Category Archives: Books Nonfiction

Phalanx: Discipline in Geometry

11 August 2025 By in History, History Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Near the ancient Sumerian city of Girsu, mid-way between present-day Bagdad and Kuwait City, stood a battle marker; the Stele of Vultures, now housed in the Louvre. It commemorates Lagash’s 3rd millennium BC victory over Umma. The stele derives its name from the monument’s carved vultures flying away with the heads of the dead.  It also depicts soldiers of Lagash marching in a dense, shield to shield formation, holding spears chest high and horizontal, led by their ruler: Eannatum, who commissioned the stele in 2460 BC. The importance of the stele, though, is that it is the first visual depiction of the use of a phalanx in a battle. It is believed that the phalanx as a military tactic is much older.

The phalanx was more than a combat formation, it was a battlefield philosophy enshrining discipline and courage over strength, unity of the team over the individual. A dense, rectangular wall of men, generally 8 deep stretching across the battlefield to protect against flanking maneuvers. Each man wore heavy armor of leather and bronze: helmet, cuirass, greaves, armed with a spear and a short sword. But the breakthrough that brought the phalanx great renown was the apsis, a round shield invented for the Greek hoplite in the 8th or 7th century BC. With its dual grip, a forearm strap and central handhold, it allowed the infantryman precise control of his shield, helping create an impenetrable barrier of bronze and bone against the oncoming enemy’s spears and swords. It transformed the phalanx from an offensive wall of attack to an added defensive engine of defiance.

The phalanx only succeeded in cohesion. When courage and discipline held, the formation with the apsis as its core defense was practically unbeatable on confined terrain. It overcame the enemy with a seamless, tight mass executing a relentless forward march into the belly of the opposing beast. But it was only as strong as its weakest link. Once discipline faltered and cohesion broke, the formation collapsed, and the opposing army ran it to ground. Victory belonged not to brute force, but to the combined strength of the military unit. Teams won, individuals lost.

From late 8th century BC onward, Greek phalanxes were manned by hoplites: citizen soldiers, generally landowners and farmers. Emerging in Sparta or Argos, possibly imported from Sumeria or born of parallel discovery in Greece, phalanx battles initially were confined, blunt, and deadly affairs. They devolved into fierce pushing masses of brawn, bone, and metal until one side broke. Heavy casualties occurred when the enemy lines broke and soldiers fled Helter skelter in shock and chaos, pursued by the victors for plunder, unless they were restrained by honor.

The phalanx became the standard that destroyed the mighty Persian armies at Marathon and Thermopylae early in the 5th century BC. At Marathon in 490 BC 10,000 Athenians and 1000 Plataeans stretched out their formation to match the breadth of 26,000 Persians, filling the Marathon plain and denying the armies any room for flanking movements.

The Greeks stacked their wings with additional rows of hoplites and thinned them progressively toward the center creating a convex crescent. The Greek wings advance faster than the center generating a pincer movement that collapsed on the Persian center. When the dust settled 192 Athenians and 11 Plataeans were lost while the Persian losses were approximated at 6400.

In the 19th century, Napoleon, possibly improvising on phalanx encircling tactics developed at Marathon, would invert his attacking army with a concave formation consisting of a strong center and weaker wings. His strategy being to split the enemies’ center with strength and attack their divided ranks on the flanks. The tactic worked until Wellington at Waterloo.

At Marathon, unity triumphed with geometric discipline. At Thermopylae the formation bought time and ended with a sacrifice that concluded Persian hubris.

During the second Persian invasion in 480 BC, Darius’s son Xerxes with 120,000-300,000 men attacked a contingent of 7000 Greeks at Thermopylae. The Greeks held back the Persian advance like a cork in a bottle, using a rotating phalanx of roughly 200 men to defend a narrow pass for two days, until betrayal by Ephialtes exposed their flank and they were destroyed in a inescapable Persian barrage of arrows. Greek losses were estimated at 4000 men including Leonidas’ 300 Spartans and 2000-4000 Persians (beginning and ending estimates for manpower strength vary widely).

The Greeks defiant stand at Thermopylae allowed the Greek navy to regroup at Salamis where they won a decisive victory against the Persian navy. A year later the Greeks at Plataea crushed the Persians quest for a Hellenic satrapy.

The Phalanx endured for another century, including use in the Peloponnesian War, where it remained lethal but of limited use. Then came Epaminondas at Leuctra in 371 BC, transforming the phalanx into a machine that erased Sparta’s mighty reputation. Typically, each army’s phalanx strength was concentrated on their right wing so that the strongest part of a force always faced off against the weaker wing of the opposition. What Epaminondas did was say nuts to that.

He reversed the order and created an oblique formation, more triangular than rectangular with his strongest troops on the left wing. His left wing was stacked 50 deep while keeping his center and right wings thin. His 50-deep was aimed directly at Sparta’s best under the command of King Cleombrotus (in those days officers and kings were in the front rows of the phalanx). As the phalanxes began to attack Epaminondas kept his right-wing stationery creating an asymmetrical front. The left wing easily broke through Sparta’s right wing, killing Cleombrotus and collapsing their superior flank. At that point Epaminondas’s wing pivoted inward creating an enveloping arc around the remaining parts of Sparta’s phalanx effectively ending the Spartan myth of invincibility.

Epaminondas tactics shortened battles with fewer casualties. His innovations proved that properly trained and equipped citizen soldiers could defeat professional warriors while instilling a new civic honor through restraint and discipline. His oblique formation allowed landowners and farmers to settle their disputes, usually in a few hours or less, with minimal loss, and return to their farms in time for the harvest. Epaminondas not only brought asymmetrical tactics to the battlefield but shattered claims of superiority by employing the unexpected.

As the Golden Age of Athens and western civilization’s Greek center waned and Roman hegemony rose, the phalanx evolved again. The Greek phalanx gave way to the Roman manipular system, a staggered checkerboard pattern, enabling units to rotate, reinforce, or retreat as needed. It was a needed refinement and improvement to the phalanx, more effectual on open plains and less susceptible to calvary and arrows.

Then came Hannibal to Cannae in 216 BC. During the 2nd Punic War, he upended the war cart of tactics once again and ruthlessly exploited Rome’s refinements.

Hannibal’s improvisations of the phalanx maneuvering tactics, but not the actual formation, showed that he had studied Marathon. Instead of a convex line with strong wings and a weak center he developed a concave line with strong wings and weak center. He allowed the center to fall back, which the Romans unwittingly obliged by surging into Hannibal’s weak center. With the Romans committed Hannibal’s deception encircled them with precision and brutal lethality. The Romans were annihilated on the field losing somewhere between 50,000-70,000 killed and another 10,000 captured. Hannibal lost 6000-8000 men (again estimates vary). Then came the 3rd Punic War.

The phalanx began as a wall of spears and shields, a bulwark of bronze and bone. Its stunning victories echo through history’s scholarly halls and hallowed plains of death and destruction. Yet its Achilles’ heel, vulnerable flanks, precise terrain requirements proved incompatible to horses and gunpowder.

Still its legacy of discipline and unity endure. Born of necessity, refined through rigor, and studied for centuries, the phalanx stands as a testament Aristotle’s enduring insight, slightly abridged but still profound, ‘The whole is greater than the parts.’ And perhaps the Roman’s said it best: ‘E pluribus unum’, ‘out of many, one.’

Source: A War Like No Other by Victor Davis Hanson, 2005. Et al. Graphic: Stele of Vultures.

Drunken Monkey Hypothesis–Good Times, Bad Times

5 July 2025 By in History, History, Philosophy, Science, Science, Uncategorized, Wine Tags: , , Leave a comment

In 2004, biologist Robert Dudley of UC Berkeley proposed the Drunken Monkey Hypothesis, a theory suggesting that our attraction to alcohol is not a cultural accident but an evolutionary inheritance. According to Dudley, our primate ancestors evolved a taste for ethanol (grain alcohol) because it signaled ripe, energy-rich, fermenting fruit, a valuable resource in dense tropical forests. Those who could tolerate small amounts of naturally occurring ethanol had a foraging advantage, and thus a caloric advantage. Over time, this preference was passed down the evolutionary tree to us.

But alcohol’s effects have always been double-edged: mildly advantageous in small doses, dangerous in excess. What changed wasn’t the molecule, it was our ability to concentrate, store, and culturally amplify its effects. Good times, bad times…

Dudley argues that this trait was “natural and adaptive,” but only because we didn’t die from it as easily as other species. Ethanol is a toxin, and its effects, loss of inhibition, impaired judgment, and aggression, are as ancient as they are dangerous. What may have once helped a shy, dorky monkey approach a mate or summon the courage to defend his troop with uncharacteristic boldness now fuels everything from awkward first dates, daring athletic feats, bar fights, and the kind of stunts or mindless elocutions no sober mind would attempt.

Interestingly, alcohol affects most animals differently. Some life forms can handle large concentrations of ethanol without impairment, such as Oriental hornets, which are just naturally nasty, no chemical enhancements needed, and yeasts, which produce alcohol from sugars. Others, like elephants, become particularly belligerent when consuming fermented fruit. Bears have been known to steal beer from campsites, party hard, and pass out. A 2022 study of black-handed spider monkeys in Panama found that they actively seek out and consume fermented fruit with ethanol levels of 1–2%. But for most animals, plants, and bacteria, alcohol is toxic and often lethal.

Roughly 100 million years ago in the Cretaceous, flowering plants evolved to produce sugar-rich fruits, nectars, and saps, highly prized by primates, fruit bats, birds, and microbes. Yeasts evolved to ferment these sugars into ethanol as a defensive strategy: by converting sugars into alcohol, they created a chemical wasteland that discouraged other organisms from sharing in the feast.

Fermented fruits can contain 10–400% more calories than their fresh counterparts. Plums (used in Slivovitz brandy) show some of the highest increases. For grapes, fermentation can boost calorie content by 20–30%, depending on original sugar levels. These sugar levels are influenced by climate, warm, dry growing seasons with abundant sun and little rainfall produce sweeter grapes, which in turn yield more potent wines. This is one reason why Mediterranean regions have long been ideal for viticulture and winemaking, from ancient Phoenicia to modern-day Tuscany, Rioja, and Napa.

The story of alcohol is as ancient as civilization itself. The earliest known fermented beverage dates to 7000 BC in Jiahu, China, a mixture of rice, honey, and fruit. True grape wine appears around 6000 BC in the Caucasus region (modern-day Georgia), where post-glacial soils proved ideal for vine cultivation. Chemical residues in Egyptian burial urns and Canaanite amphorae prove that fermentation stayed with civilization as time marched on.

Yet for all its sacred and secular symbolism, Jesus turning water into wine, wine sanctifying Jewish weddings, or simply easing the awkwardness of a first date, alcohol has always walked a fine line between celebration and bedlam. It is a substance that amplifies human behavior, for better or worse. Professor Dudley argues that our attraction to the alcohol buzz is evolutionary: first as a reward for seeking out high-calorie fruit and modulating fear in risky situations, but it eventually became a dopamine high that developed as an end in itself.

Source: The Drunken Monkey by Robert Dudley, 2014.

The Many Colors of Slavery

27 May 2025 By in Art, Novel, Philosophy, Philosophy Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.”—Abraham Lincoln

“Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

As the great continental glaciers receded at the end of the Pleistocene, fertile land emerged, allowing for the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture. Farming was labor-intensive, and with the rise of permanent settlements came the demand for constrained and controlled labor. Slavery, likely with first roots in Mesopotamia, though independent manifestation by the Pharaohs in ancient Egypt and other early civilizations, made it ubiquitous, and it has never disappeared.

From the bonded laborers of the Pharaohs to the structured servitude in Greece and Rome, from the transatlantic trade that brutalized African populations to the modern exploitation of migrant workers in sweatshops and the sex trades, slavery has evolved rather than vanished. Each era refines its own form of servitude; forced labor, insurmountable debt, bureaucratic entrapment, or corporate exploitation. It is a practice as ancient as prostitution and taxation, deeply embedded in human society, yet constantly shifting into less visible but equally insidious forms. As long as slavery remains profitable its existence will continue to indelibly stain humanities’ collective soul.

Slavery, and its ultimate contrast, freedom, was a persistent theme in the works of sci-fi author Robert A. Heinlein. With a piercing social awareness, Heinlein, who, in his early years, was described by Isaac Asimov as a ‘flaming liberal’—picked up the theme and horrors of slavery with his 1957 juvenile novel “Citizen of the Galaxy”; bringing the many forms of servitude into the personal history of a precocious kidnapped boy named Thorby. Citizen of the Galaxy is a planet-hopping, spacefaring critique of oppression, class structure, and the nebulous concept of freedom. Heinlein crafts a future where contrasting societies across the galaxy reflect varying degrees of servitude and autonomy, if not necessarily total freedom. Man rarely allows himself complete independence.

Heinlein through the lens of Thorby explores the various shades of slavery, beginning with the brutal, controlling enslavement and continuing to more subtle forms that the individual may not even recognize as confinement. (Partial plot giveaways beyond this point.) Escaping his initial enslavement by the graces of a kindly, strict, but loveable old cripple named Baslim, Thorby moves into a hierarchical, structured existence of spacefaring traders then onto a self-imposed, due to a thirst for justice, straitjacket of a corporate bureaucracy on his birth planet of Terra. A life story of how control can be imposed by others or by ourselves.

As Heinlein’s social perspectives evolved, his libertarian leanings took greater prominence in Citizen of the Galaxy. Through Thorby’s life journey, Heinlein emphasizes personal autonomy, resistance to tyranny, and the moral duty to fight injustice. Baslim, Thorby’s first mentor, symbolizes the idea that one person can stand against oppression and make a difference, even if it takes many miles and years to materialize.

This theme runs through much of Heinlein’s work, but here, it’s especially poignant because Thorby is powerless for much of the novel, making his eventual triumph all the more meaningful. Heinlein’s novels, Farnham’s Freehold, Friday, and Time Enough for Love, explore slavery and control, reinforcing humanity’s inherent need for freedom, or at the very least, breathing space.

Source: Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert A. Heinlein, 1957. Graphic: Joseph Sold into Slavery by Friedrich Overbeck, 1816. Vanderbilt University. Public Domain.

Kinder Surrealism

21 May 2025 By in Art, Art Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

“I feel the need of attaining the maximum of intensity with the minimum of means. It is this which has led me to give my painting a character of even greater bareness.” Joan Miro.

Joan Miró (zhwahn mee-ROH, 1893–1983), a Catalan artist, began his career exploring Expressionism and Cubism before rejecting the rational world, which he found suffocating possibly depressing. He turned inward, merging an abstract dreamworld with Surrealism, ultimately evolving into a minimalist, conveying deep meaning through sparse, naïve brushstrokes and colors.

Symbolism became his hallmark; for Miró, the image was secondary to the message which was always open to interpretation. Initially inspired by Van Gogh and Cézanne, he later grew enamored with Picasso and Dalí, but it was Sigmund Freud who awakened his subconscious, plunging him into the mysteries of dreams and hallucinations. In pursuit of these visions, Miró intentionally induced states of hunger and exhaustion, risking madness to capture the fleeting essence of his dreamscapes. His dreams produced a primitive, childlike, whimsical innocence, with no explicit instructions for interpretation.

Miró’s early masterpiece, The Farm (1921–22), serves as a biographical snapshot of his life at 29, capturing the essence of his Spanish countryside upbringing and young adult life. This highly detailed precursor to his later Cubist and abstract works was purchased by Ernest Hemingway for 5,000 francs as gift to his wife.

By 2024, Miró’s works continue to command prices that place him among the top 25 most valuable artists worldwide. His Peinture (Étoile Bleue), or Painting (Blue Star), one of his best-known dreamscapes, sold for £23.6 million at a London Sotheby’s auction in 2012, equivalent to $37 million at the time, or approximately $31.5 million in today’s dollars.

Source: Miró by Gaston Diehl, 1979.  Graphic: The Farm (1921–1922), National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. (Public Domain)

Decline Post Bretton Woods

18 April 2025 By in History Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

Bretton Woods, a monetary system established during World War II, sought to stabilize the global economy by making the US dollar the central currency for international trade. Other currencies were pegged to the dollar, which foreign governments could convert into gold bullion at a fixed rate. This framework functioned effectively for decades, however, by the late 1960s, inflationary pressures stemming from the Vietnam War and the domestic spending initiatives of the “guns and butter” era, coupled with a growing accumulation of US dollars in foreign accounts, strained the system’s stability. In 1971, the United States suspended the dollar’s gold convertibility, effectively collapsing the Bretton Woods framework and transitioning to a market-based system of freely floating exchange rates, setting the stage for the dollar’s decline.

Since the demise of Bretton Woods, the US dollar has lost approximately 85% of its purchasing power due to inflation, a monetary phenomenon driven by increases in the money supply. Free trade has exacerbated US economics, including the loss of 6.8 million manufacturing jobs between 1979, the peak of manufacturing employment, and 2019. Many of these jobs shifted to China after its entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001. Middle-class wages have stagnated, remaining at an average of $40,000 per year (adjusted for inflation) since 1970, while housing costs have tripled to $400,000. Meanwhile, the rising costs of child-rearing, $310,000 per child in 2023, have contributed to a declining fertility rate, which has fallen from 2.5 to 1.6 children per woman.

China’s role in US economic decline is significant with a trade deficit of $263 billion in goods and services for 2024 alone. Chinese tariffs protect key industries such as steel and electronics, leaving US manufacturing unable to compete. Federal Reserve policies, including a 40% increase in the M2 money supply since 2020, have inflated asset prices like homes and stocks but failed to meaningfully raise middle-class wages. Wealth inequality has intensified, with the top 1% controlling 40% of the nation’s wealth while Middle America’s share continues to shrink. Trade deficits reached $1.2 trillion in 2024.

Trump’s tariffs can be seen as a reaction to these trade imbalances and loss of domestic manufacturing. Additionally, new measures are seeking to rewrite regulatory and fiscal policies, to address these global inequalities. By 2030, projections suggest 2 million new jobs could be created, including 200,000 to 300,000 directly tied to tariffs, with blue-collar median wages rising to around $60,000. A stronger dollar, inflation below 2%, and a revived manufacturing base could potentially revive the American middle-class, making families more optimistic about the future. Continuing on the same trajectory as the past 50 years risks further erosion of the American dream.

Real Not Real

14 April 2025 By in Art, Biography, History, History Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

“Have no fear of perfection; you’ll never reach it.” – Dali.

Salvador Dalí was the entertaining, surrealist voice of the masses. His dreamlike spectacle of melting clocks and flamboyant persona captivated popular culture, injecting eccentric brushstrokes into the lives of the disengaged and disinterested. Dalí spoke directly to the public’s fascination with dreams and absurdity, transforming art into a theatrical experience and a giggly poke at the eminent egos on high altars.

Dalí was a 20th-century Spanish artist who drew from influences such as Renaissance art, Impressionism, and Cubism, but by his mid-twenties, he had fully embraced Surrealism. He spent most of his life in Spain, with notable excursions to Paris during the 1920s and 1930s and to the United States during the World War II years. In 1934, he married the love of his life, Gala. Without her, Dalí might never have achieved his fame. She was not just his muse but also his agent and model. A true partner in both his art and life. Together, they rode a rollercoaster of passion and creativity, thrills and dales, until her death in 1982.

Dalí had strong opinions on art, famously critiquing abstract art as “inconsequential.” He once said, “We are all hungry and thirsty for concrete images. Abstract art will have been good for one thing: to restore its exact virginity to figurative art.” He painted images that were real and with context that bordered on the not real, the surreal. For those who believed that modern abstract art had no life, no beauty, no appeal, he provided a bridge back to a coherent emotional foundation with a dreamlike veneer. Incorporating spirituality and innovative perspectives into his dreams and visions of life.

The Persistence of Memory (1931) is Dalí’s most recognizable and famous painting, but his 1951 work Christ of Saint John of the Cross is arguably his most autobiographical and accessible piece. A painting dripping with meaning and perspective, Dalí claimed it came to him in a dream inspired by Saint John of the Cross’s 16th-century sketch of Christ’s crucifixion. The perspective is indirectly informed by Saint John’s vision, while the boat and figures at the bottom reflect influences from La Nain and Velázquez. The triangular shape created by Christ’s body and the cross represents the Holy Trinity, while Christ’s head, a circular nucleus, signifies unity and eternity: “the universe, the Christ!” Dalí ties himself personally to the crucifixion by placing Port Lligat, his home, in the background. He considered this painting a singular and unique piece of existence, one he likely could never reproduce because the part of him that went into the painting was gone forever.That part is shared with his viewers, offering a glimpse into Christ’s pain, Dalí’s anguish, and his compassion: an emotional complexity that transcends mortal comprehension.

Source: Salvador Dali by Robert Descharnes, 1984. Graphic: Christ of Saint John of the Cross, Dali, 1951. Low Res. Copyright Glasgow Corporation.

Divine Right to Rule–Not

13 April 2025 By in History, Philosophy, Politics Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Sir Robert Filmer, a mostly forgotten 17th century political theorist, claimed that kings ruled absolutely by divine right, a power he believed was first bestowed upon Adam.

In his First Treatise of Government, John Locke thoroughly shredded and debunked this theory of divine rights of monarchs to do as they pleased. Locke with extensive use of scripture and deductive reasoning demonstrated that ‘jus divinum’ or the divine right to rule led only to tyranny: one master and slavery for the rest, effectively undermining the natural rights of individuals and a just society.

Filmer, active during the late 16th to mid-17th century, argued that the government should resemble a family where the king acts as the divinely appointed patriarch. He erroneously based his theory on the Old Testament and God’s instructions to Adam and Noah. He used patriarchal authority as a metaphor to justify absolute monarchy, arguing that kings can govern without human interference or control. Filmer also despised democracies, viewing monarchies, as did Hobbes, as the only legitimate form of government. He saw democracies as incompatible with God’s will and the natural order.

Locke easily, although in a meticulous, verbose style, attacked and defeated Filmer’s thesis from multiple fronts. Locke starts by accepting a father’s authority over his children, but, in his view, this authority is also shared with the mother, and it certainly does not extend to grandchildren or kings. Locke also refutes Filmer’s assertion that God gave Adam absolute power not only over land and beast but also man. Locke states that God did not give Adam authority over man for if he had, it would mean that all below the king were ultimately slaves. Filmer further states that there should be one king, the rightful heir to Adam. Locke argues that there is no way to resolve who that heir is or how that could be determined. Locke finishes his argument by asserting that since the heir to Adam will be forever hidden, political authority should be based on consent and respect for natural rights, rather than divine inheritance: a logical precursor to his Second Treatise of Government, where Locke profoundly shaped modern political thought by advocating for consent-based governance.

Source: First Treatise of Government by John Locke, 1689. Graphic: John Locke by Godfrey Kneller 1697.  Public Domain.

Swollen Caricatures

8 April 2025 By in Art, Art, Biography Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Fernando Botero Angulo, 1932-2023, was a Columbian practitioner of figuraism in paint and sculpture, a style where reality is discernable but changed to reflect the artist’s interpretation of his or her world. His unique style has taken on a life of its own and has become known as Boterismo where he exaggerates reality by inflating his objects, mimicking a fat farm on a carbo diet, injecting, according to some, a humor inherent in his plus sized models but it all seems so melodramatic. A melancholic need to explore life’s downsides, forcing the viewer to share not the beauty of life but its complexities and vulnerabilities. There is no happiness in his paintings, just a humorless life.

His style, not far removed from Legar’s Tubism, was the artist’s attempt to find himself and to relieve the self-inflicted anxiety that came from his mode of outward expression not matching his inward vision. He states that “…the moment comes when the painter manages to master the technique and at the same time all of his ideas become clear: at that point his desire to transpose them faithfully onto the canvas becomes so clear and compelling that painting becomes joy itself.”

Botero’s 1999 painting, “The Death of Pablo Escobar”, a mafioso interpretation of Chagall’s “Fidler on the Roof”, was an attempt to capture the violence that the drug kingpin brought to Columbia and the world. Standing atop Columbian society, Escobar was laid low by his chosen swordian method of rule: bullets. The artist’s son Juan Carlos Botero states that his father wanted to reflect on the magnitude of the tragedy that Escobar’s actions meant for Columbia, but he also magnified the beast in the man, reminding the world that Columbia and Escobar were once synonymous. A cruel man ruling over a dysfunctional society that he created.

Source: Botero by Rudy Chiappini, 2015. Graphic: The Death of Pablo Escobar by Botero, 1999.

Bottle Bottoms

2 April 2025 By in History, Trivia, Wine Tags: , , , Leave a comment

The bottom of your wine bottle is more varied and interesting than one would initially expect. They come flat, convex, textured, embossed, thickened, punted, and two-tiered. As varied as Samwise Gamgee’s potato servings.

Starting with the easiest to manufacture and thus likely the cheapest is the flat bottom wine bottle. And because it doesn’t conform to historical and aesthetic traditions it’s also the rarest. The flat bottom is more likely to be encountered in the spirit world, but Aldi-Chapter and Verse and Garcon wine labels sell flat bottoms, generally to the casual wine enjoyment crowd, with wines rated as good in the 83–85-point range. Interesting enough Garcon bottles with flat bottoms are also squashed into a flat oval like a quarter mile running track, so they fit into UK letterbox openings.

Although rare, a very slight convex bottom is also used on some bottles, mostly liqueurs such as Galliano for aesthetic reasons. The bottles that employ this feature require some additional features to keep them upright on store shelves.

Textured and embossed bottoms are a common feature in the fine wine market. The textured bottoms are mainly for stability, keeping the bottle in one place on a wet surface such as bar or table. Occasionally practical details such as volume or manufacturing symbols are embossed on the bottom of the bottle, with higher end wines also adding in branding, batch numbers, and other unique marks.

Thickened bottoms are usually restricted to bottles needing extra stability when standing upright or to supply structural support for wines under pressure such as Champagne or Prosecco.

Which brings us to the ever-present punt on the bottom of almost all retail wine bottles. They have been in use for centuries creating the classic lost-to-the-past conundrum of why it was there in the first place. This forgotten history has created myriad possibilities for the small inward cone at the bottle’s base. In manufacturing the punt ensures a more consistent base plus it makes the bottle stronger. On the practical side it is theorized that the punt helps collect sediment at the bottom, improves grip on the bottle, or it helps create the illusion that the bottle has a larger volume.  Then there is aesthetics, a punt just looks cool. In the end no one knows why it exists, but everyone has a theory.

Finally, there are two-tiered bases where a flat bottom covers over the punt creating a hollow enclosed cavity. An example is the DobleAlto dual tiered base bottle that mixes and matches the order of the punt and flat bottom such as shown in the graphic where the flat bottom is above the punt. The two-tier base may have been invented for structural integrity reasons but most likely it was a way to make a product stand out from its competitors.

Getting to the bottom of bottoms is an involved process. Happy investigations and cheers.

Graphic: DobleAlto bottle from Global Package.

Paris in the Evening

31 March 2025 By in Art, Art Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, born in 1864, was a unique figure among French nobility and artists. Despite his diminutive stature and aristocratic lineage tracing back to Charlemagne, Lautrec defied conventional expectations with his eccentric, mischievous character, and individualistic style. While influenced by the Impressionists, exemplified by masters like Monet and Degas, he later embraced the Post-Impressionist movement alongside Gauguin and Cézanne, leaving a distinctive mark on the art world. Post-Impressionists diverged from their predecessors by infusing their work with deeper emotion, personal experiences, and greater individualism. Their bold brushwork, exaggerated colors, and unconventional techniques laid the groundwork for the future, anticipating Expressionism.

Parisian nightlife was a cornerstone of Lautrec’s art, and At the Moulin Rouge: The Dance stands as his most famous painting, portraying fashionable society and featuring many of his friends and family in a composition of overlapping planes with a perspective that subtly defies reality and logic. The artwork is divided into three distinct planes. The static background features figures such as Lautrec’s father, the poet Yeats, and Jane Avril, a renowned can-can dancer nicknamed “Crazy Jane,” who was both a close friend of Lautrec and a frequent model. In the center, the action unfolds as Valentin le Désossé, a gentleman in a top hat, instructs a cabaret dancer in new steps. The foreground is a detailed study of a contrasting passivity from the central swirl. The viewer’s eye swings between the galloping dancer in earthy tones accented by orange stockings and the quiet, introspective woman in pink.

Lautrec intentionally distorted the painting’s perspective, evident in the mismatched linear lines of the floorboards and fluid, swaying shadows that resemble a confused liquid more than lighting effects. These artistic choices enhance the surreal atmosphere of the scene, amplifying the contrast between the hyper-dynamic dancer and the passive, tranquil surroundings. Through At the Moulin Rouge: The Dance, Lautrec masterfully evokes the opposing vibrant activity and a ‘to be seen’ spirits of Parisian nightlife, providing a vivid outline while inviting viewers to interpret the finer details themselves.

Source: Toulouse-Lautrec by Doughlas Cooper, 1982. Graphic: At the Moulin Rouge: The Dance, Toulouse-Lautrec, 1890. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Public Domain.