Whisk(e)y Men

Most whiskys (the Scottish and English spell the name of the drink without the American “e” in the middle) are blends. Famouse Grouse and the inestimable Johnnie Walker both are; oddly, most single malts are too. What we call single malts today are blends, but from casks of whisky in the same distillery.

Blenders, blending.

Blended whisky was invented by Scots who realized that strong spirits went down smoother mixed with grain alcohol. The Irish, ever slow to change, clung to the stronger spirits and eventually Irish whisky lost ground to blended Scotches. Houses like Dewars and Johnnie Walker lead the revolution, but quickly came up against the same problems anybody who mixes things for a living comes up against: how to keep a consistent product, from bottle to bottle. So the Scottish distillers became expert mixologists also, judging blendable spirits by aroma and palate, adjusting for cost while retaining quality. Master blenders like Tom Aitken of Dewars, David Stewart of William Grant & Sons, and John Ramsay of Famous Grouse became sought-after commodities and honed their skills over decades.

As each blender gets on in years, he turns his craft over to apprentices. Aitken recently turned over the reins to Sophie MacLeod, Ramsay to Gordon Motion, and David Stewart to Brian Kinsman. Stewart, though, won’t retire: he’ll stay on as master blender of The Balvenie, a single malt whisky. The Balvenie is the first single malt to be finished in a separate wooden cask than the one in which it was started. He’s also the man behind the Glenfiddich Solera Reserve, and the blender responsible for choosing and blending the whiskys used in the landmark Glenfiddich 50 Year, an acknowledged masterpiece of the blenders’ art.

Yale: “We Won’t Be Fooled Again.”

An Ivy League degree opens doors around the world, as South Korean art professor Shin Jeong-ah knows: her diploma from Yale University helped her land a job at Dongguk University, in South Korea, and a prestigous museum curatorship. The problem was, Professor Jeong-ah was never a student at Yale. Or, perhaps the problem was that Yale said she was.

In September 2005, Dongguk University forwarded materials from Professor Jeong-ah to Yale, asking the Ivy League university to verify that their potential new hire had, in fact, earned a Yale degree. The materials had been faked but Yale bought it, and sent a letter back confirming Jeong-ah’s degree.

Professor Shin Jeong-ah, center.

As news broke, Yale back-tracked: “I’ve seen the fax that supposedly confirms that Shin earned a degree from Yale, and it bears no resemblance to the letter that [the university] sends when actually confirming someone’s degree,” Yale’s Director of Public Affairs wrote in an e-mail to the Yale Daily News.

Yet, quickly thereafter, that paper reported “the University reviewed its documents and determined it had indeed sent the fax in question.”

An official statement explains: “Responding quickly to what appeared to be a routine request, Yale’s staff mistakenly relied on the letterhead and signature on the purported May 2005 letter.”

In addition to her faked Yale degree, Jeong-ah also provided Dongguk University with her Ph.D. dissertation, “Guillaume Apollinaire: Catalyst for Primativism, for Picabia and Duchamp.” That dissertation was later revealed to have been submitted to the University of Virginia in 1981 by Ekaterini Samaltanou-Tsiakma.

After landing a museum curatorship with her fraudulent credentials, Jeong-ah embezzled nearly $400,000 from the institution, posed for nude photographs, and commenced an affair with a top aide to the President of South Korea. She staunchly maintains her Yale diploma, which is missing the signature of the President of that school, is authentic.

Yale has vowed to tighten up operations.

Finally.

Please excuse the recent absense of frequent posting at this web log; law school finals are too-fast approaching, per usual, and we’re all looking forward to some additional writing time when those are finished.

Wonderful.

Hockey: Dartmouth 6, Harvard 2

Harvard University fell to Dartmouth College in a hockey game for the first time in ten years this past Sunday, by a score of 6 – 2. That same week, Dartmouth built on its momentum to defeat Providence 4 – 2. Other collegiate hockey games happened also, apparently.

Dartmouth hockey.

Environmentalists Repress Dissent

According to e-mails hacked and re-posted on public file sharing sites in Russia, there has been a concerted, concentrated, and organized effort by scientists subscribing to theories of global warming to silence any scholarly opposition.

There are two main schools of thought with regard to climate change: the first is that the planet is heating quickly and that human activity is the biggest, and perhaps only, cause of it. The second is that there is some climate change happening, but the causes, effects, and extent of it are not fully understood. There isn’t enough historical data available to know if any change is the result of recent activity, or historical trends… and if the result of recent activity, then what activity, precisely?

The Wall Street Journal reports that scientists who subscribe to the first, ”imminent doom” theory have threatened to “shut out dissenters and their points of view,” going so far as to disallow peer review of scholarly research by dissenters. Phil Jones, an environmental scientist who believes humans are the only cause of global warming, explained to colleague Michael Mann at Penn State that he would “keep them out somehow.”

University of Alabama scientist John Christy, who has asked scientific organizations to allow dissenting opinions to be published in scholarly journals, is alarmed at the contents of the e-mails: “It’s disconcerting to realize that legislative actions this nation is preparing to take, and which will cost trillions of dollars, are based upon a view of climate that has not been completely scientifically tested.”

If the environmental lobbies and politically correct “scientific” orthodoxies continue to hold sway, it appears that such a view will never have the chance to be completely tested. The overly vocal left won’t allow it.

As much as Rush Limbaugh may shout down cogent left-leaning criticism for the sake of the party line, so too do leftist scientists treat colleagues who criticize what climate researcher Mojib Latif calls “a kind of mafia that is trying to inhibit critical papers from being published.”

Environmentalist methodology.

Author Cahill, at Woodsy Rest

The Wall Street Journal recently reported enduring travel chronicler Tim Cahill, known for his horseback rides across the Mongolian steppes and fruitless searching for the elusive Caspian tiger, does his best composing at rest in a rustic, 500-square-foot cabin in southwest Montanna. The cabin is an hour’s drive from Mr. Cahill’s house in Livingston, Montanna and is hidded year-round by thick trees and an anonymous driveway.

Mr. Cahill, co-founder of Outside magazine and author of the descriptively-titled travel logs “A Wolverine is Eating My Leg” and “Jaguars Ripped My Flesh, spends several months every year holed up in the folksy retreat, writing and relaxing. There are two guest cabins nearby, which are part of his property, and an outhouse; the National Forest Service leases Mr. Cahill the half-acre the buildings sit on for about $2,000 a year. Fewer than 200 other cabins share similar arrangements in the area, and these comprise Mr. Cahill’s neighbors. Winters, an old Monarch stove heats the cabin. Summers, a screen door opens onto a small porch where Mr. Cahill enjoys making barbequed chicken “Simon and Garfunkel style”: with parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.

A little further off the back porch, the Gallatin national forest begins: almost two million square acres of untouched, pristine wilderness which flow eventually into the Greater Yellowstone Wilderness Area. Mr. Cahill’s rambles in this vast woods became the subject of his 2004 book, “Lost In My Own Backyard.” Easily enough accomplished, apparently, when your ”backyard”  is roughly the size of Switzerland.

Tim Cahill, retreatist.

Watering Holes: The Union Oyster House

The oldest continuously operating restaurant in America is The Union Oyster House, in Boston, whose doors have been open, without fail, to customers since 1826. The building it has occupied for those years has stood on Union Street for at least 250 years, originally housing, in 1742, merchant Hopestill Capen’s haberdashery. Union Street was then the farthest-back reach of the Boston waterfront and so English mercantile ships easily docked and unloaded goods directly into Capen’s store for sale.

The Union Oyster House.

 In 1775, Capen’s old store also became the makeshift headquarters to Ebenezer Hancock, first paymaster to the Continental Army, and later to King Louis Phillipe of France, who made a living teaching French to Bostonians in his second-floor apartment while exiled from his country. He reclaimed his crown in 1830, four years after the building became home to Atwood & Bacon’s Oyster House. Proprietors Atwood and Bacon are credited with installing the restaurant’s famous semi-circular oyster bar, at which Daniel Webster sat daily, drinking a tumbler of brandy for every plate of oysters he finished. Webster rarely ate fewer than six plates in a sitting.

The bar.

Since its inception, the Oyster House has had only three owners, and is the better for it. Though not so much as in New York’s McSorley’s (the oldest American tavern), ”progress” is an unwelcome intruder at the Oyster House. The place is New England at its best: spare and functional yet comfortable and elegant, without being gaudy, and excessively nautical in theme. Black Dan’s Pub is an alcove off the back end, named for Daniel Webster and his heavy beard, and the Oyster Bar still stands burnished, pitted, and defiant in the entryway. Upstairs is the Kennedy Booth, named for devoted customer John F. Kennedy. It’s a masculine, timeless place, purposefully so, and much appreciated for it.

Rugby: Dartmouth 50, BC 8

Keeping to its unbeaten streak this past weekend, the Dartmouth Rugby Football Club tallied a handy 50 – 8 victory over the Boston College Eagles in the first match of post-season play. From the match report:

“Boston College opened the match firing with intensity, giving the Big Green everything they could handle at the contact point. Carried by early tries by Charlie Grant ‘10, the Dartmouth side was able to establish a 10-5 lead it would never relinquish. “We kept a lot of pressure on them throughout and a lot of our opportunities came from that pressure… We did a great job supporting each other and we are hoping to keep up that sustained effort to finish out the last week of the season,” said Grant.”

The win means the DRFC will advance from Northeastern Quarterfinals to the Northeastern Semi-Finals, where it will face Syracuse University. A win there will mean both a shot at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, perennial Northeastern champions, and also a guaranteed bid to the national sweet 16 tournament.

The unbeaten DRFC, left.

Coca-Cola Lawyer to K&L Gates

Attorney Ken Glazer has landed at K&L Gates after serving as chief competition counsel to Coca-Cola; Mr. Glazer has also worked as No. 2 at the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Competition.

The anti-trust lawyer is an expert on Section II of the Sherman Anti-trust Act, and expects to see increased litigation in that area in coming years. Legal Bisnow reports Mr. Glazer is anticipating an increased workload in emerging anti-trust practice areas like healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and technology.

Before jumping ship to K&L, Mr. Glazer took a summer vacation to practice yoga.

Ken Glazer with client. Image via Bisnow.

The Honorable Lobbyist

Legal Bisnow reports recently that Ed Mathias, co-founder of the nebulous private equity shop Carlyle Group, described business interests without lobbyists on retainer as “extraordinarily vulnerable.” Mr. Mathias was speaking at a Washington, D.C. event at which Patton Boggs attorney Nick Allard also described lobbying as an “honorable, and increasingly essential, profession.”

Mr. Allard further pointed to a growing demand for lobbying services spurred by ever-more complex government regulation of industry and increased Federal spending; businesses have a lot of government hoops to jump through and a shot at a lot of government money, so large rewards exist for the skilled lobbyist who can help to navigate those hoops in search of that money. Mr. Allard is hoping to do just that, helping clients comply with government stimulus spending disclosure requirements.

Mr. Allard and other lobbyists also criticized President Obama’s anti-lobbyist stance at the event; they note “it’s just not good government to refuse to listen to people who disagree with you.”