Recent Comments:
Philip Stein Wine Wands {Luxist}
Feb 7th 2010 9:38PM Luxist Team, I love the blog and enjoy reading about interesting products both in my price range and out, but seeing you promote snake oil like this incenses me! As a wine lover and collector, I recognize that there are wine-related products that work, and those that don't. Aerating your wine can allow flavors to open, and tools like the Vinturi work, although a nice decanter does just as well.
Things like this "wine wand", however, are pure unmitigated fraud. "Encapsulated glass jewels replicate the natural frequencies of air and oxygen and speed up the aeration process," is the same nonsense spouted by practitioners of homeopathy, a thoroughly discredited (and utterly insane) "treatment" for disease that leads to countless unnecessary sicknesses and deaths every year.
Crystals aren't going to do anything to your wine, there are no such things as "captured oxygen frequencies," and Philip Stein is laughing all the way to the band after he rips you off if you believe garbage like this. Please, show a bit more responsibility to your readers!
Luxury Board Games For The Holidays {Luxist}
Dec 13th 2009 2:32PM I purchased the Restoration Hardware "Scrabble Premier Collector's Edition" for my husband a few years ago (and at a higher price) and found it to be extremely disappointing in terms of build quality. The play surface is still printed cardboard, the parts tray is thin felted plastic, the shell is just painted pressboard, and the tile holders were shoddily glued together. I'm not expecting it to be made out of solid gold, but at 10x the basic Scrabble price I expected some level of quality. I recommend giving that one a pass.
Absolut Chooses The Flavor Of Boston {Luxist}
Aug 26th 2009 11:24AM I picked up a bottle on Saturday and have been shaking with it all week; it's very nice. The tea flavor is surprisingly strong, and lends itself to light, refreshing summer drinks (i.e low alcohol content). The Absolut Homerun on the neck tag (1 part Absolut Boston, 2 pt white grape juice, top with ginger ale) is a winner, although I find it's better with 1/2 pt Domaine de Canton, top with soda water instead of the ginger ale. My favorite place up the street (Gargoyles on the Square) has been making a nice drink mixed with tea this week.
I'm sure I'll tire of it in a few weeks, but for now we're enjoying it quite a bit!
Tanqueray Freshens Up the "T&T" {Luxist}
Aug 14th 2009 10:02PM Boo.. the T&T Refreshed sounds like a poor substitute for the classic Ramos Gin Fizz. Tonic is unnecessary since the simple syrup adds sweetness, and orange flower water is much more complex and pleasing than quinine.
Know Your Rights: Does the Kindle 2's text-to-speech infringe authors' copyrights? {Engadget}
Feb 12th 2009 11:34AM Two thoughts:
1) While it doesn't count for much in the court, there's plenty of public precedent to allow text-to-speech. I have a friend who is blind, and he has a device called a Kurzweil Reading Machine. It's a scanner that does OCR and talks. These have been around for more than 30 years, and the Authors' Guild has never tried to shut them down.
2) These are the same people who also rail against the used-book market, saying that we need new laws to ban the sale of used books because its takes money out of the pockets of the authors. We've had the right of first sale acknowledged for more than 100 years now. These people are not your friends.
The Authors Guild is the RIAA of the written word. They are not there to represent the interest of the authors, and they are certainly not there to represent the interest of the readers. At best, they exist to represent the middlemen, the publishers. They should be put on the same boat with the RIAA and MPAA and sunk deep at sea.
Clef du Vin Wine Enhancer {Luxist}
Dec 10th 2007 1:16PM This sounds like complete snake oil to me. Replicates the oxidation of wine in seconds? Unscientific nonsense.
1) The aging of wine is more than just the oxidation of the volatile components. If this were the case, there's no reason to age wine, just let it breathe a bit longer after you open the bottle. Breathing and decanting both encourage oxidation, which does help mellow the wine, but nobody would claim it to be identical to aging.
2) Air, or substantial amounts of chemical or catalyst will oxidize. A quick dip with an overpriced piece of metal won't.
This is in the same vein of deceptive (self- or otherwise) claptrap as $200 ionic bracelets, Hamony Chips, and $500 wooden knobs.
I expect better from Luxist!
Amazon's Unbox video download service "now available" on TiVo {Engadget}
Mar 7th 2007 9:40AM I have a TiVo Series3 and just signed up. Easy as pie, but...
None of the content available is in HD, including OTA content (TV episodes) that originally were. In fact, while the PC downloads are 16:9 for those, the TiVo downloads are 4:3. WTF?
This is the same problem as with iTMS. If these vendors don't offer equivalent quality to what people can download for free (albeit illegally), then people will continue to use BitTorrent and its ilk to get content, especially OTA content which should be the easiest for them to provide.
Sad.
