But maybe he wouldn't have. It's a big debate in his homeland and amongst all of us wanna be Scots elsewhere - whether or not to put a little water in your whisky. Proponents of water in the whisky, such as John from New Zealand behind the bar on a tiny little Scottish island...how do these small islanders find each other...say it opens up the flavours. Naysayers will tell you it masks them and call themselves purists. People who put ice in their whisky just don't count. As human beings.

Chemists have been studying this (on their breaks from creating the next biofuel that will save us all) and they conclude that

If you increase the water content, you reduce the solubility of some long-chain compounds - such as esters. You also increase the volatility of some compounds, especially hydrophobic ones. While phenols, for example - the smoky compounds - are particularly water-soluble, so you'd expect to reduce the volatility of those as you dilute. Nitrogen-containing compounds too - they're the roasted nut and cereal flavours - would be reduced.

I might have had too much whisky...what? In sum, "So if you like the cereal tones or that smoked peaty aroma, drink your malt whisky neat."

However, before you start waving that in someone's face as she reaches for the quaint water jug designed especially for this purpose...

When you add water to one it tastes much better, but add water to another and it might taste far worse. For example, heavier whiskies that have strong sulfur notes -those compounds are released when you dilute the whisky, and most people find them unpleasant.

Here's a link to the whole article in "Chemistry World," including some information about why I've been too harsh to those who put ice in their whisky. Who knew?

Like most good, long-standing clannish fueds it remains entirely up to one's personal taste and family tartan tradition as to whether you add water or not. Alternatively, you could just try to decide which will make you look sexier when ordering a drink. Which leads us back to Bond. Throw it all out and go for the martini? Here's that clip I promised to help you decide.

Imagine that you are learning English as a second language. Imagine that you are writing to an English language forum with this burning question. Here's the answer -

"Neat and tidy","clean and tidy", and "neat and clean" all mean the basically same thing to me. The main difference was that one isn't a typical collocation. I suppose "neat and clean" could be applied to a person whereas the expressions with "tidy" tend to indicate a place.

response to a question posted by Van Kahn writing from Ho Chi Minh city on englishtest.net

Got it? Neat and clean = person. Neat and tidy = place. Here are some additional video resources to help you keep this important distinction in mind (wouldn't want to be sloppy with your neatness references, would ya), whether English is your first or 51st language.

Neat and Clean

Neat and Tidy

According to a study by Eric Abrahamson, professor of management at Columbia Business School, and writer David Freedman,

moderately disorganised people, institutions, and systems frequently turn out to be more efficient, resilient, more creative, and generally more effective than highly organised ones

This is truly news to me. But here's the real shocker -

These two authors surveyed real office workers and found that

people with very neat desks spent 36 per cent more time on organising and searching than people with fairly messy ones. This is probably because an apparently messy desk reflects some intuitive organising principle inside its user's mind.

Great. There goes all scientific justification for the time I spend keeping my desk neat. But what if my intuitive organizing principle is manifested in the act of tidying my desk. What then, huh, huh?

Why can't I be both virtuous (as in, neat) and intuitive. Didn't think of that one, did they? I should stop before this gets messy...

The New Rule
It's the old rule that drunks have to argue
and get into fights.
The lover is just as bad. he falls into a hole.
But down in that hole he finds something shining,
worth more than any amount of money or power.
Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street.
I took it as a sign to start singing,
falling up into the bowl of sky.
The bowl breaks. Everywhere is falling everywhere.
Nothing else to do.
Here's the new rule: break the wineglass,
and fall toward the glassblower's breath.

Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
Your covered with thick cloud.
Slide out the side.
Die, and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign
that you've died.
Your old life was a frantic running
from silence.
The speechless full moon comes out now.
"I used to want buyers for my words.
Now I wish someone would buy me away from words.

I've made a lot of charmingly profound images,
scenes with Abraham, and Abraham's father, Azar,
who was also famous for icons.

I'm so tired of what I've been doing.

Then one image without form came,
and I quit.

Look for someone else to tend the shop.
I'm out of the image-making business.

Finally I know the freedom
of madness.

A random image arrives. I scream,
"Get out!" It disintegrates.

Only love.
Only the holder the flag fits into,
and wind. No flag. "

Rumi

One - you keep lists of books you want to read - mine is, and I’ve just given it a rough count, more than 300 books long. Some of them have waited patiently on the list for more than a decade.

Two - you have at least one book under the front seat of your car or in the bag you usually have with you, just in case you forget one of your current books and are caught somewhere with a spare moment.

Three - the only way to pass a second hand book store without going in is to speak to yourself quite sternly for the time it takes to leave the shop behind you.

Four - You have at least four and more likely 8 books on the go at any one time, covering a variety of topics and styles so that you always have a book that suits your reading mood.

If this is you, my advice would be, don’t fight it, abandon yourself to your fate and start another book and remember, that the current figures say that at least 1,000 new books are published every day, so get reading already!


The novelty effect, in the context of Human Performance, is the tendency for performance to initially improve when new technology is instituted, not because of any actual improvement in learning or achievement, but in response to increased interest in the new technology. The Metropolitan Education and Research Consortium (MERC) of the Virginia Commonwealth University states, "While it is possible that higher attention spans can be attributed to novelty effect, even after the initial novelty wears off, the level of interest in the automated workbook is still greater than that in the regular workbook. The increased attention by students sometimes results in increased effort or persistence, which yields achievement gains. If they are due to a novelty effect, these gains tend to diminish as students become more familiar with the new medium. This was the case in reviews of computer-assisted instruction at the secondary school level, grades 6 to 12 (Clark & Sugrue, 1988)."
The novelty effect, in context of psychology, is the tendency for an individual to have the strongest stress response the first time that individual is faced with a potentially threatening experience. Over time, as the novelty wears off, the stress response decreases.

The Day I Went to Look for Dylan Thomas

It was freezing cold

and the sun was shinning

the day I went to look

for Dylan Thomas

The Taf estuary sang

silent as a chapel

on a Monday morning

The robins and the

gulls and the herons

watched the Boat House

where I wandered  to the

sound of the ebbing tide

sucking at the sand

and the loud voices of two

Cardiff girls planning Christmas

dinner and drinking coffee

with the postman

The Writing Shed nested

on the cliff defying

anyone standing there

who had eyes or ears

or nose to not be a poet

I walked to the Browns

where he loved to drink

for a half of Buckleys

and a piece of history

there were just two small

photographs of he and Catlin

The bar was filled with

young Welshmen all built like

rugby playing bankers gone

to seed they were listening to

Bruce Springsteen sing about

New Jersey and they were

drinking Fosters beer

and they didn't know of

Sir John's Hill of the hawk

on fire of the hunchback

in the park and they did not

give a toss for Captain Cat

But they liked a drink