Here’s the current plan. Thoughts, ideas, and suggestions would be much appreciated. View Larger Map
Eastbound Road Trip
Author: Sam Kornstein
The Dish
Here are a few shots from the dish at Stanford: And here are a couple from my backyard taken this evening:
Personal Brewing Machine
I’m not sure how I feel about this contraption: It’s a home brewing machine that produces a batch of beer in seven days. Here’s a description of how it works: The machine saves time by combining home brewing’s longest steps—fermentation, which usually takes a week, and carbonation, which can take at least two. The fermentation tank is also a pressure vessel, which traps carbon dioxide released by yeast, force-carbonating the beer. The system also does away with two common foes of freshness: the sealed vessel keeps out oxygen, a culprit behind flat-tasting pints; and a valve at the bottom of the tank isolates the yeast from the beer as soon as fermenting is done, which prevents meaty, off flavors. It’s certainly
Something’s Craft Brewing
The Brewer’s Association, one of the best sources for news and statistics on the craft brewing industry and related trends, just released the 2011 mid-year report on the state of U.S. Craft Brewers. To briefly summarize the report: Things are good, very good. Here are some of the key stats for the first six months of the year: Dollar growth up 15% Volume up 14%, a 50% increase over the same period last year 5.1 million barrels of beer were sold (that’s about 1.6 billion 12oz beers) The industry employs about 100,000 people The US now has 1,790 breweries — a 10% increase since June of 2010. 1,740 of them are craft breweries. And judging by this “chart”, this trend should
Tweedy & Sons
Jeff Tweedy of Wilco and his two sons, Spencer and Sam, have a new band, the Racoonists. Spencer, who is 15 years old, is on drums. Sam is younger. I’m not sure what he plays. Probably bass. This song was recorded in their bedroom. Own it:
AA+ What?
Kid Dynamite: “In case you’ve been living under a rock: Standard and Poors downgraded the credit rating for the United States of America last night, from AAA to AA+.” It seems that at this point S&P is generally viewed as incompetent, and the decision to downgrade the US may not be as consequential as many initially predicted. But who really knows? We’ll get a hint tomorrow morning. In the meantime, I found the following posts and articles to be thoughtful and/or interesting: James Kwak: Still, I think the whole thing is preposterous. S&P downgrading the United States is like Consumer Reports downgrading Coca-Cola. Consumer Reports is a great institution. For example, if you want to know how reliable a 2007
Map of Online Communities
Hysterical. Click the map to see it blown up: Look at the mouse-over.
Global Cable Map
Telecom cables. I’m not sure why I found this to be interesting, but I did.
Ladybug Zombies
This is twisted. I love it. From National Geographic: “The parasitic wasp…prepares to inject a spotted ladybug with a single egg…the ladybug has been paralyzed by the wasp’s venom…”: “In time the egg will hatch into a larva that will develop for a few days and then chew a small hole through the abdomen of the ladybug. The larva will then spin a cocoon between the legs of the ladybug, whose body will rest on top of the cocoon as the larva undergoes metamorphosis…”: “…sometimes the ladybugs survive the larva’s emergence, and in those cases, the…larva then “brainwashes” the bug into defending the vulnerable cocoon from predators, said study co-author Jacques Brodeur, a biologist at the University of Montreal…” There you have it. Ladybug
Corn Subsidies in One Chart
I’ve heard lots of arguments from both sides about the merits of domestic corn subsidies, but I think this chart pretty much sums everything up: Either directly, or indirectly, we consume too much corn. Thanks to my brother for pointing me to the chart.