Elliott C. Back: In Aere Aedificare

Thanks to the often useless Techcrunch for pointing out Summize, a meta-rankings engine with a gorgeous, hip look:

It’s perfect in the way it rates Windows Vista as utter crap, and the Apple iPhone as delicious but flawed. Topically, they focus mostly on Books, Movies, and Music–the classic media triplet–but other products are present as well. In a blog post About Summize they explain the drive behind the site:

We currently provide a Summize Experience for Electronics, Cameras, Books, Movies, Toys, and other useful things you find at Amazon and other top caliber review sites. We provide clean, straightforward, un-duplicated results so you don’t have to piece together the information on your own.

The only problem–people are going to misspell its name as “summarize.”

These photos of are my slightly worn Seiko Men’s Arctura Kinetic Watch #SKA201 taken on a Canon S3 camera. It has a nice macro mode.

I love the idea that I won’t have to replace this watch’s batteries for many, many years.

Those workers now making $5.15 an hour, or $10,300 a year, on their minimum salaries have just received a raise of 41%. Over the next few years, if the Senate approves the wage hike, these minimum wage employees will make $14,500.

I’m not sure the economics of this are a good idea. First, it only benefits the 450,000 or so Americans making minimum wage. Second, it does nothing to offset the costs of their employers. Why not let the free market decide wages?

A minimum wage doesn’t do anything for people who make significantly more than it, either. If wages are to be raised, why are minimum wages being raised? If compensation is based on market merit, shouldn’t those making more money get a raise for their hard efforts? If minimum wages are paid to those jobs or individuals who are least useful to the market, shouldn’t they be then paid less?

It seems to me that the minimum wage system is an unnecessary burden to a developed society. If jobs need to be done, people will pay a premium to have them done. Without minimum wage, I find it unlikely that people will as a whole make less money than before. If you look into the history of the minimum wage, you’ll see that it came about as a means of avoiding strikes, thus actually giving corporations the ability to set a low grade of pay. Take back your freedom, vote away minimum wage!

It should be Remy Martin but I don’t like putting accents in post titles. That aside, Remy Martin’s a high-class drink made from double-distilled fine champagne. After distillation, the brandy is aged at least 2.5 years in oak barrels. The grapes used are also strictly regulated–90 percent must be Ugni Blanc, Folle Blanche, or Colombard grapes.

There are three kinds of Cognac you can buy, sorted by quality:

• VS (Very Special) - stored for at least two years in casks
• VSOP (Very Superior Old Pale) - stored for at least four years in casks
• XO (Extra Old) - stored for at least six years in casks

Interestingly, 60-80% of the American cognac market is African American, because of its recent placement in hip-hop and rap music as Yak or Yack. According to BoingBoing:

“Cognac “is a classy, sophisticated and really smooth thing to drink,” says rap star Jay-Z. His new Manhattan club, 40/40, features a “Remy room” in honor of his own favorite cognac brand, Remy Martin. He says he likes to sip Remy Martin’s Louis XIII — which comes in a gold-encrusted Baccarat crystal bottle for $5,000 — “whenever I wanna have a really relaxing moment, usually with a cigar.”

It’s a bit expensive–at $135 a bottle, $35 a glass–but it’s definitely worth it if you want to relax. Next to try: Hennessy VSOP.

Today I had the pleasure of a man dressed in a black skirt introduce me to a men’s cologne which combined vanilla, amber, and musk to attract a maximum number of ladies. My reason for being at Macy’s was actually to acquire a pair of shoes that a lady could appreciate, so I let him stop me and spray his expensive french cologne over various limbs.

It was then that I realized that a musk-based cologne simply simulates the odor produced by a sweaty male body. Wikipedia writes on the topic:

Musk is the name originally given to a perfume obtained from the strong-smelling substance secreted by a gland in the abdomen of the male musk deer, and hence applied to other animals, and also to plants, possessing a similar odor.

It was at that point that I wondered why–besides the hot euro-salesmen in black skirts–would anyone buy the stuff. Personally, I prefer a much more subtle scent.