Here’s an interesting article on lambic beers: NYT
If you have explored beer and decided it’s not for you, well, I toast your open mind. But if you have exiled beers to parts unknown, I have a radical proposal: Take the time to seek out and try a few lambic beers from Belgium and tell me if these are not as complex and distinctive as many fine wines.
What makes this radical? Even many beer drinkers know little about lambic beer. It’s perhaps the most unusual beer around, truly made in the old-fashioned way. It is not at all easy to find. You will most likely have to seek out a shop specializing in great beers of the world, but I assure you it is worth the effort.
Go read the rest if you’re interested. I think I’m going to have one of those for Happy Hour later…
I had shared some of their Trippel with an Army wife friend before moving to Alabama. We bought it because the label had three muses dancing around a maypole. Three chicks dancing…..it seemed made for us! It had a strong floral aroma (we laughed together that we were drinking flowers) but sharing a six pack over the course of an evening and one of her gourmet style meals left both of us with a pounding headache the next morning. After reading that article I thought that maybe Trippel was a lambic beer. Alas, it is not but is called Trippel after the beers that the monks would brew that they considered to be light tasting but having triple the alcohol strength. Gee, that explains a lot about that evening and the next morning now! Good thing there wasn’t a maypole around because our husbands were in Iraq. I guess their Beire De Mars is a sort of lambic though. I did not drink beer. Budweiser tastes so yucky to me. Then I met Fat Tire and discovered that I did drink beer when it tasted the way that beer was meant to taste.
Over the past eight years, Weldon has spent about $80,000 of campaign treasury funds–donated money that congressional ethics rules say should be used for “bona fide campaign or political purposes”–on restaurant meals. His dining choices range from high-end establishments like The Monocle, a Capitol Hill restaurant popular with lawmakers and lobbyists, to the humble Cracker Barrel. During the same period Weldon also dropped about $30,000 on hotels.
Take January 3, 1999: less than two months after winning reelection with 72 percent of the vote and 22 months away from his next election, Weldon spent $435.39 in campaign funds at the Capitol Grille in Washington. (The Grille’s website bears the slogan: “Remind yourself why you work so hard.”) Then, during the summer and early fall of 1999, still more than a year from election day, Weldon put down $400 of campaign funds on five meals in Wildwood, New Jersey, where he then owned a beach house. Three of those meals were on the weekend.
Senate Defies Bush, Approves $109 Billion in War Spending, Hurricane Relief
WASHINGTON, DC, May 4, 2006 (ENS) – The U.S. Senate has approved a $109 billion emergency spending bill to pay for the war in Iraq and for reconstruction of the hurricane-battered Gulf Coast, but the future of the legislation is very much up in the air.
The measure is $14 billion more than the amount requested by President George W. Bush and the White House today reiterated its pledge to veto the bill.
President George. W. Bush has decided to veto the emergency spending bill passed by the Senate. (Photo courtesy The White House)
“The President has made it very clear he would veto legislation that goes above and beyond what he called for,” White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan told reporters. “He said that this is a test on spending restraint and he calls on Congress to fund our troops and fund the rebuilding efforts along the Gulf Coast and then hold the line on spending elsewhere.”
McClellan added that Republican leaders in the House and Senate have expressed support for sustaining a veto – a point reiterated by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.
“I applaud the President’s determination to stick to true emergency spending and I will support such a veto if necessary to keep that federal spending under control,” said Frist, a Tennessee Republican. “Families have got live within their means and so should we here in Washington.”
The Senate passed the bill by a vote of 77 to 21 – all those in opposition were Republicans.
Where are the activist priests and ministers who took strong stands during the Vietnam War and hit the streets with their protests?
Three years into the war against Iraq, the silence of the clergy is deafening, despite U.S. abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and a reported American policy of shipping detainees to secret prisons abroad where, presumably, they can be tortured.
There are U.S. chaplains of many faiths serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, ministering to the men and women in uniform and reaching out to local religious leaders in both countries.
But here at home, the clergy seems to be in the same boat as the news media and most members of Congress: they are victims of the post-Sept. 11 syndrome that equates any criticism of U.S. policy with lack of patriotism.
The clergy are not alone. There is a disquieting public acceptance of the status quo. Although the Iraq war has a role in President Bush’s declining standing in public opinion polls, rising gas prices may be having a bigger impact on his popularity.
Helen skewers the religious leaders of this country for a lack of courage to stand up against this morally bereft administration. The piece is wonderful and you should check it out.
I will never understand how religious leaders and regular church-goers can justify wrapping themselves in the American flag and standing lockstep behind the GOP – completely abandoning the real message of Jesus.
Which is why my “Who Would Jesus Bomb?” sticker will stay on my car until it cracks and peels off.
Jesus would nuke everyone. It is the apocalypse, after all, and Jesus would do the right thing and free us from these constricting bodies so our souls can ascend into heaven.
I’ve had this argument before, and it is pointless to waste the breath on people who will never change their minds. How can you effectively question blind genocidal faith?
If you haven’t seen this supercool video of the Huygens probe’s descent to the surface of Saturn’s moon, Titan, I highly recommend it. It is an 11MB file, so dialup users, be forewarned.
The almost four-hour-long operation of the camera is shown in less than five minutes.
…
The first part of the movie shows how Titan looked to the camera as it acquired more and more images during the probe’s descent.
…
The movie includes sidebar graphics that show:
…trajectory views from the south, a scale bar for comparison to the height of Mount Everest, colored arrows that point to the sun and to the Cassini orbiter.
…A close-up view of the Huygens probe highlighting large and unexpected parachute movements, a scale bar for comparison to human height.
…
Sounds from a left speaker trace Huygens’ motion, with tones changing with rotational speed and the tilt of the parachute. There also are clicks that clock the rotational counter, as well as sounds for the probe’s heat shield hitting Titan’s atmosphere, parachute deployments, heat shield release, jettison of the camera cover and touchdown.
Sounds from a right speaker go with the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer activity. There’s a continuous tone that represents the strength of Huygens’ signal to Cassini. Then there are 13 different chimes – one for each of instrument’s 13 different science parts – that keep time with flashing-white-dot exposure counters.
Something science based and awe inspiring has survived our present day American repressed, suppressed, and depressed society, culture, and scrubbed media?
My dogs were trying to figure out why the computer was making all of those sounds. My son is home today. He finished his end of the year testing at school and his ribs are hurting from his last scoliosis rod extension so I let him stay home today. He said that Booman is very cool for giving me this……he is only six.
When I was six I got to stay up late and watch Neil Armstrong step onto the surface of the moon. I’ll never forget that. This may be somewhat less dramatic, in the sense that it is not a live human setting foot on another moon in our solar system, but it is a huge achievement, and something that we can be proud of.
I hope your son’s tests went well for him. Perhaps he will design or supervise such a magnificent exploration milestone someday.
a child left behind. Yesterday his teacher told me that she thought that the “child” part is what will be eradicated so that it can’t be left behind. She was going over a kind of Kindergarten syllabus from last year and counting how many social and art projects there isn’t time for now in her Kindergarten class because they all must be able to read before they leave now. She sighed and said….most of them all average out around third grade when it comes to reading. Before then though some seem to be overly and unbelievably gifted readers and others don’t seem to be able to get it at all until one morning in third grade they wake up and a light is blazing in their heads.
Awesome clip – thanks, blueneck! I’m old enough to remember the Sputnik launch and resultant space race. I lived fairly near the Kennedy Space Center for several years and could watch the Apollo launches from my backyard.
VILNIUS (AFP) May 4 — US Vice President Dick Cheney took a swipe at Russia over democratic reform as EU leaders pledged to support the new democracies of former communist east Europe and vowed to bring authoritarian Belarus into the fold.
Cheney joined EU leaders at a summit in the former Soviet republic of Lithuania which, despite the US leader’s stinging attack, they said was not an anti-Russian gathering.
In a keynote speech, Cheney accused Moscow of “improperly restricting” human rights and using oil and gas supplies as a weapon.
“Opponents of democracy in Russia are seeking to reverse the progress of the past decade. No legitimate cause is served when oil and gas become tools of manipulation or blackmail,” Cheney said, referring to the cut-off of gas supplies to Ukraine last January which also affected parts of Europe.
“No one can justify actions that undermine the territorial integrity of a neighbor, or interfere with democratic movements.”
A new theory has been proposed to explain how the giant planets — Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus — became tilted. The tilts of these planets are fixed, whereas the tilts of the smaller Earth-like planets — Mercury, Mars and Venus — have changed with time. The new theory says that the tilts were fixed by the way the planets interacted gravitationally as they moved from being close together to the positions they occupy today (Nature 440 1163). If correct, the theory would solve one of the biggest mysteries in our solar system.
Mainstream coffees are offering “greener” and fair trade alternatives though less well known brands that they own – Yuban, owned by Maxwell House, and Millhouse, owned by Folgers – opening ethical coffee choices to those that can’t afford or don’t want to pay a premium coffee price. For Yuban, it’s also opened doors to wider distribution, as market demand exists for such coffees.
A Japanese consortium hopes to capture carbon dioxide emissions at an Australian power plant by 2009 in a world first that would be a major step towards battling greenhouse gases responsible for global warming, a report said Thursday. Under the plan, about 20 percent of the carbon dioxide (CO2) released by the plant in the north eastern state of Queensland would be trapped, liquefied then stored underground rather than released into the atmosphere.
Yale researchers argue that monkeys and humans exhibit similar illogical economic biases. Little attention has been paid to whether systematic economic biases such as risk-aversion are learned behaviors – and thus easily ameliorated through market incentives – or biologically based, arising in novel situations and in spite of experience. The researchers explored how a colony of capuchin monkeys responds to economic decisions. They found that monkeys doing business – including trading and gambling – behave in ways that closely mirror our own behavioral inclinations.
With an Iranian war possibly on the horizon, the British Medical Journal [!!!] has this interesting and timely story this week: “A way out for the conscientious objector: ‘become’ a mental patient.” [A note to “the Watchers”: I’m not endorsing anything here; we report, you decide.]
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has released a report describing the occurrence of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in ground water and drinking-water supply wells across the Nation. VOCs are produced in large volumes and are associated with a myriad of products, such as plastics, adhesives, paints, gasoline, fumigants, refrigerants, and dry-cleaning fluids. The report concludes that VOCs were detected in aquifers across the nation and not limited to just a few specific aquifers or regions. Despite the nationwide occurrence, VOCs were not detected in most of the sampled wells (about 80 percent had no detections above a threshold of 0.2 part per billion). VOCs were detected in some domestic and public-supply wells, but seldom at concentrations greater than U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulatory or USGS health-based guidelines. The full report is available here.
The CDC this week reports on an investigation where six regional poison control centers in five states were consulted regarding 172 human and 19 animal (i.e., pet cat or dog) exposures to shoe or boot leather protection or sealant products resulting in respiratory illness. One product was associated with 126 cases of human illness and another product with seven cases. The toxic agents appear to be a mixture of fluoropolymers and hydrocarbons. Previous outbreaks of acute pulmonary illness associated with exposure to waterproofing agents have implicated fluoropolymer-and-hydrocarbon-based products.
The universe is at least 986 billion years older than physicists thought and is probably much older still, according to a radical new theory.
The revolutionary study suggests that time did not begin with the big bang 14 billion years ago. This mammoth explosion which created all the matter we see around us, was just the most recent of many.
The standard big bang theory says the universe began with a massive explosion, but the new theory suggests it is a cyclic event that consists of repeating big bangs and big crunches – where every particle of matter collapses together.
Thanks for the link. This is some really head-spinning stuff. I look forward to the day we send the Bushites frog-marching so we can have the luxury of the time and mental energy to debate the philosophical and religious implications of a discovery like this around the frog pond (the kind of thing I happily spent mental energy on back in the Clinton years, sigh…).
I’ve always said that if you want to find a more efficient process than currently exists, give it to the lazy guy, not the eager beaver. The lazy guy will figure out the easiest, shortest way to the goal. The eager beaver will work his frickin ass off and cover all angles and bases before eventually arriving at the goal.
The lazy man’s process will be far more efficient than the eager beaver’s!
(Disclosure: I know this from personal experience! (As a lazy man – not the eager beaver!))
GENEVA (AP) May 5 — In its 87-page report filed in January — some four years behind schedule — Washington insisted it is “unequivocally opposed” to torture and that its commitment to the ban “remains unchanged” since the U.S. Senate ratified the convention in October 1994.
But the Geneva-based committee, a panel of 10 independent experts who meet twice a year, said the United States’ legal interpretation of torture in Department of Justice memorandums in 2002 and 2004 “seems to be much more restrictive than previous United Nations standards.”
The committee is demanding the United States explain why it established secret prisons, what rules and methods of interrogation it employs, and whether the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush assumes responsibility for alleged acts of torture committed by American agents outside U.S. territory.
“In view of the numerous allegations of torture and ill-treatment of persons in detention under the jurisdiction of (the United States) and the case of the Abu Ghraib prison, what specific measures have been taken to identify and remedy problems in the command and operation of those detention facilities?” the committee has asked.
Here’s an interesting article on lambic beers: NYT
Go read the rest if you’re interested. I think I’m going to have one of those for Happy Hour later…
I had shared some of their Trippel with an Army wife friend before moving to Alabama. We bought it because the label had three muses dancing around a maypole. Three chicks dancing…..it seemed made for us! It had a strong floral aroma (we laughed together that we were drinking flowers) but sharing a six pack over the course of an evening and one of her gourmet style meals left both of us with a pounding headache the next morning. After reading that article I thought that maybe Trippel was a lambic beer. Alas, it is not but is called Trippel after the beers that the monks would brew that they considered to be light tasting but having triple the alcohol strength. Gee, that explains a lot about that evening and the next morning now! Good thing there wasn’t a maypole around because our husbands were in Iraq. I guess their Beire De Mars is a sort of lambic though. I did not drink beer. Budweiser tastes so yucky to me. Then I met Fat Tire and discovered that I did drink beer when it tasted the way that beer was meant to taste.
Financial follies: Harper’s
I sure hope Joe Sestak beats him in November.
How come it don’t look so “humble” on me?
Its made by lazy men who can afford to hire and motivate others to do the hard work for them.
Entrepreneurs, they call us.
Trouble is every one is lazy nowadays, except the illegal immigrants from Mexico and Asia.
God, we Americans are a lazy bunch! Even those of us who get up early and go to “work.”
Link
link
Where are the activist priests and ministers who took strong stands during the Vietnam War and hit the streets with their protests?
Three years into the war against Iraq, the silence of the clergy is deafening, despite U.S. abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and a reported American policy of shipping detainees to secret prisons abroad where, presumably, they can be tortured.
There are U.S. chaplains of many faiths serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, ministering to the men and women in uniform and reaching out to local religious leaders in both countries.
But here at home, the clergy seems to be in the same boat as the news media and most members of Congress: they are victims of the post-Sept. 11 syndrome that equates any criticism of U.S. policy with lack of patriotism.
The clergy are not alone. There is a disquieting public acceptance of the status quo. Although the Iraq war has a role in President Bush’s declining standing in public opinion polls, rising gas prices may be having a bigger impact on his popularity.
Helen skewers the religious leaders of this country for a lack of courage to stand up against this morally bereft administration. The piece is wonderful and you should check it out.
I will never understand how religious leaders and regular church-goers can justify wrapping themselves in the American flag and standing lockstep behind the GOP – completely abandoning the real message of Jesus.
Which is why my “Who Would Jesus Bomb?” sticker will stay on my car until it cracks and peels off.
Jesus would nuke everyone. It is the apocalypse, after all, and Jesus would do the right thing and free us from these constricting bodies so our souls can ascend into heaven.
I’ve had this argument before, and it is pointless to waste the breath on people who will never change their minds. How can you effectively question blind genocidal faith?
If you haven’t seen this supercool video of the Huygens probe’s descent to the surface of Saturn’s moon, Titan, I highly recommend it. It is an 11MB file, so dialup users, be forewarned.
Something science based and awe inspiring has survived our present day American repressed, suppressed, and depressed society, culture, and scrubbed media?
My dogs were trying to figure out why the computer was making all of those sounds. My son is home today. He finished his end of the year testing at school and his ribs are hurting from his last scoliosis rod extension so I let him stay home today. He said that Booman is very cool for giving me this……he is only six.
When I was six I got to stay up late and watch Neil Armstrong step onto the surface of the moon. I’ll never forget that. This may be somewhat less dramatic, in the sense that it is not a live human setting foot on another moon in our solar system, but it is a huge achievement, and something that we can be proud of.
I hope your son’s tests went well for him. Perhaps he will design or supervise such a magnificent exploration milestone someday.
a child left behind. Yesterday his teacher told me that she thought that the “child” part is what will be eradicated so that it can’t be left behind. She was going over a kind of Kindergarten syllabus from last year and counting how many social and art projects there isn’t time for now in her Kindergarten class because they all must be able to read before they leave now. She sighed and said….most of them all average out around third grade when it comes to reading. Before then though some seem to be overly and unbelievably gifted readers and others don’t seem to be able to get it at all until one morning in third grade they wake up and a light is blazing in their heads.
Awesome clip – thanks, blueneck! I’m old enough to remember the Sputnik launch and resultant space race. I lived fairly near the Kennedy Space Center for several years and could watch the Apollo launches from my backyard.
.
VILNIUS (AFP) May 4 — US Vice President Dick Cheney took a swipe at Russia over democratic reform as EU leaders pledged to support the new democracies of former communist east Europe and vowed to bring authoritarian Belarus into the fold.
Cheney joined EU leaders at a summit in the former Soviet republic of Lithuania which, despite the US leader’s stinging attack, they said was not an anti-Russian gathering.
In a keynote speech, Cheney accused Moscow of “improperly restricting” human rights and using oil and gas supplies as a weapon.
“Opponents of democracy in Russia are seeking to reverse the progress of the past decade. No legitimate cause is served when oil and gas become tools of manipulation or blackmail,” Cheney said, referring to the cut-off of gas supplies to Ukraine last January which also affected parts of Europe.
“No one can justify actions that undermine the territorial integrity of a neighbor, or interfere with democratic movements.”
It started as a comment for this newsbucket, it turned out to be a diary ::
Evil I of WH In Lithuania – No Love for Russia
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
A new theory has been proposed to explain how the giant planets — Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus — became tilted. The tilts of these planets are fixed, whereas the tilts of the smaller Earth-like planets — Mercury, Mars and Venus — have changed with time. The new theory says that the tilts were fixed by the way the planets interacted gravitationally as they moved from being close together to the positions they occupy today (Nature 440 1163). If correct, the theory would solve one of the biggest mysteries in our solar system.
At least one aspect of the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change is spurring US and EU joint international action. Global standards being developed for auto air conditioning systems should restrict leakages of the fluorinated greenhouse gas HFC-134a to 40 grams per year from cars sold after 2008. These requirements mirror an EU directive set in January.
Mainstream coffees are offering “greener” and fair trade alternatives though less well known brands that they own – Yuban, owned by Maxwell House, and Millhouse, owned by Folgers – opening ethical coffee choices to those that can’t afford or don’t want to pay a premium coffee price. For Yuban, it’s also opened doors to wider distribution, as market demand exists for such coffees.
A Japanese consortium hopes to capture carbon dioxide emissions at an Australian power plant by 2009 in a world first that would be a major step towards battling greenhouse gases responsible for global warming, a report said Thursday. Under the plan, about 20 percent of the carbon dioxide (CO2) released by the plant in the north eastern state of Queensland would be trapped, liquefied then stored underground rather than released into the atmosphere.
The impact of blogging on the internet has reached a tipping point, the BBC reports today, at least as far as the relationship between consumers and businesses. They don’t discuss the political ramifications, however.
Yale researchers argue that monkeys and humans exhibit similar illogical economic biases. Little attention has been paid to whether systematic economic biases such as risk-aversion are learned behaviors – and thus easily ameliorated through market incentives – or biologically based, arising in novel situations and in spite of experience. The researchers explored how a colony of capuchin monkeys responds to economic decisions. They found that monkeys doing business – including trading and gambling – behave in ways that closely mirror our own behavioral inclinations.
With an Iranian war possibly on the horizon, the British Medical Journal [!!!] has this interesting and timely story this week: “A way out for the conscientious objector: ‘become’ a mental patient.” [A note to “the Watchers”: I’m not endorsing anything here; we report, you decide.]
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has released a report describing the occurrence of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in ground water and drinking-water supply wells across the Nation. VOCs are produced in large volumes and are associated with a myriad of products, such as plastics, adhesives, paints, gasoline, fumigants, refrigerants, and dry-cleaning fluids. The report concludes that VOCs were detected in aquifers across the nation and not limited to just a few specific aquifers or regions. Despite the nationwide occurrence, VOCs were not detected in most of the sampled wells (about 80 percent had no detections above a threshold of 0.2 part per billion). VOCs were detected in some domestic and public-supply wells, but seldom at concentrations greater than U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulatory or USGS health-based guidelines. The full report is available here.
Geology update: More than 5,000 Indonesians have fled their homes around simmering Mount Merapi, officials said Thursday, as the first lava flow oozed from the volcano.
The CDC this week reports on an investigation where six regional poison control centers in five states were consulted regarding 172 human and 19 animal (i.e., pet cat or dog) exposures to shoe or boot leather protection or sealant products resulting in respiratory illness. One product was associated with 126 cases of human illness and another product with seven cases. The toxic agents appear to be a mixture of fluoropolymers and hydrocarbons. Previous outbreaks of acute pulmonary illness associated with exposure to waterproofing agents have implicated fluoropolymer-and-hydrocarbon-based products.
A bit more science news:
One Big Bang, or were there many?
Thanks for the link. This is some really head-spinning stuff. I look forward to the day we send the Bushites frog-marching so we can have the luxury of the time and mental energy to debate the philosophical and religious implications of a discovery like this around the frog pond (the kind of thing I happily spent mental energy on back in the Clinton years, sigh…).
I agree wholeheartedly!
I’ve always said that if you want to find a more efficient process than currently exists, give it to the lazy guy, not the eager beaver. The lazy guy will figure out the easiest, shortest way to the goal. The eager beaver will work his frickin ass off and cover all angles and bases before eventually arriving at the goal.
The lazy man’s process will be far more efficient than the eager beaver’s!
(Disclosure: I know this from personal experience! (As a lazy man – not the eager beaver!))
CIA Chief Porter Goss resigns, abruptly. Reuters reporting.
Anyone saw that coming?
.
GENEVA (AP) May 5 — In its 87-page report filed in January — some four years behind schedule — Washington insisted it is “unequivocally opposed” to torture and that its commitment to the ban “remains unchanged” since the U.S. Senate ratified the convention in October 1994.
But the Geneva-based committee, a panel of 10 independent experts who meet twice a year, said the United States’ legal interpretation of torture in Department of Justice memorandums in 2002 and 2004 “seems to be much more restrictive than previous United Nations standards.”
The committee is demanding the United States explain why it established secret prisons, what rules and methods of interrogation it employs, and whether the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush assumes responsibility for alleged acts of torture committed by American agents outside U.S. territory.
“In view of the numerous allegations of torture and ill-treatment of persons in detention under the jurisdiction of (the United States) and the case of the Abu Ghraib prison, what specific measures have been taken to identify and remedy problems in the command and operation of those detention facilities?” the committee has asked.
Amnesty International’s Supplementary Briefing to the UN Committee Against Torture
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY