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Global wine consumption has been on the rise almost without interruption (save for a short stint between 2008 and 2009) since the late 1990s. The US and China, in particular, have been drinking more. The US, which guzzles roughly 12% of the world’s wine, has seen its per capita consumption double since the start of the century. And China, which is now the world’s fifth largest import market, has doubled its consumption not once, but twice in the past five years.

World production hasn’t managed to keep pace. Outputs have steadily declined in a number of the world’s most prosperous regions. Overall, global production has been on a downward trend ever since the early 2000s, when there were still massive excesses. Peak wine, the report holds, isn’t merely upon us; it already happened—back in 2004.

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– http://qz.com/140602/a-global-wine-shortage-could-soon-be-upon-us/#140602/a-global-wine-shortage-could-soon-be-upon-us/

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THE moving assembly line was the simplest of inventions, born of necessity to meet the exploding demand for automobiles in America in the early 20th century.

And while it turned 100 years old this month, “the line” remains as integral to the progress of the auto industry as it was in the days of Henry Ford.

The assembly line is a constantly evolving industrial ballet of workers and robots building cars. And automakers like the Ford Motor Company are finding that building multiple models on the same line is a huge key to success in the intensely competitive global marketplace.

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– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/30/automobiles/100-years-down-the-line.html?pagewanted=1&ref=todayspaper

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One decade after “Saturday Night Live” began in 1975, it added the first black woman to its primary cast. Danitra Vance, a gifted downtown actress and Second City veteran, lasted just one season.

“Saturday Night Live” later cast Ellen Cleghorne (1991-95) and Maya Rudolph, a biracial star who left in 2007. And that’s it. In this context, it’s no wonder that the cast member Kenan Thompson set off a debate this month when he explained the show’s dearth of black women this way: “It’s just a tough part of the business,” he told TV Guide. “Like in auditions, they just never find ones that are ready.”

Let me state the obvious: That “Saturday Night Live,” once home of the Not Ready for Prime Time players, has hired only three black women for its main cast— in addition to Yvonne Hudson, a featured player in 1980 — in four decades says more about the show than about the talent pool. That doesn’t mean that the show’s executive producer, Lorne Michaels, discriminates so much as he doesn’t put a premium on this kind of diversity.

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– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/30/arts/television/for-snl-cast-being-diverse-may-be-better-than-being-ready.html?ref=todayspaper

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The café and the final cup are the biggest culprits in the energy vacuum that is the coffee supply (and demand) chain. Of the 10 to 11 pounds of carbon emissions that the average pound of coffee creates, as much as 50% is created at the retail and consumer level.

This not insignificant energy usage is the result of multiple factors. Heating and air conditioning in an environment with constant temperature fluctuations (think of the gust one way or another every time a new customer walks in the door); outlets in constant use behind the counter (toasters, blenders, grinders, brewers, fridges, dishwasher if the baristas are lucky) and in front (laptops, phone chargers); espresso machines and grinders left on 24-7 for efficiency’s sake; lights left on in the bathroom and the basement when no one’s using them; computerized POS, cash register, and/or credit-card machines; mountains upon mountains of paper-cup waste; and, of course, the perpetual flowing of water through coffee equipment, toilets, and sinks.

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– http://drinks.seriouseats.com/2013/10/calculating-coffees-carbon-footprint-energy-usage-to-farm-pick-ship-roast-brew-coffee.html

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The famous quotation, widely attributed to Brian Eno, that “only a thousand people bought the Velvet Underground’s début, but they all started bands” is not wrong; if anything, it is conservative, though we have to range over many albums to size up Reed’s impact. “What Goes On” gave us the Feelies; “Sister Ray” gave us Spacemen 3; the third, self-titled Velvet Underground album gave us Galaxie 500, and maybe a chunk of the independent rock music made in New Zealand during the late nineteen-eighties. Reed’s tendency toward structural simplicity married to noise, and a faith that no word was above his listener’s head, is at the root of so much music that I am scared to make a list, in fear of the counterlists that will point out everyone who is missing.

On the Pixies’ 1987 début, “Come On Pilgrim,” Frank Black sang, “I wanna be a singer like Lou Reed.” That’s a fairly solid citation, so we’ve got one, for sure. We could venture further and say that David Byrne, Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus, and Ian Curtis would have thought very differently about music if not for Reed’s existence. The real list of who loved Lou Reed songs is probably something like “everyone,” though that doesn’t do much for anyone looking to find something to listen to right now. His work spans my life and is woven into it, and it is impossible to imagine my own imagination without thinking of the direction in which Reed told me to look. Some people have Dylan, some have Tori, others have Kanye. I started with Lou, and he rarely failed me, even when he failed me. (Hell, I liked “Lulu,” give or take twenty minutes.) Dylan, in the director Todd Haynes’s formulation “wasn’t there,” which is a brilliant plan. Reed, for better or worse, was always right in front of us, no different from anyone, except that he had some pretty nice guitars. But he barely pretended to be a singer, and the simplicity of those songs lulled so many of us into thinking we could do that, because, hey, there wasn’t even a third chord on “Heroin,” just two! That isn’t so hard.

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– http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sashafrerejones/2013/10/postscript-lou-reed-obit.html

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“Bill Murray worked on Anderson’s second feature film, starring Jason Schwartzman, for scale. “He got a piece of the profits, but his day rate was Screen Actors Guild minimum,” Seitz writes. “By Anderson’s estimate, Murray made about $9,000 from acting in Rushmore.” Even more charmingly, the actor volunteered to kick in his own funds “[w]hen Disney didn’t want to pay for a helicopter shot for Rushmore’s ‘A Quick One While He’s Away’ montage.” The actor wrote a check for $25,000 to cover the helicopter rental, which Anderson never cashed and has held on to as an apparent memento. In total, Murray was willing to spend approximately $16,000 to be in Rushmore.”

– http://www.vanityfair.com/online/oscars/2013/10/bill-murray-rushmore

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The common misconception is that your cable company is responsible for raising your bill. Look, I hate Comcast just as much as the next guy, however, price increases generally come from the TV networks. If Fox News raises their price, the cable provider cannot all of a sudden stop carrying it. Customers would not only complain but also immediately look to other providers for service. Instead, they eat the price increase and eventually pass it on to the consumer. This is what leads to our exploding cable bills.

When a cable company decides to carry a channel like Comedy Central, they must pay the TV network a subscription fee for every one of their customers. Subscription fees are important because they show us how expensive one channel is relative to another. The fees vary greatly based on the demand of the channel. For example, The History Channel costs roughly 22 cents/month. ESPN you might be wondering? That comes out to $5.13/month, making it by far the most expensive cable channel out there.

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– https://medium.com/editors-picks/1d7043ed024b

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“He’s taking this Bansky — to the bank!

The owner of a Queens auto-glass shop made off with the British street artist’s latest work Tuesday afternoon in response to a big-bucks bid to purchase the piece.

Bernardo “Choco” Veles enlisted about 20 pals to help dismantle and remove Banksy’s makeshift sculpture of the Great Sphinx of Giza just hours after it appeared near his Willetts Point business.

“A big gallery truck pulled up and offered me money. He gave me a card,” said Veles, owner of Choco Auto Glass.”

– http://nypost.com/2013/10/22/shop-owner-sells-off-banksy-sphinx-statue/

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