RKS Wines: Great Western Australian Wines: More Elegant than Barossa

Generally speaking the red wines of Western Australia are perceived as lighter and even elegant as opposed to the full throttle Barossa red wines and the centre of these light-footed reds is in the Margaret River District. I agree with the generalspeak here! Now what about the wines of Great Western which is a registered subregion (GIC) of Central Victoria’s Grampians wine region?

We try a Best’s Great Western 2018 Bin number 1 Shiraz. Best’s has been making wine since 1860. The winery calls this a “cool climate aromatic made in a style that is perfumed, peppery yet well balanced with no overt dominance of alcohol yet well balanced”. It is notable the winery says this is ideal to drink with a roast rack of lamb and that is a fair statement.

Critic James Suckling put this wine which he rated a 95 in his top 100 wines of 2021. Suckling and I are usually quite close in our rating. He usually scores 2-3 points higher than I do. So bottom line I think we are assured a drinkable wine.

On the nose there is some heft to the wine. Notes of red and dark plums, creamy blackberry, cassis, root beer, bacon and a whisper of Saigon cinnamon. On the palate the tannins are soft and there is blackberry, pomegranate, dark chocolate and cranberries. The wine is not packing a Barossa punch. This Syrah is not exactly Rhône or Western Australian but it is not Barossa. It will drift nicely into 2028. We rarely get wines in Ontario from Great Western so I will anxiously await arrival on the shelves of more.

(Best’s Great Western 2018 Bin No 1 Shiraz, Great Western, Best’s Wines, Victoria, Australia, $21.95, Liquor Control Board of Ontario # 222323, 750 mL, 14%, Robert K. Stephen A Little Birdie Told Me So Rating 92/100).

Wine Drinker Profile: This wine will suit one who enjoys a lighter style of Shiraz as opposed to many Australian Shiraz’s that take no prisoner. Good to sip but will suit food such as New Zealand Spring Lamb or Black Bean Chili with Sweet Potatoes and Corn https://www.purelykaylie.com/vegan-sweet-potato-black-bean-chili/.

RKS Film: “They/Them/Us”: A Deservedly Happy Ending

When I received “They/Them/Us” for review it sounded somewhat like “Cheaper by the Dozen” made in 1950 followed by a 2003 remake. Yes my fear was cheese and a “Leave it to Beaver” squeaky clean film sanitized for all to see!

Thank goodness most of the cheese was sanitized out of this film and it has an adult feel to it best suited for mature audiences.

Charlie Goldman (Joey Slotnick) and Lisa Harper (Amy Hargreaves) are 40 somethings recently divorced. Charlie and Lisa meet on a dating site and hit it off very quickly. As for sexual preferences Lisa is into kink and likes to be dominated. Charlie is not of that ilk but to please Lisa takes kink lessons. So yes they do “hit” it off!

In a jiffy Charlie and Lisa decide to move into Charlie’s house. But there is a matter of their two children each! There is 18-year-old nonbinary Maddie Harper (Lexie Bean) who needs to be called “they” and her 15 year old sister Courtney (Sarah Eddy). On Charlie’s side there is pot smoking Danny (Jack Steiner) and his younger sister Anna (Shanna Strong). There is an initial bit of ill will between the children but over a short period of time that ill will disappears but it is a rough transition. Maddie is bullied and Danny has a drug problem.

So we are progressing nicely and looking for a cheesy ending right? But Danny overdoses on 4 tabs of acid and the girls put a little too much weed in their Lasagna. Chunks of cheese fall by the wayside at this point. Danny is not a forever lost soul as he is in a great deal of pain from the divorce and tries to unsuccessfully self medicate out of his trauma. That overdose puts a strain on Charlie and Lisa but Lisa willingly surrenders Charlie to care for Danny. Lisa wonders if their relationship is over but it is not.

OK then the movie has a bit of a rough happy ending and after seeing both adults and children coping with divorce, drug abuse, bullying and new sexual patterns by God they deserve the quasi-happy ending. Finally an adult “Cheaper by the Dozen” genre film that we had to wait 19 years for. The cheese has been left on the cutting room floor for the mice. The acting is strong throughout the entire cast. A shout out to Abi Van Andel as Charlie’s ex-wife Deborah who plays a selfish, self-righteous prig to the tee!

The film will be released in theatres in the United States on January 28, 2022 and then digitally for the rest of the world on February 1, 2022. You can see a trailer for the film which is written and directed by Jon Sherman here https://vimeo.com/581908613/4acaeff620

RKS Film Rating 90/100.

Passage of The Day: What is Mindfulness?

“Mindfulness is the act of consciously focusing the mind in the present moment, without judgement and without attachment to the moment. Mindfulness contrasts with automatic, habitual or rote behavior. When we are mindful we are awake, like a sentry guarding the gate. When we are mindful, we are open to the fluidity of each moment as it arises and falls away.”

Marsha M. Linehan “Building a Life Worth Living” Random House

Travels to a Different Time: June 22,1970 Letter to My Nanny Stephen

From Robert to Nanny Stephen: Dear Nan: I am now in the country of Greece on the island of Rhodes staying in the city of Rhodos. So far in Greece we have met many people including a couple from South Africa named Jenny and Charlie Horse. Jenny is a doctor. We also met another doctor Heidi from West Berlin. We have invitations to visit both. Well today Heidi and I went to the market to buy some fruit. We went to both the Old Market and the New Market. The Old Market is inside the city walls and the New Market is outside the city walls. We bought cucumber, tomatoes, ham, cheese and buns. We had a lunch with Heidi, and the South Africans on our hotel balcony. Then we had a siesta and in the late afternoon I was anxious to visit the beach to try my new speargun I bought at the market.

P.S. I had a lousy plane trip with a rotten crying baby hollering for most of the trip. He wet his pants and screamed almost the entire ten hours. He then spilt a soft drink over my pants. I will never forget that trip! Both Mom and I were exhausted upon arriving at our Hotel Omiros in Athens. We went out for dinner and got lost. After three days in Athens we took a ship to where we are now.

From Margaret Mary Stephen to Nanny Stephen: This island is a heavenly place. It is so clean and the Greeks are kind and pleasant. The fruits and vegetables are incredible here. Such a tasty tomato I have never had! We have such juicy oranges and the sweetest watermelon in our room.

On Monday we go to the island of Symi which is a two-hour boat trip from here and we plan to stay a week there then go to Crete after that for a week then we might go back to Athens then go to Spain. The weather in Rhodes is very hot during the day but in the evening with a breeze off the ocean you need a sweater.

The sea here is many shades of blue and green. We are discovering this fabulous island and Robert and I are brown and heathy. Everything here is for the tourists. It is their living. One can live in a hotel here and eat for less than $5 a day. We are now heading for a swim before breakfast. We buy fresh rolls from a runny nosed baker down the street from our hotel. The bread is warm and we have it with oranges, cheese and ham or salami . The Greek traditional breakfast does not impress Robert as he likes his bacon, eggs toast and jam and here it seems to be bread, coffee and occasionally a cheese called Feta. But here Robert can have some ham with his breakfast along with such sweet oranges he is making the transition from the Canadian breakfast! Love Mum.

“In Your Face”: Fascinating Journey into Natural and Artificial Intelligence Facial Recognition

If you are Canadian you no doubt are familiar with one the nation’s must trusted and respected scientists David Suzuki. He has an uncanny ability to not only simplify science but to make it enjoyable.

A Canadian documentary “In Your Face” is presented on David Suzuki’s “Nature of Things” a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation television show on January 21st at 9 p.m. The documentary is written and directed by Montreal native Josh Freed an internationally recognized producer of documentaries.

Although many of us are aware of the growing use of Artificial Intelligence facial recognition software you may be surprised that the human brain has been wired to enable humans to recognize faces. This ability starts almost right after birth. In fact most of us are so good at facial recognition we can often think we see faces in inanimate objects such as sinks or clouds. In fact some recent experiments on monkeys have enabled scientists to actually hear neurons in the monkeys’ brain firing when facial recognition is occurring. It seems we humans have a facial data bank recognition for over 5000 faces. But 2% of the population do not have this ability including Brad Pitt! This 2% face blind group may lack the ability to recognize their own face. Imagine not being able to recognize the faces of your children!

Yet there are the “super recognizers” that have the ability to never forget a face and they need not see the entire face to have this ability. They are in high demand in some police forces to operate in crowds to spot criminals and terrorists.

I like the segment of the documentary where viewers are asked to recognize celebrity faces that are masked in balaclavas so all you can see is part of the face and the eyes. I was 0/4!

It might be that our evolution as humans fine tuned this facial recognition ability. It enabled us to recognize friends and foes and was part of a survival recognition.

Then there is the AI side of facial recognition which seems flawed with unreliability to recognize different ethnic groups and leads to incorrect profiling and targeting. AI is out of control in China where there are 300 million CCTV cameras which is one for every five citizens. To even pay for fast-food meals a facial recognition camera is used. Interestingly humans have difficulty in facial recognition for faces outside their racial group. A study of adopted Korean children in France concluded that the children had a better success rate in facial recognition of Caucasians than for Korean faces showing that this facial recognition has a great cultural as opposed to genetic component.

This may amount to a huge breach of privacy capturing faces on camera. A face is a person and to capture that image without consent is a potential human rights violation.

I hope you will enjoy this documentary as much as I did. You can access this throughout the globe on streaming service CBC Gem as of January 21,2022 https://gem.cbc.ca/

As filmmaker Josh Freed says, “I never knew I had a superpower until I made this film about how we all recognize faces. It’s an amazing and untold story about what we do every time we meet someone.”

You can see the trailer here https://vimeo.com/664475263

Vitamin C and COVID-19

THE REVIEW

Vitamin C Intervention for Critical COVID-19: A Pragmatic Review of the Current Level of Evidence

Patrick Holford 1,*, Anitra C. Carr 2, Masuma Zawari 2, Marcela P. Vizcaychipi 3,4

  1. Founder of Institute for Optimum Nutrition, Ambassador House, Richmond TW9 1SQ, UK
  2. Nutrition in Medicine Research Group, Department of Pathology & Biomedical Science, University of Otago, Christchurch 8140, New Zealand; anitra.carr@otago.ac.nz (A.C.); masuma.zawari@otago.ac.nz (M.Z.)
  3. Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College, London SW7 2AZ, UK; m.vizcaychipi@imperial.ac.uk
  4. Intensive Care Medicine, Chelsea & Westminster Hospital, London SW10 9NH, UK

*   Correspondence: vitaminc4covid@gmail.com

Abstract: Severe respiratory infections are characterized by elevated inflammation and generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) which may lead to a decrease in antioxidants such as vitamin C and a higher requirement for the vitamin. Administration of intravenous vitamin C to patients with pneumonia and sepsis appears to decrease the severity of the disease and potentially improve survival rate. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection causes pneumonia, sepsis and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) in severe cases, and is referred to as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Patients with COVID-19 infection also appear to have depleted vitamin C status and require additional supplementation of vitamin C during the acute phase of the disease. To date there have been 12 vitamin C and COVID-19 trials published, including five randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and seven retrospective cohort studies. The current level of evidence from the RCTs suggests that intravenous vitamin C intervention may improve oxygenation parameters, reduce inflammatory markers, decrease days in hospital and reduce mortality, particularly in the more severely ill patients. High doses of oral vitamin C supplementation may also improve the rate of recovery in less severe cases. No adverse events have been reported in published vitamin C clinical trials in COVID-19 patients. Upcoming findings from larger RCTs will provide additional evidence on vitamin supplementation in COVID-19 patients.

Posted: 1st November 2021

Read the full report here > https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/11/11/1166/pdf

Affordable Vitamin C for Covid | An Interview with Patrick Holford. Find out what the new 12 trial study has identified in THIS interview.

https://www.brighteon.com/3a850822-a310-4ac2-b720-4d89ef161931

Travels to a Different Time: June 21, 1970, Letter Home from Rhodes

From Robert to brother Andrew; Dear Andy: Yesterday we returned from our trip to Lindos. We all went there on a motorcycle! Yes I had to coax Mom to ride one. They broke down a few times and ran out of gas. We saw the Acropolis at Lindos and swam at a great beach there and ate sweet watermelon and the juiciest oranges. It is very funny that Mom simply puts the watermelon in the ocean for a bit to cool it down. It is so hot here! Having a good time here. I am hoping to buy a speargun here as a friend I made taught me how to use it. Robert

From Margaret Mary Stephen to son Andrew: Dearest Andrew: I wonder if there has been another mail strike in Montreal. I would like to hear from you so use the blue airmail forms. Rhodes is beautiful and it is very hot during the day but you need a light sweater when the sun sets- and a heavy wool blanket at night. The food is wonderful with fruit, veggies and cheese being plentiful. Robert is good company and complains about nothing other than being hungry all the time! He really misses his big Canadian breakfasts. I am very tanned without even trying. You can burn in the sun so easily here and I have a big scab on my knee from the moped spill. It was a terrifying 36-mile trip to Lindos. I just about had a heart attack when a car passed me. The ruins caused me to think how ancient Greece is. It is such a different life here. I almost can’t believe what I have seen in this country. It is so clean and the people are lovely. We have been invited to West Berlin by a 38-year-old German doctor we met on the ship from Athens to Rhodes. We also got an invitation to go to South Africa from a couple we met on the ship. One meets so many people here from all over the world. I miss you very much and it would nice if you could be here with us. Please write me today. Love Mom

Travels to a Different Time: June 1970: Moped Troubles in Rhodes!

Hotel Pearl in Rhodes was quite to our liking. The room was small but spotless and had a breezy balcony. We had a quick lunch and I rented a moped for a couple of hours and had a ball zipping around. A 12-year-old on the open road. No way you could do that as a 12-year-old in Canada! We hung around the beach later in the afternoon and met up with Jenny and Charly Horse the South African couple we met on the ship here from Piraeus. We also met up with our ship friend Dr. Boden and all of us decided to rent mopeds and travel some 40 kilometres to the Acropolis at Lindos.I am not sure what kilometres are or kilos as we do not follow the metric system in Canada.

At 9 a.m. off we went to Lindos with Dr. Boden and Jenny and Charly Horse. We got off to a zippy start but just out of town my bike pooped out. I got a lift to a gas station with the bike and they said it would be tomorrow before it would be ready. It was decided that Charly Horse and I would go back to Rhodes and get a new moped and off with my new moped and we went to the small town where we left the ladies. Mom had had a spill and had a gash which Dr. Boden had cleaned and bandaged. We started going up some hills higher and higher and Mom was getting nervous. We finally arrived in Lindos hot and tired so a trip to cool down at the beach was just what we needed. We then went out with a fisherman in the late afternoon and were back on shore at 8:30 p.m.. The fisherman had a couple of rooms in his house which we rented. The next morning, we saw the acropolis at Lindos and after lunch headed back to Rhodes.

Mom and the adults spent time together for the next two days but I met a boy my age at the beach and spent a couple of days with him. He taught me how to spearfish and he nailed a couple of fish but no such luck for me. His family owned a restaurant so we had lunch there. Boy what an adventure! Are there sharks in Greece because we were far out in the ocean?

A couple of days later Charly and Jenny Horse went on their way and we hung out with Dr. Boden who insisted we call her Heidi. Every time I say that name I think of The Sound of Music!

One night at dinner we met two American sailors Charly and Barney who were cooks on a United States aircraft carrier anchored in the harbour. After dinner we went with the sailors and Heidi to a nightclub. A 12-year-old at a nightclub! Cool daddy Cool! The sailors were drunk as skunks and we said good-bye at 3 in the morning but not before they invited us on their aircraft carrier later in the day. We took a launch to the aircraft carrier and Shorty had been instructed by Charly and Barney to take us on a special tour. To get on the ship we had to climb a rope ladder and the ladies were not happy as the sailors below were looking up their dresses. We saw the kitchen and had sweet buns. These sailors eat a good breakfast every day and I am stuck with bread and jam! We saw jets and all sorts of weapons.

I have seen and done so many things in 10 days that 12-year old’s in Canada would never see. I feel I am growing up real quick. Is this what Europe can do to a 12-year-old?

We found a bakery around the corner from the hotel so every morning we went to get just baked rolls. We had with juice and jam on our balcony. Mom saw the baker who always had a drippy nose which we hoped did not drip into the dough.

A couple of days later we said goodbye to Heidi at the port as she was going to another island. She had left her contact details and we may meet up again in Europe. She invited us to West Berlin! Boy I can’t wait to see the Berlin Wall!

RKS Wine: Ontario Gamay Gamble

There are some dicey Ontario red wines. Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Baco Noir to name some. You must really know your producers in the dicey game.

Gamay Noir and Cabernet Franc do well in Ontario. Malivoire and Fogolar do very well with Gamay. What about Niagara’s KEW Vineyards? Why not try a KEW Vineyards 2019 Barrel Aged Gamay Noir?

It’s a garnet coloured and transparent wine. On the nose a very lighthearted cherry with some milk chocolate, raspberry all of which enveloped in a slightly smoky frame. Very smooth on the palate. Is this a lightweight lovely? On the palate the lightweight cherry champions itself with a slight bit of a tart and sour cherry finish. This wine only goes to show Gamay Noir has a bright future in Niagara.

Roast lamb and duck would suit this well but this is one of those wines that can be delightfully sipped as well. Ready, willing, and able to be consumed now and I doubt ageing will improve it.

(KEW Barrel Aged Gamay Noir 2019, VQA Niagara Peninsula, KEW Vineyards Estate Winery, Beamsville, Ontario, $17.95, Liquor Control Board of Ontario # 515270, 750 mL, 13%, Robert K. Stephen A Little Birdie Told Me So Rating 92/100)

Wine drinker profile: One who appreciates a lighter red wine tinged by red fruit and is happy to sip as is with some nibbles such as Morbier or St. Nectaire cheese or with simply roasted lamb or duck confit.

RKS Poetry: “Lizzie the Spineless Worm”

Andrew the “alleged” sexual predator leaving a potential embarrassing stain
on the royal mane
the gutless royal train rather pandering to the National Enquirer and Daily Mirror sleaze
in the continuing historically sexually corrupt Royal trapeze
no pride on your part nor family loyalty
you dump Andrew before he may be nailed to the cross of perpetual time honoured royal corrupt breeze
before the grand jury even has time to sneeze
Lizzie you are a spineless weasel ready to dump Andrew and screw him up good
what happened to the stiff British stiff upper class lip
you have dumped the royal pride
and have chosen to be ruled by the tabloid stride
leader of the spineless royal worm
before his guilt you have dumped Randy Andy
so far innocent of some guilty spanky spanky
you’ve dumped him like some scum
but please let that not disturb tourist revenue derived from the Royal Windsor drum
such a loving grand mum!