Month: November 2020

One Day Till Election Day

James Ashley

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The most important thing about making a Moscow Mule is getting the cup right. It needs to be copper, which does good things with the lime juice. Don’t use a silver cup, which is used a a container for the Mint Julep. To make a Moscow Mule my way, pour ice into a copper cup. Over the ice add:

  • 2 oz not too expensive vodka
  • 4 oz Moscow Mule mix
  • enough sparkling water to fill your copper cup to the rim

Garnish with a lime slice and mint sprig.

A few years ago I found myself with Dennis Vroegop at a LinkedIn Learning party in Redmond, Washington. It was there that we began negotiations on what eventually became our App Development for HoloLens video course. It was November 3rd, 2016  during the week of the Microsoft MVP summit and the free bar had an excellent mixologist who was able to make me a Rusty Nail as well as a Moscow Mule. I was thrilled.

As the night wore on, we went from party to party with a great sense of freedom and the feeling that we were on top of the world and that we were on the cusp of great things. Another friend, Tamas Deme, ended up at a dour affair for the local Republican Party where depressed representatives waited patiently for bad news.

But that isn’t how things turned out. As we moved from party to party, people started getting panicked phone calls from spouses at home and their faces turned from bemusement to chagrin. At one point we ran into Tim Huckaby, a legend in the Microsoft RD world, who told us Trump was winning the election. We thought he was joking.

Finally my wife called me in tears barely able to contain herself. The country had elected (another) rapist and she couldn’t understand how. I couldn’t get my head around it and ended up walking around Redmond for the next few hours.

Instead of the best year, 2016 became the start of a set of strange, difficult to understand events. Everything feels like it has slowly been dissipating ever since. Friendships have become strained. Relationships have frayed. The extended, non-nuclear family is maintained by avoiding each other. I constantly have to tell my children that this isn’t how things used to be and politicians as well as people in general traditionally are afraid of being caught in lies. But I can tell from their tone that they doubt me. After all, isn’t my generation partly responsible for what has happened?

Two Days Till The Election

James Ashley

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The Sidecar is a somewhat neglected concoction, being a brandy-based cocktail that doesn’t fit into the common categories of brown, clear and beach drinks. The most important thing is to wet the tip of your martini glass with water before dipping it in sugar and chilling it in the freezer. To make a sidecar, shake:

  • 2 oz brandy
  • 2 oz triple sec or other orange liqueur
  • 1 1/2 oz fresh squeezed lemon juice

The base of a cocktail (brandy, whiskey, gin, vodka, rum or tequila) is a bit like a Kuhnian paradigm that casts an interpretive shadow over whatever else you add to it. If you add lime juice and simple syrup to rum you get a Daiquiri. When you add lime juice and simple syrup to gin, you end up with a Gimlet. Garnishes also provide a gravitational pull of their own. Dry vermouth, gin and olives gives you a martini. Dry vermouth, gin and cocktail onions makes a Gibson. Replace gin with vodka and you end up with either a vodka Martini or a vodka Gibson (emphasizing that vodka, being a clear alcohol like gin, is a mere variation rather than a species change). Gin, sweet vermouth and bitters gives you a Martinez, a drink that the Martini is apparently descended from. Bourbon, sweet vermouth and bitters is a Manhattan. Replace the Manhattan’s vermouth with simple syrup and you get an Old-Fashioned. Add mint leaves to this and you have a Mint Julep.

Herodotus tells us that the Persians always deliberated over important issues once drunk and once sober, to ensure they captured all the aspects of the matter with clarity but also with an open mind so that, matatis mutandis, good outcomes were achieved. The surprise is always in how different moods can affect our judgment which we otherwise assume is firm and built on unmoving principles. It is why decisions should never be made in haste or in a moment of high passion. And if we do this anyways, there is much to be said for a process that allows review, so that mistakes made in the moment can be fixed.

But due process, like brandy cocktails, is not currently in vogue, and it is difficult to tell if this is a result of changing perspectives on what justice entails – or if this is merely a momentary passion.