In American whisky making, it’s common for distillers to use some of the fermented grain in the mash—before it goes into the still—to mix in with the next batch to be fermented. That portion is called the “backset,” and the whole process is called “sour mash,” just like it says on the bottles. The practice began in the 1800s, probably as a way to keep the same yeast strain consistent.
in the boardinghouse the justices were staying in, dislocating his shoulder and suffering a mild concussion. As he recovered, he wrote a sweet letter to Polly. “Old men”—Marshall was sixty-eight—“do not get over sprains and hurts quite as quickly as young ones.” He had, he went on, plenty of time on his hands as he recovered, which he spent recalling the episodes of their courtship, over forty years ago: “our little tiffs and makings up.… the lock of hair… all the thousand indescribable but deeply affecting instances of your affection or coldness which constituted for a time the happiness or misery of my life.” They could “never be lost while recollection remains.”
In his Life of Washington, Marshall had described the passage of the Fifth Amendment and its nine fellows. By the end of 1791, Congress had passed and the states had ratified ten amendments. The Ninth and Tenth were general statements about the division of rights and powers among the federal and state governments and the people. The First through the Eighth, by contrast, listed specific prohibitions—no establishment of religion or warrantless searches—and guarantees—freedom of the press, the right to keep and bear arms. The inclusion of this compendium, according to Marshall, had been a matter of political and emotional housekeeping. The “friends” of the government “were anxious to annex to the constitution those explanations and barriers against… possible encroachments… on the liberties of the people which had been loudly demanded, however unfounded… might be the fears by which those demands were suggested.” The Constitution as it left Philadelphia in 1787 was fine, but nervous folk feared imaginary dangers; to please them, Congress drew up the Bill of Rights.
the term executive skills comes from the neurosciences literature and refers to the brain-based skills that are required for humans to execute, or perform, tasks.
One trick almost every distiller I visited tried to play on me was to get me to stick my head into the vat during the final stages of fermentation, when the headspace—the volume of air above the liquid—is a cloud of CO2. Taking a whiff is like sticking a knitting needle up your nose. Too much of it, and you can pass out and fall right into the vat. Fun!)
As different spirits have evolved, they’ve taken on different setups. In Ireland, they use three pot stills to make whisky; in Scotland, it’s two. Clear, light, Puerto Rican rum uses a continuous still, but heavier, darker styles of rum generally use two or three pot stills chained together. Of French brandies, Armagnac is distilled only once in a copper pot still, but cognac twice. Eau de vie is double distilled in a copper pot; aquavit comes off a continuous still.
When the Black Death spread across Europe, from 1347 to 1350, physicians didn’t really have anything to make people feel better besides aqua vitae. So they used them. The French translated aqua vita into eau de vie, and the Dutch called it “burnt wine,” or brandewijn. Exported to England, that got corrupted to “brandy-wine,” and eventually just “brandy.” The Scots started making the stuff out of grains; in Gaelic, they called it “water of life,” usquebaugh, eventually corrupted to “whisky.” By the early 1400s, people were getting addicted to ethanol. Liquor had spread across the world.
You, my friend, have a hangover. Scientists have a more inscrutable name for it: veisalgia, from the Greek word for “pain,” algia, and kveis, a Norwegian word meaning “uneasiness following debauchery.” That sounds about right.
if a child has ADHD, some executive skills will be impaired. Chief among these are response inhibition, sustained attention, working memory, time management, task initiation, and goal-directed persistence.
Ending—neutral zone—new beginning. You need all three phases, and in that order, for a transition to work. The phases don’t happen separately; they often go on at the same time. Endings are going on in one place, in another everything is in neutral zone chaos, and in yet another place the new beginning is already palpable. Calling them “phases” makes it sound as though they are lined up like cubicles. Perhaps it would be more accurate to think of them as three processes and to say that the transition cannot be completed until all three have taken place.
Youngsters with weak task initiation also often have weak sustained attention—not only are they slow to get started on homework, they also are likely to quit before it’s done. These children generally have weak goal-directed persistence. However, we’ve found that if goal-directed persistence is a relative strength, we can encourage the child to use that skill to override his weaknesses in task initiation and sustained attention. These are the kids we can spur on to get their homework handed in consistently if we tell them that they can earn points for handing in homework on time and, once they have enough points, they can buy that video game they’ve been hounding us about.
Outright drunkenness is relatively easy to characterize, even though its symptoms vary from person to person, ranging from volubility to introspection, excitement to sadness. Concentration and coordination go out the window; maybe you slur your words. You get tired. You try to put your elbow on the bar and miss. That’s what happens when you have around 17 millimoles of ethanol per liter of blood, or 80 milligrams per every deciliter—sometimes also written “0.08 mg%,” or 0.08 blood alcohol content, the legal standard for intoxication in most parts of the United States. At higher concentrations, ethanol is a classic depressant of the central nervous system. Between 250 and 300 mg/dl, for example, it’s an anesthetic. You’re conked out, insensitive to pain. At 400 mg/dl ethanol is a solvent; that level of ingestion is fatal.
there’s a certain amount of creativity in design, but that’s just one part of a very meaty, robust toolkit. Teaching a designer to be creative without teaching them ethics is akin to a medical school teaching a surgeon how to open up a torso without teaching them how internal organs work. Anyone who wants a career as a designer is going to need to speak about someone’s business and organizational goals. They’re going to have to learn how to analyze data, and how to measure effectiveness. They’re going to have to learn how to build and extend brands and to do goal-driven work. Most of all, they need to learn how to measure the effectiveness of their own work. Not only for the company, but more importantly for society at large. Design is not about expressing yourself. Design is not about following your dream. Design is not about becoming a creative. Design is about keeping people from doing terrible things to other people.
Maybe histamines, the stuff of allergic responses. Red wine, white wine, sake, and beer all contain histamine, though studies go back and forth on which drink has the most. Some say it’s red wine, but others don’t find much difference among the various drinks.
Embrace the Use of Catchphrases: When you look at successful groups, a lot of their internal language features catchphrases that often sound obvious, rah-rah, or corny. Many of us instinctively dismiss them as cultish jargon. But this is a mistake. Their occasionally cheesy obviousness is not a bug—it’s a feature. Their clarity, grating to the outsider’s ear, is precisely what helps them function. The trick to building effective catchphrases is to keep them simple, action-oriented, and forthright: “Create fun and a little weirdness” (Zappos), “Talk less, do more” (IDEO), “Work hard, be nice” (KIPP), “Pound the rock” (San Antonio Spurs), “Leave the jersey in a better place” (New Zealand All-Blacks), “Create raves for guests” (Danny Meyer’s restaurants). They’re hardly poetry, but they share an action-based clarity. They aren’t gentle suggestions so much as clear reminders, crisp nudges in the direction the group wants to go.
