Chhota Pegs

On Bordeaux: Tales of the Unexpected from the World’s Greatest Wine Region , edited by SUSAN KEEVIL, with an Introduction by JANE ANSON, Académie du Vin Library (Simon McMurtrie), 2020, 287 pp. ISBN 978-1-913141-05-09 (hardcover). To be published in the Journal of Wine Economics. On Bordeaux is a rambling collection of extracts and articles on “the world’s greatest wine region,” that poetic patch of southwestern France that straddles the Gironde as it nears journey’s end. We are reminded of the special, distinct nature of this terroir from the get-go: the book begins with four testaments to Bordeaux’s delicate yet proud dependence on the “power of the vintage.” The compendium then winds through a litany of interlaced themes: topography, individual châteaux , the aristocracy, Bordeaux personalities, the ravages wrought by Phylloxera , the serendipitous benedictions of Botrytis cinerea , and the uncertainties of global warming. There are the inevitable comparisons: across vintages and a...

Fuji-san on the approach to Narita airport; Debraj Ray (2017) On June 25, 2021, the Sreenidhi Institute of Science and Technology , located in Hyderabad, released the Report of an "Expert Committee," entitled " Open Reviews of the Proof of the Riemann Hypothesis ." The “proof" referred to an unpublished paper by Professor Kumar Eswaran, which claimed to have settled one of the most distinguished open questions in Mathematics, a conjecture stated by Bernhard Riemann in a classic paper written in 1859. As the Preface to the Report states, Eswaran’s contribution “was lying extant on the Internet for nearly four years and had received thousands of reads and downloads but had not received the assent of a mathematical journal to subject it to a detailed peer review." The Committee sought an open review of Eswaran’s paper from 1,200 “eminent mathematicians and scientists." Based on the reports received by the Committee, and its own deliberations, the Commit...