Motivation

OK, I feel better now.

Update: The picture used for this poster (done by someone unknown) was taken by Jim MacMillan.

What can happen in a British Pub?

Consider this lesson in irony. It's short and explains why you shouldn't drink too much if you make it to the UK.

...and don't pee in the water if you go way south.

Blog Note: I need to switch away from Templates to the new Blogger Way. So, assuming I don't totally deep six the whole thing, you may see some minor differences in the blog for a while---some custom items may not make it. It's supposed to make it easier to add stuff to the sidewalls, etc. Hey, onward and upward.

Comet Coments

This view above was like our view of the comet. Not with a telephoto lens, of course, but low to the horizon, twilight, bright and clear--at least for one day. Low clouds were low hills in our case.

Other people got to see it in the daytime, as above. Our clear skies did not work out in their timing to allow us to see it during the day.

Now, the comet has headed south for those down under to wonder at.

Photos looted from Astronomy Picture of the Day. Check it, you know, daily.

Consorting with the...Duvel

Duvel is probably my second-most favorite Belgian beer (after Orval). The USA importer has a content-free website here. Wikipedia, as usual quite chatty, has more information here. There is even a club, but my Flemish is not so good---I could get that their server just crashed on the 9th, however. A technical description of the style is here.

The brewers of Duvel are very secretive, but we do know that Duvel is bottle-conditioned, i.e. fermented in the bottle. That is believed to be the third fermentation overall. The first fermentation is assumed to be normal (i.e. for a Belgian beer), and the second caused by an infusion of candy sugar (and why not?). The homebrew digest (main site here) has had some informed speculation in the past (use the search function), but all of us brewers have our own truth when it comes to consorting with this beer.

I think of it as a light-tasting, velvet-wrapped bierhammer. I'm making 10 gallons for a party.

The head on this beer is awesome and it leaves a very delicate lace on the perfectly shaped glass that reminds me of a diamond string bikini...
OK, maybe this is more like they mean by Belgian Lace...



I bet I know the image stuck in your head now.

Dangerous Quotes

Normally, people of the left refer to Hitler and the Nazis as being "right wing." There was a right wing in Germany at the time, but they were definitely not Hitler's party. The People's Cube hilariously demonstrates the danger of quoting Hitler in an attempt to smear right-wing or conservative targets.

Be sure and visit some of their other articles while there, especially Klaatu.. Barada.. Pinko!

Battle of New Orleans

Well, not the historical battle:

The worst is that, if it continues steady for six months more, the city would have a 12-month murder rate about eight to 12 times the national average for cities its size, rather than this year's multiple of seven to 10. Three New Year's Eve killings brought the city's murder total to 161 for 2006. Depending on which population estimate is used, that works out to a rate of 60 to 81 killings per 100,000 residents. But two-thirds of the murders were in the last half of the year. The state's most recent door-to-door survey estimated the population at 200,000 down from a pre-storm figure of about 455,000. Using that estimate, the 2006 murder rate is 81 per 100,000 residents. If the figures remain steady, Peter Scharf, executive director of the Center for Society, Law and Justice at the University of New Orleans notes, that would mean a June-to-June rate of 105 killings per 100,000 residents.

So, the current death rate in New Orleans is about the same or greater than in Iraq? I'm talking Iraqis in Iraq here, including the people we are shooting and bombing--on purpose--along with all the ones shooting and blowing themselves up.

I guess D.C. is relieved that another city has taken over the lead.

500 miles per gallon of gasoline?

Yes, well. It's all in the definition. If you have a plug-in hybrid, running on E-85, going short commuter distances, then yes. Most of the energy in that set up comes from plugging it in at night and ethanol. But, it does cut down on the gasoline to the equivalent of 500 mpgg.

Coincidence?

OK, so I'm applying on-line for an EIN number... Props to IRS for letting me progress to the internet age... And, to be sure it gave me a number, which I copied down by hand---because I've dealt with computers for over 30 years. Good thing too, since trying to print the page locked up my computer.

Happily, Firefox deposited the print in the spooler before the IRS knife found a vital spot. So, I only lost time. The government is good at that---even when it is trying to save you time. I suppose I should be grateful that the gov is slowly saving more time than it loses. Progress.

Poverty is Relative

Whether one is poor or not is sometimes hard to determine. Not too many years ago, I bought a 50 lbs bag of barley for 8 bucks and change, which could have fed a family for several days in a pinch. At the same time, I paid for a burger, fries and drink about the same.

Normal people can't live on foodstamps, but if you ate a la 19th century you could and bank the rest.

VDH from his Works and Days:

The Great Disconnect

For all the holiday depression with the state of the world, there is great munificence and affluence around the globe, and especially here in the United States that have brought us a long way, for both good and evil, from our primordial existence of even the immediate past.

Part of the pre-January rhetoric of the Democrats is the notion of great inequality. Yet despite the budget deficits, the piling up of national debt, and amid the doom and gloom of the vast amount of US capital held by Chinese, or oil payouts to the Arabs, or a declining standard of education, there are signs of American wealth never seen before among any civilization on earth.

I live in one of the poorest sections of one of the poorer counties in California, but consider: there were near riots to get the latest PlayStation 3 video games nearby. I was looking at a 4-wheel drive truck recently, and passed up all the “extras” offered by the salesman—leather seats, GPS, DVD player, extra chrome, multiplayer CD—but that extravagant Toyota Tundra was snapped up by a family on welfare in the booth next to me. With a zero-interest loan package, and no money down, apparently almost anyone can walk into a showroom and drive out with a $40,000 monster-sized truck.

Then I drove into the local shopping center and walked through Office Max, Wal-Mart, and Food4Less where there were more signs of America’s new encompassing wealth. There were new Camrys and Accords all over the parking lot, nearly everyone was on a cell phone. Nearly everyone was also speaking Spanish and no doubt a first generation immigrant (legal or not from Mexico). But in terms of traditional notions of poverty and the ability to acquire material goods, food, communications gear, transportation, etc. they were hardly poor.

Perhaps this new prosperity that encompasses almost all social classes in America is due to the miracle of science that now gives us such cheap appurtenances, or the addition of 1 billion Indian and Chinese fabricators to the world’s work force that results in endless consumer goods; or the ability of low interest and almost universal instant credit.

We are not talking of European vacations, second homes, or SAT camps for junior, but nonetheless there is something very different from the past that I remember when the poor nearby lacked indoor plumbing and at school in the early 1960s students ate thirds and fourths at our noon meal of barely edible surplus cafeteria food. Surely something has gone right in eliminating elemental poverty that we never hear in the din of constant accusations and complaints about American inequality.

This summer I bought on sale an old-style color television, 32-inch screen (the kind with the big tube in the back and curved front) for about $130. A decade ago it would have cost $500. The surprise was that the clerk laughed about what he thought was the idiocy of wanting one of these now obsolete, but perfectly fine, televisions. He probably made about $10 an hour, but would never have apparently stooped to such sacrifice. Again, any discussion about this surreal world is entirely lacking in the current political debate.

A final note. I wrote about such anomalies about three years ago when I broke my arm and visited the local emergency room in Selma about three miles away. Nothing much has changed since then, which is good—however little the credit this country gets from its critics.

We also bought one of those $150 regular TVs recently, because we are waiting for the new technology to get cheaper and also new-technology sources to become more plentiful, i.e. cheaper, too. Our most recent TV before that, a WEGA, was supposedly HD ready, NOT! Lies, Lies, Lies--still a nice TV though. Next time, the TV, the DVD-follow-on, the cable, everything will be to hand BEFORE we buy.

Oh, and why was I buying a big bag of barley? To feed my family for weeks, of course, on Pilsner Beer. The 19th century---when technology peaked.

David Brin Serves Up

(Image looted from Lifeboat.com)

Dr Brin discusses the Singularity with its signposts and nightmares.

Hurrying or slowing it may be possible, but trying to do one might do the other in my opinion. He hammers on a point that always bothers me about calls from the extremes to use the coercion of government to shut off one avenue of research or another (left and right): in most stories and real life disasters it's the hidden, secret knowledge that spirals out of control and eats everyone's lunch.

I suppose you can spin anything

John Kerry went to Iraq recently after:

insulting the intelligence of the troops

meeting with enemies of the US whose minions are killing our servicemen as he chatted them up (something he's done since the 70's)--here he charms the President of Syria.

When he got to Iraq, he didn't exactly draw a crowd at breakfast:

He had to cancel a news conference to avoid an embarrassing, obviously low turn out...

Ben was there.

I bet if you read the materials coming out of the Kerry '08 Exploratory Committee, they just loved him over there and really got where he was coming from.

This may or may not be about beer

Most of the Belgium beers I like are from the Northern or Flemish part of Belgium. Maybe this is why.

Today was a wine day. I had most, or maybe all, of a bottle of my homemade white.

A Christmas Story

Long before it would have occurred to me to build a Christmas Tree out of Grolsch Beer bottles(someone beat me to it anyway), I spent a few Christmas Seasons in an All-City Boys Choir.

Twas the Singing Boys of Houston, and as Houston is a large city and there were about 75 of us boys, it must have been somewhat of a select group I was in. It was not obvious at the time to me, but it was a big deal for everyone else that I was there.

I remember people mentioning that they had listened to me/us on the radio Christmas Eve and thinking Dang, I missed us on the radio.

One year, we sang in the lobby of a large downtown bank and the manager gave us all an un-circulated silver dollar in a plastic case. We all took ours out and played with them.

I was a second soprano, and therefore stood in the middle of the choir. We sang lots of songs, but being boys we liked the ones we could really project.

So, here's to the Christmas memory of standing, surrounded by 75 boys singing a very long Gloria.

If that doesn't do it for you, how about the Nutcracker Suit performed entirely on bicycle parts?

New Blogger

OK, I finally had time to upgrade to the new Blogger software. Everything is supposed to be the same---except better. Well, everyone could use some push, I guess (Image looted from Lucianne).

There are slaves and then there are slaves

Orson Scott Card, he of many words and author of famous SF, has a new interesting polemic---more or less comparing Rome to the USA. He does it in a good way, not the usual Rome Fell, so we Fall, etc.

On the way, he falls into to usual trap of saying that slaves were at the bottom of the economic system in terms of purchasing power. Well, some slaves were at the bottom: let's say salt miners. But, for example, Egypt was owned directly by the Emperor as his own personal property---therefore it was managed by one of his slaves. Now there is a slave with purchasing power. In general, slaves could have their own money, property, etc. During certain times of the empire, slaves---at least the better sort---had more rights than freemen.

OSC's article is a good read anyway. He's definitely a post 9/11 person.

I've had a bottle of my homemade wine so I laugh at barbarian invasions.

Beer Club Buys Engine

Real Ale is a reference to naturally carbonated beer fresh from the cask. To get real ale ready requires some effort. The final product is pumped--not pushed with CO2, as in regular beer taps--with a beer engine, which the young lass above is preparing to yank on. It takes a few pumps and some wait time to pour a perfect pint.

Credit for saving real ale and beer engines and everything that goes with it can be laid at the feet of CAMRA. The lore and love of real ale is explored in this short polemic at the Beer Advocate.

Now, our homebrew club is a great club, and we hold our meetings at Ice Harbor Brewing Company, a local brewpub. They have a cask-conditioned beer every Tuesday, but carbonated and pushed by CO2, as per regular American beer. To say thanks for hosting us for our meetings and special functions (like megabrews on their equipment), we bought them a beer engine. It might just be for us, but I hope they take the hint.

Pump me a beer baby!

Weekend Blitz

I've been working a lot over the past few months, missing beer club events and shooting opportunities galore, but this weekend I got to do both---beer club Christmas party on Saturday (more about that later) and local IPSC match on Sunday. Wow, maybe it's a sign of normality returning in my life.

The only COED NCAA sport is shooting (that I'm aware of), so it's probably doomed. Her team is doing well, however. I'm sure she wears eye and ear protection when actually shooting and not posing for photos.

The attack on Christmas as opposed to The Holiday Season continues. Mark Steyn has a funny/thought-provoking take on it as per his usual. Seattle is in the lead, duh, but they come out looking better than expected, probably by accident. Accident or not, a good outcome is good.

More Gas

A few days ago, I mentioned that some coal-seam fires in China put out more CO2 than US traffic. Now, we can see that Cows put out more greenhouse gas than all combustion. This is probably a thinly disguised vegan attack on steak and hamburger.

In other news, PM has 10 tech concepts you need to know about.

I really want to swallow that smart pill next time.

OK, What Would You Do?

If you had mostly unlimited power?


A little fashion review of despots. Quaddafi really does have an all-girl troop of bodyguards. I guess these people are beyond parody, which is why, I suppose, plain ol' W gets all the attention of satirists these days.

Notes from all over

It's a question of magnitude:

Fires in underground coal mines in China consume an estimated 200 million tons of coal per year, putting some 2-3% of all man-made carbon dioxide into the atmosphere—or as much as that produced by all the cars and light trucks in the U.S. And whereas auto transportation has considerable economic value, all the pollutants from coal fires are completely and utterly useless.

Of course, to ‘global warming’ zealots the purpose of fighting ‘global warming’ isn’t to save the environment; it’s to bugger industrially-advanced nations, especially (indeed, almost exclusively) the United States.

...and no, I won't explain what "bugger" means.

Compare and contrast:
General Pinochet recently died and Castro, who he is sort of paired with, is on his death bed. Pinochet seems to be hated by many, yet he stepped down voluntarily in favor of a democracy and Chile is currently the richest in South America--even with a current socialist government. Castro is swooned over by the whole world and Cuba is a totalitarian basket case.

Deja Vu:
The Seattle school district has a racist method of deciding who can go to which school and why. They have defended it all the way to the Supreme Court. I won't link to their website, but here's a nice write-up by Sowell. I'm sure it's OK to send a white girl across town because her neighborhood school is too white. It's just not OK to do that to a black girl because, well, just because, Diversity ya know.

December 7th

A day that will live in infamy?

Fast Cancer on Demand

A little review of killing with radioactive poisons by communist leaders.

We're pretty careful with this stuff where I work. Feeding it to people is right out.

Time Out

As part of my moving towards 3-Gun or Multi-Gun shooting as part off my USPSA/IPSC hobby, I'm putting together a rifle.

I'm going for the Tactical division which lets me have one optic on the rifle, a shotgun with up to 8 shells in the magazine and a Limited class pistol. The rifle was the final component. Here's what I decided to start with:

Da rifle is a Bushmaster Varminter. Yes, I'm more concerned with my long distance shots than close in. So I've gone with a 24 inch barrel. I might add a compensator, but I want to try one with and without side by side before I add one. Yes it's a poodle-shooter .223, but I don't reload and I don't think I could afford to practice much with 6.8 SPC, 6.5 Grendal or 308 Win. I suppose once I got the lower shooting right I could add a 6.5 Grendal upper...and a long-distance scope. Hmmm, sweeeeet.

The rifle has a competition grip and trigger. I might want to add a JP trigger later, but for now I have a two-stage Bushmaster one.

The scope is a Leupold VX II 1-4x. I like the 1x cause I can keep both eyes open. Hopefully, this will translate into relatively fast close-in shots. I hope the 4x is ok for the 300 yard shots. I know it's mainly the shooter and not the scope...yeah well, maybe that's what I'm afraid of.

Oh well, I haven't been the worst one yet with a borrowed rifle. Maybe I can hide out in the middle for a while until I know what I'm doing.

I'm supposed to get two days off from work this week, so I can put it together---before I clean out the garage to get both cars in.

Take a seat

Recycled AK-47s...take a load off and lean back with the help of a magazine.

A couple o' links

Strategy Page is one of my favorite sites. It's a bunch of war gamers who look at the news feeds and rewrite them as "History."

Here's one on the uncontrolled women of Iran.

Here's one about the information war in the media.

Based on how Walter Cronkite spun the Tet victory and the almost total destruction of the Viet Cong into a defeat, we could credit old Walter with killing more Americans than Pearl Harbor and 9-11 put together by encouraging the North Viet Army---a pretty capable force. Walter used to be important, now he just works to keep electricity-generating windmills from being built off-shore of his vacation home.