"LOUD NOISES!"

As long as people disagree with each other, there will be arguments. And as long as we have the Internet, there will be more arguments than you can shake a mouse at.

(The computer accessory, not the rodent. Unless you’re a terrible person.)

The problem is that what passes as an argument in the age of digital media and cable news isn’t always an argument. Confused?

Well, let’s say that I believe butter pecan is an excellent and delicious ice cream that should be enjoyed by everyone. (Which happens to be true). However, if given the choice, some people would rather eat vanilla ice cream. I feel this is wrong on a gut level, but to convince others, I need to provide reasons. Clearly, some sort of argument is called for.

Here’s one way I could approach it:

Butter pecan is a better ice cream than vanilla, due to the sophistication and complexity of its flavors. Whereas vanilla merely offers a single tone to the tip of your tongue, butter pecan is a veritable orchestra of flavor. One key difference between the diets of humans and lower animals is that while animals almost always consume one single item at a time -- grass, an antelope, etc. -- humans are capable of combining and blending multiple ingredients with multiple flavors. This ability to understand and appreciate complexity is a bedrock of civilization. A single note does not a melody make, and likewise, a single brush stroke doesn’t form a complete painting. To choose butter pecan ice cream is not only to enjoy a better dessert  -- it’s to be more human.

This argument isn’t airtight, and other people could easily disagree with some of my premises. (We're talking about ice cream, for crying out loud.) But it is an active attempt to explain why I believe my position is the correct one. Delivering an argument, even a good one, won’t result in instant victory. It should, however, make your opponent think about what they believe, and come up with a response that deals with your assertions in a substantive way. The end result is that players on both sides of the argument are forced to develop their ideas with increasing complexity, and perhaps even cede certain points, if they must.

Unfortunately, all this complexity can be mentally exhausting. It’s almost, like, you have to think about things. This is where a second strategy comes in. A very popular strategy. This method of argumentation relies on proving something’s badness (or goodness) due to its mere association with a certain time period or group of people, and makes frequent references to either inevitable progress, or an idealized past. The “progressive” version of the argument would go something like this:

Lovers of vanilla ice cream want to send us back to the 1800s with a regressive flavor that reeks of a paternalistic society. In the last few decades, we’ve made strides toward a greater diversity of flavors in our ice cream, but the persistence of the vanilla crowd frequently makes me ashamed to be an ice cream eater. When our almost-certainly-butter-pecan-loving grandchildren look back at this moment in our history, they’ll wonder why it took us so long to give up the hatefully mono-flavored dessert that plagues us today. Stand up for butter pecan. Stand up for the truth.

The tone of this argument suggests that its author is very passionate about something, but doesn’t know why. So, reason is substituted with outrage, in an attempt to disguise the fact that there are no substantive arguments being offered. Rather than trying to attract a strong response from its opponent, the goal of this statement is to make people who agree with it feel righteous, and opponents feel ashamed about their life choices. Arguments like this also tend to be based on a painfully cheapened view of history that can only be accepted if you’ve never studied it.

In other words, it’s not really an argument at all. It’s noise.

I think it’s reasonable to believe that some things people did in ye olden times were wrong. Olden-times-people, like modern-times-people, were a little messed up, and sometimes had bad ideas. However, the very fact that a certain view was held by people in the past doesn’t make it wrong. Conversely, the fact that a certain view was held by people in the past doesn’t make it right.

So, if a liberal tells you that conservatives are wrong because they want take us back to the 1950s, or some other sinister time period, you should politely tell them that this isn’t an argument, and make them restate their case in terms of actual reasoning.

And if a conservative tells you that something is right because our leaders in the 1700s said it was, you should remind them that politicians in the 1700s were still just people, and they would probably be disappointed in such a shoddy argument.

After all, this is the 21st century! People who lean on chronological snobbery or golden age thinking will end up taking us back to the Manchu dynasty. Instead, we should return to the perfection of classical Greece, where reason and virtue reigned on jewel-studded thrones.

And we should all eat more butter pecan ice cream. It rocks in a big way.

In Good Spirits.

I’m not much of a liquor connoisseur.

But I’m definitely a liquor review connoisseur.

Liquor reviews are wonderful, because they are also ridiculous, and written by crazy people.

You see, when I evaluate something, I try to follow the Kind of Baffling First Principle of Reviewable Attributes:

Any object of evaluation shall be evaluated based on properties of an evaluatable nature within said object, with which that object may be evaluated in light of... those properties. Of the object.

For example, a review of an apple might involve references to its levels of crispness and sweetness, because those are actual things your mouth notices when an apple is inside of it.

If, however, I were to compare the apple’s flavor to, say, a rare steak or a garlic-roasted turnip, that would not be acceptable. Those flavors just don’t exist within the context of an apple.

Meanwhile, over in liqourland, such rules of reality are routinely cast aside, allowing the whiskey-soaked elite to craft odes to the distillery’s bounty that soar somewhere between the stratosphere, and Dick Cheney’s armored moon-home.

(Dick Cheney was once our vice president. If you haven’t heard much about him lately, you can probably chalk it up to his residence in said moon-home.)

To get a clearer picture of this phenomenon, let us examine one particular member of the liquor family: American bourbon whiskey.

Bourbon is the stuff you get when you distill alcohol from a corn-majority blend of grains, and let it mellow in new oak barrels for a while. It’s pretty decent, all things considered.

Taste-wise, bourbon is very, well, bourbon-y. It’s about 50% ethyl alcohol, so you have that flavor/burn going on in a big way. The barrel any given bourbon is aged in lends some flavor, usually an oakiness or slight smokiness. (Rhyming!) But basically, we’re not getting too fancy here. This is something good American farmers invented to get drunk on, because it’s sure as heck easier than wine-making, which despite California’s peculiar insistence, is for French people and Bacchus.

Bourbon enthusiasts, however, do not burden themselves with the dull physical reality that has been poured into their thick glass tumblers. As a slightly inebriated Yoda was known to remark, “luminous libations are these, not this crude whisky!”

Hiding beneath the caramel-colored surface of America’s native spirit, true bourbon lovers find... things.

Things like vanilla, cardamom, cinnamon, pepper, leather, grapefruit, toffee, blueberries, mushrooms, orange rind, freshly-baked bread, and, I swear, persimmons.

Freakin’ PERSIMMONS.

To watch these flavors unfold through the written word is like witnessing a delicate ballet I do not yet understand, and likely never will.

Case in point: I recently bought a bottle of Old Grand Dad bourbon, because I wanted to make mint juleps, which in turn was because I wanted to pretend to be a fancy southern person like that guy from Gone with the Wind, or Colonel Sanders. If I were to write my thoughts on this comfortingly-retro-looking bottle of whiskey, they would be roughly as follows:

Old Grand-Dad seems pretty good to me. It didn’t cost very much, which is something I like, as I do not yet have very much money. It doesn’t burn in your throat too much, and it doesn’t have an unpleasant aftertaste. Sometimes, whiskey makes your mouth feel gross, and that wasn’t going on here. Props, Old Grand-Dad.


It made a heckuva julep, which made me feel adequately fancy, although not quite so much as I had hoped. The fanciest southern men I know of have what I refer to as “signature facial hair,” and I feel like this could be a missing piece in the puzzle. Will explore further.


Overall Score: 4 out of 5

If I were a bourbon enthusiast with a website called something like downthewhiskeyriver.com, things would be quite different:

Upon opening the bottle, I was enraptured by the heady aroma that filled my nostrils with pleasuresome vapours. It was like the calm of a field recently soaked by rain -- a well-needed respite from a drought, if I’m not mistaken. Also noted were mixed hints of a cherry pie cooling on a nearby window sill, and rich shampoo lather. After the first sip, I detected a robust flavor, like an entire grilled chicken stuffed with pine-nuts and quinoa. This was followed by the rich sweetness of a fudge-covered brownie, and the tart sting of a salt-encrusted lime. The viscosity was excellent, with a mouthfeel akin to a fresh ocean surf foaming betwixt my teeth. On the throat, I felt the soothing mellowness of a tiny cherub and his angelic cohorts massaging my uvula with gifted hands. The finish was strong, starting with a bushel of pomegranates, and then followed by the tears of a small child who has just learned a disillusioning truth about life, which left me emotionally drained, but eager for future tastings.


Overall Score: 3.8694 out of 4.94

To truly review a whiskey, one must transcend the immediate reality, and enter into a strange form of free-association poetry that reveals the deeper spiritual nature of booze some guy made from corn. The results are breathtaking, and in this writer’s opinion, should be extended to other fields.

Specifically, politics.

It’s only June, and we’re already sick of reading the same dull write-ups of each candidate’s performance on the stump:

Romney spoke to a small but enthusiastic crowd, in the wake of a new poll showing, blah, blah, momentum, etc.

You get it.

It’s time to whiskey-up some real journalism:

Romney’s voice wafted like the aroma of my late great-aunt Dorothy’s famous pecan crisp bars. The crowd was distinctly Mezozoic, and one could very clearly perceive a tension in the air, like the moment before a litter of kittens is born. This comes in sharp contrast to Obama, whose recent public appearances have evoked a mixture of grass clippings and slightly-burnt sage.


Altogether, a refreshing day, but one that lacked the strongly pronounced notes of unicorn and honeysuckle so prevalent in recent weeks.

The general populace will be unable to glean any useful information from these stories, thus maintaining the status quo. But the politically inclined among us would be able to have delightful debates over whether the correct random labels were attached to events, and then offer colorful-sounding, meaningless descriptions of our own to counter them. Then, instead of dealing with boring, weighty issues, political discourse could become an endless game for the amusement of the well-educated.

Completely different from the system we have today.

I’ll let the journalist-types sort out the details. My julep’s getting warm, and this “signature facial hair” isn’t going to grow itself.