Cocktailblogging: James Bond Edition

Burt Likko 4 Comments

Inspired by a comment from BradK yesterday, I decided that I wanted to be James Bond and drink a Vesper.

So I bought a bottle of Lillet, and while I was waiting for it to chill, I went back and did a little research. This proved useful. The actual formula is: Three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it’s ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel. And stare down the villain like the badass you are the whole time you’re ordering it. Or, if you’re going to go back all the way to the original novel Casino Royale:

“A dry martini,” he [Bond] said. “One. In a deep champagne goblet.”
“Oui, monsieur.”
“Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it’s ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?”
“Certainly, monsieur.” The barman seemed pleased with the idea.
“Gosh, that’s certainly a drink,” said Leiter.

Yes it is, Felix. But it turns out, every portion of Fleming’s original description needs analysis because we’re dealing with something nearly sixty years old here and it turns out that in the world of cocktails as in the world of espionage, one should take nothing for granted. Let’s start with the glass. Continue Reading →

No Right To Be Uncriticized

Burt Likko 15 Comments

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

This is freedom of speech: you can say what you want, and the government won’t sanction you for doing it. So if you want to go on national television and pimp out your new historically revisionist movie, and there call homosexuality “unnatural,” “detrimental,” “ultimately destructive to so many of the foundations of civilization,” the government won’t stop you and won’t sanction you for it after the fact. But you don’t have a right to be free from criticism from other people who disagree with you. It’s sort of like when you say something amazingly offensive and stupid, and lots of your advertisers decide they’d rather be associated with someone other than you.* That’s also not a First Amendment issue. (You can argue, I suppose, that tu quoque is an appropriate response instead, but don’t be surprised when it doesn’t work; and by the way, keep staying classy, Michael Moore.)

Although this scenario is playing out on the right side of the spectrum now, there’s players on the left who will drop the “Private criticism of me is suppression of my free speech rights” card on occassion too.† And it’s just incorrect. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from criticism. Freedom of speech means freedom to criticize. If your view is silenced, perhaps it’s because everyone else in the world can tell that you were wrong, that you didn’t know what you were talking about, or at least that you were out of line. If they subsequently ignore you, contradict you, lampoon you, or otherwise heap abuse upon you, that’s the risk you took when you entered in to the arena of public opinion.

While the objective of the Constitution’s guarantee of free speech is not necessarily discernment of the truth, it is a very fine side effect of it indeed. If we learn, through allowing people to speak their minds freely, that in fact they are fools, bigots, or worse,‡ well, we’re all actually better off for knowing it.

 

* Nearly three dozen of them, according to one not-exactly-unbiased source.

† E.g., When Roseanne Barr decided to mangle the national anthem and mock baseball players at a baseball game, IIRC, she played this card; this was also the point that her entertainment career jumped the shark.

‡ What personal shortcoming, reasonably exposed during public discourse, could be worse than bigotry? How about sociopathy?

Clearing Out The Clippings, No. 39

Burt Likko

“In the days of my own prosperity things had seemed to me to be very well arranged.” Now from his new point of view he was to find they were no arranged at all; that government was a compromise of aggressions and powers and lassitudes, and law a convention between interests, and that the poor and the weak, though they had many negligent master, had few friends.

– H.G. Wells

Monday Trivia #47

Will Truman 21 Comments

Alabama has the most of these with 15, followed by North Carolina with 10 and then Georgia and Texas with 9 each.

Most states do not have any. The western-most is in Texas, the northern-most is in or around Detroit, the eastern-most in Delaware, and the southern-most in either Miami or the Virgin Islands, depending on whether or not you count the latter.