What’s the difference between an amateur and a professional? You might say that the latter is someone who’s paid to practice a given skill, while the former engages in it purely for love of the thing (that’s the etymology of the word, after all), though non-monetary gratification might be a better way to describe it.…
All posts in September 2024
Wine at the High End
Wine can be high-priced, high-falutin’, even high-minded. But the kind of loftiness that matters most – at least as far as the cultivation of the wine vine is concerned – has a more earthbound, geo-location kind of vibe, involving two commonplace, readily-comprehended concepts: altitude and latitude. That the two make an anagrammatic pair and sound…
Why It Is What It Is
We long ago settled the question of whether cigarettes are bad for you and whether auto seat belts save lives. While nothing seems more obvious now, it wasn’t always the case. When I was coming up, what is now the settled science was still up in the air. Where it would come down no…