Good morning, InsideHook reader. If you’re planning a party for St. Patrick’s Day, we’ve got two words for you: cocktail shots. Simple to make and even easier to drink, these tiny libations are tasty and impressive. We’re also taking a look at superyachts today. What’s a wealthy boater with a lavish vessel and a guilty conscience to do? Donate time on their yacht (or the entire yacht) to marine research. Now let's set sail.

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Cocktail Shots Are the Ultimate Party Trick

BY AMANDA GABRIELE

Cocktail shots are nothing new. If you’ve ever taken a lemon drop or green tea shot, you’ve had one. But I’ve been seeing them more and more while dining out in NYC, and bartenders are getting creative with the tiny drinks. At Chiangmai Diner, I always start a meal with a round of Mao-Hugs, made with Eleven Tigers Herbal, Amaro Montenegro, Martini Fiero and tamarind. Trick Dog in San Francisco has a great list of them on their always-creative menus. And at French-Indonesian Wayan, cocktail shots are meant to complement a food menu of very shareable plates.

To do this at home, you could totally make a big batch of your favorite cocktail and simply serve it in shot glasses. Or you could take a note from the pros and try one of the recipes here. Either way, once you start serving cocktail shots at your soirees, you too will be charmed by their batchability and crowd-pleasing tendencies.

No Tab Required.

What's your preferred liquor for shots? Answer our one-question survey below.

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Superyachts for Science?

Thomas Peterson may have majored in marine biology, but he ended up working in insurance. It has done well for him. “It’s insurance that’s funded all the fun for all these years,” he says. The fun, in this case, is yachting. But Peterson, who owns a 75-foot motor yacht called the Valkyrie, understands his hobby also necessitates “an interest in the protection of the ocean.” That’s why he’s been keen to use Valkyrie to host researchers who are studying great white shark juveniles or trying to tag whales.

He’s part of a growing group of yacht owners and captains who are donating time aboard their vessels (and in some cases, the entire vessel itself) to scientists engaged in marine research, with organizations like the International SeaKeepers Society and Yachts for Science playing matchmaker. “Yachting is obviously a luxury and sometimes wasteful industry,” says one captain. “It’s rare to meet an owner who isn’t aware of that public image, and that consequently it’s good to be part of something bigger than that.”

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What Constitutes a “Visit” When You’re Trying to Get to Every Country in the World?

BY LINDSAY ROGERS

I was standing outside of Golubac Fortress in Serbia, which sits directly on the Danube River and just a stone’s throw from the modern-day border with Romania, a country I have yet to visit. “We should walk over, just to say that we did it,” I joked, craning to get a better look. “It wouldn’t count,” someone in my group, a known country counter, quickly countered. That would require, at minimum, an overnight and at least one meal, they added, and we didn’t have time for that.

I agreed. I’m not a country counter, at least in the sense that I’m not actively racing to get to every country on the planet. But I could recognize that merely stepping foot inside Romania’s borders wouldn’t be enough to sate me, either. I conceded. Prior to that day, however, I’m not sure I’d given any serious thought to what the criteria was for being able to say I visited a country.