ZGerman's Blog

There were, as usual, several reasons. But the most prominent one is the amount of completely useless comments which appear on engadget. The amount of Apple-related news aside, seemingly every other post turned into some kind of fanboy war in the comments. It just gets old, really, really fast. As a sidenote, I read the actual webpages, rather than via an RSS reader. Call me oldfashioned, but I like it that way. But here is what really sealed the deal for me regarding the comment system: Disemvoweling. When a comment gets flagged as "inappropriate" (read: useless), instead of getting voted down (not really effective imho) or deleted (not a fan of the censoring aftertaste) it simply gets all its vowels stripped out. The offending user is warned and his message is neutered enough to not matter anymore, but still "there". Genius!

... is worth it. In the world of Cognac, XO stands for "Extra Old". Kind of lame, I know. But in terms of quality, it's a really sweet spot in my opinion. For Rémy Martin e.g. there are these levels of quality:

• Rémy Martin Grand Cru — ca. $25/750mL
• Rémy Martin VSOP — ca. $50/750mL
• Rémy Martin Club
• Rémy Martin 1738 Accord Royal
• Rémy Martin XO Spécial — ca. $120/750mL
• Rémy Martin XO Excellence —
• Rémy Martin Extra
• Louis XIII de Rémy Martin
• L'Age D'Or de Rémy Martin

I recently heard about a facebook event called a day without a gay, I believe to protest Proprosition 8 in California. The idea to protest against the result of a public vote is strange in and of itself, assuming the text of the vote was clear (the $30+million raised for and against would indicate it probably was) and no irregularities happen at the voting booths (intimidation to vote a certain way e.g.) I think on issues similar to this, a public referendum is a good way to resolve the conflict democratically. Countries like Switzerland have used this kind of "direct democracy" for a while with reasonable success.

What struck me as interesting though is the concept of "A Day Without X", where X is usually some people group or product. It's a good way for a cause to generate publicity and be heard. However, the actual feasibility is often questionable.

After a hiatus of about a year or so, I have decided to keep a blog again. The reason for this is simple: I'm coming across things that are interesting to me pretty much every day, but if I don't write them down, I will forget them. Life is worth too much to forget about large chunks (particularly the interesting ones). So here I am again, writing something, this time something every day.