I live in France where I make wine. I travel a lot to talk about and sell the wine. I have a blog where I write about wine. ... It's nice to come here and think about things that have nothing to do with wine.
I also come here to detox after having frustrating conversations with wine idiots and whatnot. My most recent detox was after a series of comments on my aforementioned blog which the masochists amongst you can read at http://mastergrape.com/blog/?p=270
The wine culture is, in my opinion, all about status signaling. I wouldn't be surprised if wine enthusiasts are also over-cynical: a common intellectual status signal.
Dale McGowan writes:
In this spirit, I propose the creation of a fully off-topic discussion thread.
Here is our monthly place to discuss topics entirely unrelated to Less Wrong that (of course) have not appeared in recent posts.
ETA: There are two behaviors I would love to see associated with this thread. First of all, discussions often drift off-topic in the middle of a thread. In these cases "let's take this to the off-topic thread" would be an excellent response. Secondly, given who's doing the discussing, I could easily see, say, a discussion about recent developments in some webcomic blossoming into a LW-worthy insight, in which case someone could spawn a new thread.