What Hedges fails to recognize, however, is that critical wine rating has grown in ubiquity on a parallel path with the growth of wines available to the consumer who are mostly inundated with a wall of wine and abundance of choice when all they truly want is a lovely bottle of vino for dinner.

FORBES: Wine of the Week: 2009 Hedges Family Estate DLD Syrah

WDM, a technique that allows a single optical path to carry thousands of parallel channels, as long as each is encoded in a slightly different colour.

ECONOMIST: Optical communications

It took three passes before we found the turnoff, an unmarked path of red dirt, two parallel paths, really, tire tracks, with grass growing in the middle.

NEWYORKER: Reverting to a Wild State

Who knows: you may think you are reading this article in a gloomy office, but there could be a parallel universe where some of the electrons in your brain followed a slightly different path a few weeks ago and your alter ego is browsing it on a sunny beach.

ECONOMIST: The universe, it appears, may not be alone