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Last year, Italy exported 78 million gallons of wine to America. That’s nearly a quarter of the total wine imported by the U.S., according to the Beverage Information Group. Italy also ranks second in the world (behind France) for personal wine consumption, with each Italian consuming 13.6 gallons a year. Compare that to America, which ranks 42nd in wine consumption, with the average American drinking 3.6 gallons a year.

And yet, wine consumption in Italy is dwindling.

Five years ago Italians drank 14.5 gallons a year – and significantly less than the 15.1 gallons they drank in 2006, according to the Beverage Information Group. It’s a dramatic change from the 1970s, when Italians drank 29 gallons, according to Assoenologi, the main Italian oenologists’ association.

“This is happening in all three of the world’s major wine-producing countries: France, Italy, and Spain,” said Jancis Robinson, wine critic of the Financial Times. “Wine – so much part of tradition and the past in these countries – is seen as an old person’s or peasant’s drink, whereas heavily advertised beers, spirits, and sodas are seen as more youthful and modern.”

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– http://mag.newsweek.com/2013/11/15/vino-thanks-re-italian.html

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The question is, can anyone really stamp out the Dread Pirates? Like the rest of the Internet, the Dark Web is being shaped and reshaped by technological innovation.

First, there was Tor, short for The Onion Router, a suite of software and network computers that enables online anonymity. Edward J. Snowden used Tor to leak government secrets, and the network has been important for dissidents in places like Iran and Egypt. Of course, drug dealers and gunrunners prefer anonymity, too.

Then there is bitcoin, the cryptocurrency that has been skyrocketing in value lately. Bitcoin is basically virtual cash — anonymous, untraceable currency stuffed into a mobile wallet. The kind of thing that comes in handy when buying contraband.

It’s hardly news that there are bad actors on the Internet. People have been hacking this and stealing that for years. But the growth of the Dark Web is starting to attract attention in Washington. Senator Thomas R. Carper, the Delaware Democrat who is chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, warned recently that the authorities seemed to be playing Whac-a-Mole with websites like Silk Road. As soon as they hit one, up pops another. This, the senator said, “underscores the inescapable reality that technology is dynamic and ever-evolving and that government policy needs to adapt accordingly.

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– http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/disruptions-a-digital-underworld-cloaked-in-anonymity/?ref=todayspaper

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None of the obstacles to limiting food stamps to healthier foods seem insurmountable. It is administratively simple to draw a line.

But not politically simple. It’s not just that people on food stamps are an enormous market for soda and junk food. Big Soda has unusual allies. Restricting purchases is not controversial with WIC, which exists to supplement nutrition. But it is with food stamps, which exist to supplement income.

“There are people in the anti-hunger community who support a soda tax in general because it affects everyone, but they oppose banning soda from SNAP because it affects only poor people,” said Marlene B. Schwartz, director of the Yale Rudd Center. “Their philosophical argument is, if it’s the right thing to do for everyone, then make it for everyone.”

Other approaches exist. A portion of food stamps benefits could be set aside for produce. Or states could use the guidelines they already follow — to little controversy — with sales taxes. More than half the states tax soda or junk food at a higher rate than the food tax rate — in effect, they do not consider them food.

“Instead of arguing about healthy versus unhealthy, I would almost rather say what counts as food,” said Ms. Schwartz. “States already figured out what is and isn’t food.”

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– http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/16/to-fight-obesity-a-carrot-and-a-stick/?ref=todayspaper

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FARM subsidies were much more sensible when they began eight decades ago, in 1933, at a time when more than 40 percent of Americans lived in rural areas. Farm incomes had fallen by about a half in the first three years of the Great Depression. In that context, the subsidies were an anti-poverty program.

Now, though, the farm subsidies serve a quite different purpose. From 1995 to 2012, 1 percent of farms received about $1.5 million each, which is more than a quarter of all subsidies, according to the Environmental Working Group. Some three-quarters of the subsidies went to just 10 percent of farms. These farms received an average of more than $30,000 a year — about 20 times the amount received by the average individual beneficiary last year from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistant Program, or SNAP, commonly called food stamps.

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– http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/16/the-insanity-of-our-food-policy/?ref=todayspaper

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Most people credit Sly Stone’s use of a Maestro Rhythm-King MRK-2 on the 1971 No. 1 “Family Affair” as one of the defining early moments for programmed percussion. During the ‘70s, the devices worked their way into hits—Blondie’s “Heart Of Glass,” Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love,” Roxy Music’s “Dance Away”—and carved space in both explicitly regenerative genres like new wave and commercial juggernauts like disco. In the ‘80s, Prince, Michael Jackson, and Madonna all used drum machines. Hip-hop developed into a national force behind acts like Run DMC, LL Cool J, and the Beastie Boys; they had the toughest beats around, put together with drum machines.

There are still corners of the world for the machines to colonize—they probably appear less in country music, for example, though J.J. Cale used them under his loping country grooves—but their unique propulsion is pervasive, and valuable. This is true regardless of how you evaluate music. If your metric is sonic innovation, drum machines have consistently pushed boundaries further: Kraftwerk playing every part of their songs on a machine; Lee “Scratch” Perry using the “Super Rhythmer” to help open reggae’s spaces; Prince working with Linn models, pumping record levels of sexuality and whiplash into funk and pop.

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– http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/11/the-immortal-soul-of-the-drum-machine/280947/

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But “The Simpsons” was locked into an unusual — and now vintage — deal. The show was first sold into syndication in 1993. While an enormous hit for Fox, “The Simpsons” always stood out because it was animated. When Fox tried to place live-action comedies adjacent to it, they never really worked.

So the stations paying hefty rights fees insisted on maintaining exclusivity — meaning no sale to a cable network for as long as they were buying new seasons of reruns. “The Simpsons” — with a cast that never visibly aged — kept making new episodes on Fox, and the syndication contracts kept going.

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– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/16/business/media/simpsons-reruns-sold-to-fxx-in-first-cable-deal.html?ref=todayspaper

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Some background: In June, the Supreme Court struck down a core provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, under which nine states and portions of others had to get federal approval before changing their election laws.

One of those states, Texas, is again in court, facing a Justice Department suit seeking to get the state under federal oversight again. To do so, the Justice Department must prove intentional racial discrimination.

Texas’ defense? It’s discrimination, all right — but it’s on the basis of party, not race, and therefore it’s O.K.

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– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/16/opinion/voter-suppressions-new-pretext.html?ref=todayspaper

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