have something... Google-fu:
Apparently there is a local meadery that has a fair amount of distribution in Atlanta: Monk's Mead. I've never heard of them before let alone had any, but that's how you build experience. I'm from the Seattle area (though I don't live there anymore sadly) and one of my favorite meaderies turned out to be a couple hours drive to the north, Sky River Mead in Skykomish.
There are couple stores that have nihonshu selection that I can find (based on this), namely Buford Farmer's Market and Tower Wines and Spirits. I can't tell anything about their selection from their sites, but *shrug*.
Also there is apparently a sushi place with a sake menu more expansive than 'generic hot sake': Starfish. They have Rihaku's dreamy clouds which I would definitely recommend as a refined introduction to nigorizake.
OMG mead is indeed awesome... what's your favorite meadery? You ever had Die Hochland Imker single-source lime flower mead from Austria? Hard to find, but wow... sublimely delicate citrus-y ambrosia.
As far as finding Nihonshu... if you're anywhere near Seattle Uwajimaya is a good place, as is Sake Nomi (and for mead and cider you can't beat Full Throttle Bottles). San Francisco has TrueSake run by Beau Timken (who's probably the foremost gaijin Nihonshu expert after John Gautner). Other parts of the country... meh, I don't know other than you might get lucky at an H-Mart. (At the very least H-Marts are really into umeshu whether mixed with Nihonshu or 100% fermented ume.)
Online there is SakeSocial (which partnered with Beau Timken), but I don't really like their selection. There are other more general online alcohol purveyors that do Nihonshu but I haven't used them so cannot provide any meaningful recommendation.
I said I thought Takara's US product was mediocre, hardly a ringing endorsement.
Shipping is rather important, especially during the summer. If it goes unrefrigerated through high temps it can be damaged. So, you do probably get the "best" US Gekkeikan has to offer...
But you talk of a price effect? You simply lack experience. I've had dozens if not more than hundred different brews, and I know the history and methodologies behind the brewing. If you're not interested in taking advice from somebody with broader experience and deeper knowledge, it's your loss.
You only drink it hot? Are you aware that WW2 and rice rationing are over no longer necessitating a practice that is Chinese in origin? (Though it came originally from a mindset that hot things were healthier than cold things, in WW2 it was a common practice because rice rationing decreased Nihonshu quality and the only way it could be tolerated was through increasing the temperature to mask the flaws.)
Granted, not all Nihonshu is intended to be consumed cold either, and usually the brewer will include a recommendation on serving temperature to achieve the specific flavor profile he designed. So I have to ask, have you ever even had a good cold kimoto or yamahai? That's some smooth complexity...
Although it doesn't really add anything to say so, as a 'sake geek' I have to say it's pathetic that the discussion on this topic so far is more than half about how the summary was worded and less than half about, you know, sake! (Nihonshu)
I guess if you're just a hipsterish yuppie maybe. I drink good things because they're good. If I knew a US producer who was as good as Bunraku or Rihaku or something, I'd buy all the time.
They're in English dictionaries and are considered valid words in English, even if they are loan words.
Domestic Gekkeikan and SCB are crap. Takara USA is mediocre. It's all personal taste, so if you can float your boat on the cheapest, most generic and readily available domestically produced Nihonshu, in some strange way I envy you.
However 100% of the people I've talked to who've tried "sake" and left with an impression that ranged from unimpressed to disgusted were those exposed to those domestic products. I've given people who thought they hated sake some awesome imports (like Bunraku's Nihonjin no Wasuremono, sweet jesus), and they completely flipped opinions. Americans are not going to develop a love of Nihonshu when the first things they're given are the equivalents of Budweiser and Coors.
Also, though it's a tad ironic to mention in a thread spawned by a 'kura' in Texas, don't buy domestic. A lot of the mass produced crap from Gekkeikan, Sho Chiku Bai, etc. (the Budweiser and Coors et al of Nihonshu) is made in the US and even their own employees admit they'd never serve what they make in the US to Japanese people. Now maybe this Texan company is inspired enough to worth trying, but in general, buy imported.
ALSO: Nihonshu is not wine! It doesn't age well (by and large, there are special exceptions), so if it's older than ~18 months do not buy (imports sometimes are dated in the Japanese imperial calendar which is annoying and I still haven't learned it). If you see somebody who doesn't know what they're doing selling namazake off a shelf at room temperature (I've seen this!) DO NOT BUY! Namazake is unpastuerized, must be refridgerated at all times, and should be consumed within 3 months.
While I think he gave himself an out in the specification/qualification of 'first year student', there's a degree of hypocrisy in that vs. this. (Specifically after the 4 minute mark where he basically says you can't properly explain certain things in physics through intuitive metaphors.)
What the article discusses is the age of a rock formation that appears to have been caused by bacterial activity, not any direct structural remnant of the bacteria themselves.
I was going to say more or less the same thing. Modern bacteria have completely different metabolisms, internal and external structures and materials from early anaerobic prokaryotes. To say that bacteria stopped evolving from that state would be deliberately ignorant/obtuse (since you'd essentially have to argue that animal life doesn't exist).
It's not really a good analogy because the steps taken by the DoD following Pearl were substantive to addressing what actually happened. The US military is exceedingly better prepared to handle a preemptive strike than before Pearl, but the National Security infrastructure is an empty gesture. It doesn't substantively prepare for future attacks, but it does act as a power grab disenfranchising the simple citizenry.
One man's perspective, tinged with his own political bias. Never mind that there were others who served right alongside him who drew different conclusions from the same experiences.
Besides which, you're grossly missing the point. We're not talking about what any given person thinks about US foreign policy, but about why the US military has kept higher force numbers and more modern equipment. The military from the end of the Civil War to World War 2 was pretty low key in both equipment and numbers (with a brief exception on the latter during WWI for obvious reasons). It was this weakness that was targeted at Pearl Harbor, and it was a weakness recognized and never forgotten by successive strategists. As such, the US is probably the most prepared nation on earth to react against a preemptive strike. You can argue the value of that, or collateral matters (as you attempted to do) such as what all that infrastructure is kept busy doing waiting for the next Pearl, but I think the supremacy of US preparedness is inarguable.
The difference being Eisenhower knew what he was doing. His restraint with regard to DoD policies/procurement etc. were based on a lifetime of deep knowledge and experience. This is quite a different thing from somebody who has an ideological position against the military who has no idea what it needs and what it doesn't, but they're sure they need less of it, you know, because... reasons.
I would love it if somebody with Eisenhower's abilities were in charge again and could intelligently make the armed forces leaner without gutting them. DoD could really use that.
The US military has been shaped by paranoia about a preemptive strike ever since Pearl Harbor. They don't want to be caught a decade behind and short on forces ever again, especially just to salve the conscience of some whiny hippies.
Except that deanklear was largely correct. Post-Vietnam War East Asian geopolitics have been largely about maintaining the status quo at any cost. China needs DPRK to stay afloat because otherwise they're virtually guaranteed to clean up the mess and lose their buffer (a lot of Western pundits don't realize that Korea as a buffer for China is not a Cold War phenomenon, it's been the case since at least Ming/Chosun relations and the Imjin War in the late 16th century). The US wants the Korean peninsula situation to stay the same because they don't want NK to become a full-on Chinese protectorate/territory (ironically the same thing China wants, but for different reasons). Even though both countries want the status quo, they can't be seen to want it. Because both the US and China have been using SK and NK as proxies for over half a century, they must be seen to, at some level, continue to desire the original goals of the arrangement ('unified "free" Korea'). This has been mere theater for something like three decades, and actually both sides have more contingencies for preventing the "goal" than anything else.
"Control" and "power" are not the same things. Really the most the US wants is leverage in developing situations in Asia. A lot of nations in East Asia are very interested in close-ish ties with the US as a counterbalance to Chinese influence/intimidation, and this has largely been successful in averting crises in the region and/or Chinese aggression in the South China Sea or the Taiwan Straight. (Though occasionally you'd have political players who didn't really get the dynamic like Chen Shui-bian who tried to use US support as a skirt to hide behind while he would repeatedly poke China with a metaphorical stick. Even though personally I'm pro-Taiwan independence and more or less pro-DPP, President Chen was really reckless and ultimately not productive.)
Being in one or another major nation's sphere of influence has consequences (both good and bad) for their respective trade relationships. However these remain rational actors and as such believe they are making net positive (or least negative) gains in whatever relationships they are pursuing, so I'm not laying awake at night.