Barry's Life in Napa Blog

Kind of embarrassing that I missed this one, a story that popped up some 5 months ago in March 2008, but it's still blog worthy. Moses Was High on Drugs, Israeli Researcher Says. Psychedelic Cocktail May Explain Vision of the Burning Bush, Professor Says The professor in question is Benny Shanon. He says you can find the same plants on the Sinai Peninsula that you find in the Amazon, where these plants are used to make a mind-bending hallucegenic cocktail. (One of many versions of the news story can be seen here.) Not only was Moses on the stuff, says the prof, but perhaps his followers, too. That means they were understanding when he came down off the mountain and said "Thou shalt not kill, and does anybody have any Cheetos?" Any story like this, attributing less than divine cause to the great moments in the Bible, immediately draws scalding criticism. Hearken back to the "DaVinci Code" phenomenon, for example. For some people, the lessons in religious teaching...

Once in awhile you get a situation in sports where somebody is playing for vindication. A big contract for an aging slugger- the golfer with the reputation for choking - or more currently, the whole Brett Favre mania. In all these cases, that player comes out to prove he or she's still got it, deserves to be there, is truly the best. There's a vindication story playing out right now in China, in the women's gold medal match between the US and A and Brazil, and she who may be vindicated is Hope Solo. You have to be a real soccer fan to be really into this, I guess, but the Hope Solo story broke out into the mainstream last year. She's the US goalkeeper who played great all the way through the World Cup, then got benched for the semi-final, and Brazil cleaned our clock with Briana Scurry in the net. Solo was the better player at the time, Scurry's best games were well behind her, and just about everybody who follows the game thought it was a dumb mistake by the coach...

The expression we've all heard is "you can't be too rich or too thin." I suppose that gets said a lot around the tennis court at the country club, the changing room at Sak's? I suppose it draws a wry smile every time. Or is it really said in the aisles at Target by people who are at no risk of being too much of either? The expression we've never heard is "you can't be too smart," because we all know it is possible to be too smart. Kind of ironic since we spend a lot of energy trying to force kids to be smart. We pound them with homework, make them take tests, tell them the kids in Mumbai are going to take your future job. We try to get them into the best schools, the ones for the smart people, but they are always at risk of becoming "too smart for their own good." Based on what I've heard about last weekend's Presidential candidate activity, Obama is running the risk of being too smart for his own good. He and McCain did these l...

Indifference rapidly turns to rabid partisanship as soon as the Olympics offers its first big moment, and it looks like that's happened, so let's pump our fists and do a little "U-S-A! U-S-A!" In case you missed it, some French swimmers claimed they were going to "smash" the Americans in the 4 x 100 freestyle. (Imagine that, French bragging.) The race turned out to be spectacular, with the USA winning, so in your Gallic face, monsieur. Maybe you can win some gold medals if they had a smugness competition or a smoking marathon. We know the French could win the sprints if they could just have Germans chasing them. But mon dieu, enough cheap slaps at Pierre. (And in case you missed it and you want to see it, NBC has set up an excellent website to feed video. You can get live streams and archived stuff. Go to the site here, and if you get a message that you need to install "Silverlight" that's cool, don't be fearful.) It's a funny thing th...

I am proud to present my 200th post on this here blog, entitled "George Washington's crotch and other curiosities." You're welcome. George Washington - what do we know? He chopped down the cherry tree (not really) and he threw a dollar across the Delaware (unlikely) and later he crossed the Delaware (maybe to retrieve the dollar?) and he had wooden teeth (true) and he married for money (true) and he was lucky as hell to win the war (true.) But today we ask, did he have a deformed groinal area? Was he, in fact, engaged with something less than a full set of equipment? Were his legs on backwards? I'm not sure just what the heck was going on, but I enter as evidence this photo of a portrait that hangs in Faneuil Hall in Boston. (There may be copies in other galleries, too.) It's called "George Washington at Dorchester Heights" and was painted in 1806 or 1777, depending on what internet source you want to use. We see the familiar face with the wig, the l...