I would like for Cindy Sheehan, the Environmental Minister of Germany Jürgen Trittin, Islamic whackjobs and this fucktard to go drink a large, steaming mug of shut the fuck up.
Hurricane Katrina was not the fault of George Bush, the Republicans, American environmental policy or a vengeful Allah.
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Hurricane Katrina has left in her wake devastation and suffering. Thousands may be dead, and those remaining in New Orleans and the worst-hit portions of Mississippi and Alabama are in dire need of assistance. The first and simplest thing to do is to donate money to those who are trying to help. The Red Cross has a convenient web page where you can donate money via credit card. Over $11,000,000 has already been donated, and that just scratches the surface. Give all you can.
After giving to the Red Cross, consider other, more targeted aid. Instapundit has an immense and still growing list of organizations that can translate your money into help for the refugees of Katrina. I might also suggest The IOCC, the International Orthodox Christian Charities. They have low overhead; they focus on providing aid that doesn't merely ameliorate immediate needs, but that wil help prevent future need as well.
Tell your friends and family to give.
Spread good ideas, like this one from Donald Sensing. He suggests that printing and dropping leaflets over the affected areas would provide much needed information for those cut off from the outside world.
And pray for those who have died, for those who have been saved, and for those awaiting help, for the brave soldiers, firemen and police officers risking all to help others, and especially for those who have resorted to looting and violence.
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I recently took up homebrewing as a way to give myself even more burns on my hands and arms; bread baking just hasn't been doing the trick. From time to time I am going to post the results of recent brews as a way for me to archive recipes and procedures.
My first brewing attempt, two weeks ago, was a clone of Bass Ale. Saturday I will bottle it and about three weeks later will know if I'm a hack or a god. Water into wine? Pah! I'm turning water into beer! I didn't bother doing a lot of the usual rigamarole associated with brewing the first time around: I didn't write down how many IBUs (international bittering units... seriously) of bittering hops I used, much less what varieties were used (though I can make an educated guess at East Kent Goldings); I didn't take a specific gravity reading of the unfermented wort (that's "raw beer" to you); and I didn't keep any kind of journal. I mainly just wanted to do a test run and focus on a-b-c procedures so I could work out a system that will serve me down the road.
My second attempt took place this last weekend. (If any of you are brewers, you just said 'wait, Johno... your fermenting bucket is fulla beer... what are you doing? Well, see, I bought two fermenting buckets so I could do two batches at once - I'm wicket smaaht.) I'm a fan of porter in general, but I tend to like drier (less sweet) examples more. My all time favorite is the Edmund Fitzgerald Porter at the Great Lakes Brewing Company in Cleveland, and I'm chasing something like that. Their porter is actually quite sweet with chocolate and various estery flavors, and with 37 IBUs it's pretty darn hoppy. I am after something a little lighter but with a similar hop assertiveness. Details below the fold.
August 28 2005
Brew #2
All Thumbs Porter
2 cans (6.6 lb) Coopers Amber liquid malt extract
1 lb crystal malt, 40L
1/4 lb chocolate malt
1/4 lb black patent malt
bittering hops: 1 oz Eroica
finishing hops: 1 oz Hallertau Mittlefrueh
yeast: 1 packet Safale 33 dry yeast reconstituted in 1.5 cups 90 degree water
Steeped grains in ~3 gallons filtered tap water from room temp to boil, removed grainbag at boil. Added malt extract, returned to boil and added bittering hops. I don't know IBUs... too bad. Boiled uncovered 1 hour. Finished with the Hallertaus for last 5 minutes of boil time. Covered pot and moved to bathtub and waiting ice water. The ice water cooled the wort to about 95 degrees in less than 1/2 hour, and I added cooled distilled water to bring wort to 69 degrees and 5 gallons total volume before pitching the yeast. Removed to the basement to ferment at 73 degrees.
OG 1.048
Now a word about my thumb. I cut the hell out of the back of my right thumb adding the malt extract (can lids are sharp!!!), but managed not to bleed in the wort. Nevertheless, immediate medical attention was required; I could see veins and tendons down in there. I didn't go for stitches, but my ever forbearing wife went to the drugstore for some "steri-strips," which work just fine in a pinch. I finished the brew session trying to use only my left hand for everything, which is a fairly challenging prospect.
After 48 hours there was no evidence of fermentation. I was sure I killed the yeast.
After 72 hours, I popped top on bucket to re-pitch a new batch of yeast and found happily fermenting beer with yeast flocculating happily. Huh. Guess I need a new bucket lid that doesn't leak. Primary fermentation done in 72 hours: check. Drew off a bit with sterilized spoon and tasted- great! Very dry with nice hop flavor and aroma, a good astringency that will mellow with conditioning and good medium body. Detected a fair amount of fusel alcohols that need to condition away but they will. Not sure how final brew will taste... I didn't detect much residual sweetness; maybe that will reemerge as the astringency mellows. As long as I didn't contaminate when I peeked, this should turn out well. I may use some more chocolate malt next time to add a little more body, but I'm very happy with the roasted notes the black malt is providing and the way that plays with the rather thin spiciness of Hallertau hops.
[wik] A note to my compatriots: I am a good shot and a former Boy Scout with a strong survival instinct. I will do what I can when the zombies come to make sure that we get to the Catastratorium alive and well. But I'm thinking in the long term. What good is a secret zombie- and bomb- proof bunker if you can't eat well and get hammered while you're in there?
[alsø wik] Final gravity: 1.014.
[alsø alsø wik] The beer turned out delicious... a good session beer, dry, crisp, malty, maybe a little husky thanks to too-hot steeping? Next time I might use Fuggles instead of Hallertau Mittlefrueh for finishing hops, and juuuust a few more.
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This is fascinating and disturbing. Those who think that China is a "strategic partner" should think again.
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In my high school, there were basically 2 sorts of people: the kids who listened to crap, and the ones who didn't.
We were too small to have a distinct division between the usual clans. The heads and jocks, for example, were oftentimes indistinct as the top athletes smoked dope or juiced. Since I wasn't into drugs or sports, or combining one with the other, I found I identified most with people who listened to similar musics. As an interesting side note, most of us had little musical talent; the band kids listened to the pop/pap.
Via Begging to Differ and about three other people comes a harmless, yet peculiarly irritating little music game.
Instructions:
After looking at the list, is it any wonder that Zeppelin and Sabbath were among the most popular bands to the music clan? Is it wrong that the B52s had the least-offensive track in the entire year? I ought to disclose that sure, I dug G 'n R when I was 17. But today I can't even bear to hear a snippet of "Appetite" flipping between stations.
My list below the fold.
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Malaysia has announced that they plan to be on the moon by 2020. If a third rate nation like Malaysia is even contemplating a manned moon mission in the near term, it is high time that we get our asses moving. Bad enough that we can imagine a Chinese-dominated space future, but a Malaysian one is beyond the pale.
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From Kathleen Parker, who later refers to the boob thusly:
Robertson, of course, is well known for his spontaneous foot tastings. This is the same Pat Robertson who has urged his flock to pray for a U.S. Supreme Court vacancy "one way or the other."
Quite so. Oh, anyhow - that analogy?
Televangelist Pat Robertson's flip-flop on his fantasy moment as an international assassin reminds me of a famous, if possibly apocryphal, story about David Niven as told by Christopher Buckley.Niven is standing with another gentleman at the base of a staircase as two ladies in evening gowns descend.
Niven says: "That's the ugliest woman I've ever seen."
Other man replies: "That's my wife."
Niven: "I meant the other one."
Other man: "That's my daughter."
Niven: "I didn't say it."
If there were licenses required for speaking in public, Robertson's would have at least been suspended by now.
Our plentiful supply of other public morons is probably embarrassed to be seen around Reverend Pat. If not, they ought to be. Not everything you think is worthy of public exposition.
Unless, of course, you have a blog.
[wik] Other views, of course, can be found. Witness this from Alan Abelson of Barron's:
Predictably, Mr. Robertson's suggestion prompted a paroxysm of harrumphing from lily-livered liberals and the like (if you don't like, just leave it at from lily-livered liberals). Jesse Jackson urged the FCC to launch an investigation as it did after Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction during the half-time show at the Super Bowl on the grounds that "This is even more threatening to hemispheric stability than the flash of a breast on television during a ballgame."A close call, we'd say.
The fuss proved sufficiently discomforting for Mr. Robertson to cause him to recant. Which, frankly, we feel is a shame. Not that we believe dispatching Mr. Chavez is a particularly compelling priority. But the concept of effecting regime change on the cheap appeals to us.
Certainly, even the most cursory spectator of the global political scene can rattle off the names of at least a dozen no-good-niks who would be ideal candidates for the coup de grâce. And they don't even have to be mass murderers or ethnic cleansers; blamed nuisances would do fine. And we needn't worry too much about world opinion: We could always outsource the work. If the administration is right and everything is going to be hunky-dory in Iraq, there'll be a lot of idle assassins hanging around street corners in Baghdad who'd be only too happy to pick up a few bucks. Or, we could insource the job to the Mafia, whose business, thanks to the zeal of prosecutors and the eagerness of capos to spill the fava beans, isn't the killer it used to be.
Come to think of it, the approach is fraught with possibilities right here in the good old USA. It might be a quite useful device for our own polity as a kind of permanent term limit for especially deserving office holders. It also might prove an extremely efficacious tool for corporate governance as a means of getting rid of crooked CEOs, a quick and irrevocable way to enhance shareholder value (avoiding those costly golden handshakes, etc). And it holds particular promise for our own beloved Wall Street, where capital crimes are committed every day and the perpetrators live to crow about it.
Thank you, Mr. Robertson.
On second thought, he might not be completely serious. It's possible he has a blog on the side.
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A research team has succeeded in producing a recon drone that flies like a bird. At least in some respects. It's not an ornithopter - it doesn't use the flapping of wings to generate lift. But it can rapidly change the shape of its wings to achieve much greater flight control and maneuverability. The flight control system is modeled after the wings of the common sea gull, and will allow the drone to complete three barrel rolls in a minute - an F16 can only do one without incapacitating the pilot.
"If you fly in the urban canyon, through alleys, around parking garages and between buildings, you need to do sharp turns, spins and dives," said project leader Rick Lind, an aerospace engineer at the University of Florida. "That means you need to change the shape of the aircraft during flight."
If all this tinkering pans out, the result will be a highly maneuverable drone for looking in on enemies in built up areas. As long as they don't add a guano-bombing module, I think its a good idea.
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I'm not especially a religious cat, and lean toward agnosticism at my most upbeat. But I am capable of respecting, and on a good day appreciating, the art that comes from spiritual expression.
I'm not sure how I ended up with this cross, because some of the questions assumed dogmatic knowledge on my part that I don't possess. But I knew the difference between "Ben Hur" and "The Passion of the Christ" so took a stab.
The one question that really threw me though was something about which material bests suits my personality... I thought about it, and couldn't decide betwixt marble or clay. I went with marble because it's cold.
I think I like my cross: simple, devoid of pretension (the object itself, I'm focusing on here), hand made, and just slightly weird:
You are St Brigid's Cross: St. Brigid is an Irish saint who hand-wove a cross out of rushes she found by the river. She made the cross while explaining the passion of our Lord to a pagan man.
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