[LINK] "How to throw away a book"

Over at the Financial Times-hosted blog The Undercover Economist, written by Tim Harford and now linked on my sidebar, Harford considers the the question that vexed bibliophiles: How do you get rid of unwanted books? The consensus seems to be that searching for specific recipients of books is a bad idea, that in many cases donated books can displace good books that recipients would otherwise have read, but that in order to avoid excessive clutter it's best to get rid of the books before it becomes impossible to do so.

That sounds all right for me. Then again, I've sold ~$C75 worth of unread and unwanted books at various stores in Toronto's BMV chain over the past week. Maybe I'm just trying to justify my heartlessness.

[LINK] "For Finland, the Issue Is Selling Its Wine, Not Making It"

I was quite surprised to come across John Tagliabue's article in The New York Times "For Finland, the Issue Is Selling Its Wine, Not Making It". Finland makes wine? Evidently so.

In spring and fall, when temperatures are erratic, Fredrik Slotte sprinkles his vineyard with water. The water freezes, encasing the vines in thin tubes of ice that protect them from temperatures far lower than freezing.

Is this Burgundy? The Napa Valley? No, it is the Aland Islands, a cluster of wooded islands in the Baltic Sea between Finland and Sweden, roughly 1,000 miles northeast of Burgundy.

Dr. Slotte, a 29-year-old physician, is one of a growing number of people in Finland and some neighboring countries who, as global temperatures climb, are turning to winemaking. The grapes he plants are hardy, weather-resistant varieties, including a cross between a Latvian and a Siberian strain.

Within a couple of years, Dr. Slotte expects to produce about 110 bottles a year — hardly a threat to the French — including a frothy, pink blush sparkling wine, what the French call vin gris, and a robust white.

But a wine business must sell what it produces, which is where Dr. Slotte has run into a problem.

The Aland (pronounced OH-lund) Islands, with a population of 27,000 Swedish speakers, are an autonomous region of Finland. And since Finland, which entered the European Union in 1995, is not considered a wine-growing country under European rules, Dr. Slotte may not sell his wine. “I give it to my family and friends,” he said.

A major problem for Finnish vinticulture, as the article goes on to say, is that the European Union's agricultural subsidy system sees areas like traditionally cold Finland receive heavy agricultural subsidies, with European Union authorities arguing that southern Finland was too warm to justify the most subsidies. When news that Slotte and others were growing grapes for vine got out, major complications ensued, in the autonomous and Swedophone Åland Islands and elsewhere in Finland.

I wonder if Finland will end up becoming a large-scale producer of ice wine, like Ontario's Niagara Peninsula. The climate might well be right for that sort of specialized product.