I have always liked Guinness, especially on tap. A nice, cool pint of Guinness slows things down a bit, as you watch it slowly settle to its characteristic dark stillness, with this creamy, meditative – but confident – head.

Recently, Beer Advocate published an interview with Fergal Murray, one of the company’s head brewmasters, and he gave the Alström Bros. the inside scoop about Guinness:

Murray explained that the recipe for Guinness has undergone only minor adjustments over the years. Every keg of Guinness Draught imported to the US comes from St. James’s Gate in Dublin (though Guinness Extra Stout is made in Canada). It contains water, malt, roasted barley, hops and yeast – and that’s it. Like many major labels, Guinness relies on “high-gravity brewing,” which involves large batches of wort (unfermented beer) high in fermentable sugars (note to beer geeks: the goal is a final gravity of 1072). Eventually these are watered down to attain a 4.2 percent ABV (alcohol by volume). The brewers also blend batches to aid in consistency, and the beer is pasteurized.
Mysteries of Guinness Revealed, Beer Advocate, by the Alström Bros, 04-11-2006

Guinness is a remarkable product – produced in enormous quantities by an international conglomerate. Every day, 10 million pints of Guinness are poured in 150 countries. Yet they manage a remarkable consistency and quality for such a mass-market product.

One of the interesting bits of information to me was the relative purity of the product, with no weird chemicals added to the beer, and the comparison of the caloric value: Guinness has only 125 kCal per 12 ounce serving – less than a Budweiser (ugh). Heck – a 12-ounce can of regular Coke has 144 kCal and may contain the carcinogen benzene. And then there are the Coca Cola deathsquads in Columbia. I have not heard of any Guinness death squads.

Forget soda – pour me another Guinness.

Oh yeah, baby! Veg Power rules!

Grease be with you!

Saturday, the ruling RPT and several opposition parties elected the lawyer and opposition leader Yawovi Agboyibo to run their “national dialog” talks. This process began in May 2004 and had been interrupted in February when President Eyadema died. The goal is primarily to find ways to reform the electoral process in the West African nation, which had been ruled by Eyadema for 38 years, mostly as a single-party state.

The opposition’s LeTogolais voices some cautious optimism about the talks, noting the presence of foreign observers and an atmosphere that is “less tense” than previously. However, they also not that this is the 11th time since 1990 a “national dialog” has been convened.

The electoral process is a huge problem for the Togolese opposition. The electoral commission is full of RPT cronies, and the entire process is controlled by the ruling party. Agboyibo is a very smart, capable leader. I met Agboyibo a few years ago, and I was very impressed by his humility and sharp mind. I really hope that he can convince the RPT to make some concessions to allow fair elections.

However, I don’t think that the electoral process is, in fact, Togo’s biggest problem on the road towards democracy and peace. I believe that the most important issue is the ethnic divide between Ewe and Kabyé – the legacy of Eyadema’s brutal regime. The opposition has to try to start breaking down this divide by recruiting Kabyè leaders, and by reaching out to all Kabyè – at least those who are not RPT cronies.
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Julia makes it all the way to the top of “The Rock” at yesterday’s Earth Day Celebration at Duke.

The Nicholas School at Duke had a great Earth Day Celebration. Matt and I manned the Piedmont Biofuels booth.
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Last Sunday, a 28-year-old man was attacked in the city of Potsdam (near Berlin) by racist thugs and violently beaten to a pulp, simply because he is black. This racist attack has prompted a fair amount of outrage and analysis, but also some rather telling statements, like the one from Minister of the Interior Schäuble, insisting that it is “not clear” why the man was attacked, and that “blond, blue-eyed people also can be victims of violence, and sometimes the perpetrators are foreigners” and that that’s supposedly just as bad.

Bullshit!

There is absolutely no question about why this guy was attacked. The Brandenburg police has posted an audio recording (ge) of the attack, which, they hope, will help identify the attackers. As he was attacked, the man recorded the attack with his cell phone to his wife’s voice mail. This chilling recording clearly documents the racist motif of the attack. The attackers can be clearly heard repeatedly calling their victim “nigger” and taunting him. Then they proceeded to bludgeon the poor guy almost to death.

Germany has a real problem. Not just an image problem – a Nigerian delegation cancelled their trip to Potsdam, when they heard the news about the beating. No, Germany has a racism problem. Part of this problem is a legacy of the East German Stalinists. Ironically, despite the fact that Anti-fascism was one of the big slogans of the Worker’s and Farmer’s State, racism is a huge problem (ge) in Germany’s eastern states. Just ask Adebowale Ogungbure (en) a player for the soccer club FC Sachsen Leipzig, who suffers from racist abuse on a regular basis.

Yet, the problem exists all over Germany. Germany’s star national soccer player Patrick Owomoyela had to get a court injunction against a neo-nazi party, the NPD, to stop their recruiting campaign during the Worlcup, which was supposed to prominently feature his white No. 25 national team jersey with the slogan “White, not just a jersey colour for a real national team!”

Jerks!

I have seen it first-hand how this racism permeates German mainstream life. Growing up in Stuttgart, I sometimes hung out with one of the two or three black kids in my high-school. He always had to carry his ID around, because he’d always get his ID checked, especially going downtown. Cops would just walk up to him and demand to see his ID – for no good reason. And he even had a thick Swabian accent for chrissake! And as heinous as the violent racist attacks are, it’s this racist attitude that permeates German culture so deeply, that is the real problem, because it foments the open racism and tolerates the violence.

What to do?

There are many Germans who fight racism. It will be a long, long battle. I think personal contact is the only real cure for racism. So everyone, not just Germans, should look at their community and find ways to build bridges between people. If you live in a place with a strong minority/majority division, seek out those who look or talk different in your neighborhood and invite them to your place. Listen to them, try to see through their eyes. It’s worth the effort. Get your children together – they are your only hope.

The real change has to start with you. So many of our so-called leaders have their heads firmly planted in the sand about this issue. Far too many think that multiculturalism has failed, and far too many think that there has to be a “dominant culture” (Leitkultur) and everyone has to integrate. That’s nonsense, cultural diversity is a good thing and if you open up to it, you will see why.

Philips is working very hard these days to piss off consumers, as acknowledged by one one of their recent patent applications. Odd thing, you think, for a consumer electronics company to create technology to disenfranchise and piss off consumers? Seems disingenuous? Yet, this seems to represent a new industry trend. Consider the recent whooping Sony received over its bungled attempts to impose its will on consumers. Now Philips is handing consumer-rights lawyers this little gem:

If a new idea from Philips catches on, the company may not be very popular with TV viewers. The company’s labs in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, has been cooking up a way to stop people changing channels to avoid adverts or fast forwarding through ads they have recorded along with their target programme.
-snip-
Philips suggests adding flags to commercial breaks to stop a viewer from changing channels until the adverts are over. The flags could also be recognised by digital video recorders, which would then disable the fast forward control while the ads are playing.
Invention: The TV-advert enforcer, Barry Fox, NewScientist.com news service, 18 April 2006
(via Slashdot)

Now that’s what I call a challenge to the marketing department. Can’t wait to see Philips spin this technology to consumers. Maybe they’ll collaborate with La-Z-Boy and create a recliner chair that will strap you in and force your eyelids open while ads are on during the Superbowl. Thank god I don’t have cable TV.

… is real! The atheist filmmaker Brian Flemming has recruited volunteer activists, Rational Responders, to distribute copies of his documentary and flyers that compare Jesus to the Easter Bunny.

Declaring War on Easter, Beyond Belief Media has launched a preemptive attack on the Christian holiday, the company announced today. “Operation Easter Sanity” has already begun.

Using its documentary THE GOD WHO WASN’T THERE as the chief weapon, Beyond Belief Media is covertly planting DVDs of the film in churches throughout the United States. The popular movie, currently ranked #1 on Amazon.com’s independent documentaries list, is critical of the irrational beliefs of Christians and asserts that Jesus Christ did not exist.

A total of 666 DVDs will be hidden like “Easter eggs” in sanctuaries, church yards and other holy areas by Beyond Belief Media’s national team of volunteers. The DVDs will be slipped into hymnals and other locations where they are likely to be discovered by unsuspecting worshippers.
BEYOND BELIEF MEDIA LAUNCHES PREEMPTIVE STRIKE ON EASTER – Press release, April 11, 2006

Apparently, Easter has provoked a host of controversies throughout history. In the Quartodecimanism controversy in the 2nd century AD the churches of the East in Asia Minor and the Church of Rome fought over whether Easter should be on the 14th day of Nisan, the Jewish Passover, or on the Sunday after Passover.

These days, another controversy (besides the “War on Easter”) rages – over the authenticity of the pagan roots of Easter:

In his ‘De Temporum Ratione’ the Venerable Bede wrote that the month Eostremonat (April) was so named because of a goddess, Eostre, who had formerly been worshipped in that month. In recent years some scholars (Ronald Hutton, P.D. Chantepie de la Saussaye, Elizabeth Freeman) have suggested that a lack of supporting documentation for this goddess might indicate that Bede assumed her existence based on the name of the month.

Jakob Grimm took up the question of Eostre in his Deutsche Mythologie of 1835, noting that Ostaramanoth was etymologically related to Eostremonat and writing of various landmarks and customs related to the goddess Ostara in Germany. Again, because of a lack of written documentation, critics suggest that Grimm took Bede’s mention of a goddess Eostre at face value and constructed the goddess Ostara around existing Germanic customs which may have arisen independently.
Etymology and Pagan origins of Easter traditions, Wikipedia

As the Wikipedia article points out, both Bede and Grimm were noted historians, and involved in recording oral traditions that were quickly disappearing. So the fact that there are no other records of these traditions would have been the reason they were interested in them.

Another interesting point about the colored-egg tradition is that Catholics were (are?) prohibited from eating eggs during Lent. In the “olden days” when everyone had a bunch of chickens, they boiled them and saved them. So on Easter, everyone had piles of eggs, and they had to get eaten ASAP.

Well, anyway happy Spring Equinox, happy Passover, and yeah – happy Easter!

Food safety researchers have conducted more tests on soda pop involving heat and UV exposure, and they found clear evidence that even short exposure of soda to heat increases the levels of benzene, a human carcinogen. This is caused by the presence of two common preservatives in the soda: sodium benzoate and ascorbic acid.

“Heat is a major factor” in the formation of benzene in drinks, according to Mike Redman, a scientist with the American Beverage Association and who also represented the industry in meetings with the FDA over benzene in 1990.

Redman told BeverageDaily.com that soft drinks firms reformulated drinks in 1990, mainly by adjusting the levels of sodium benzoate and ascorbic acid, to reduce and control the potential for benzene traces to form.

Still, the continuing presence of soft drinks containing benzene above drinking water standards has led to calls for sodium benzoate to be taken out of drinks formulas.

“What are we to tell consumers? ‘Product contains cancer-causing substance, drink immediately, do not store in a warm environment or near sunlight?’ Preferably benzoate should not be used in combination with vitamin C (ascorbic acid) or added juice,” said the scientist involved in industry testing for benzene 15 years ago.
Heat tests key for benzene in soft drinks, By Chris Mercer, BeverageDaily.com, 4/11/2006

I found out about this a month ago, and I went cold turkey on my beloved Mountain Dew. These days, when I don’t drink beer or wine, I tend to stick to water, juice and Ice Tea. Instant Ice Tea is not any worse than soda, and it contains much less weird chemicals. And if you really need a caffeine kick, you can just make it more concentrated.
(Hat tip to Revere)

Last weekend my dad visited us and since we were doing a bit of sight-seeing, I figured a trip over to Chapel Hill would be fun. I had not visited my alma mater in a long time and this time of year the old campus at UNC is just gorgeous (despite a huge amount of construction everywhere).


Pretty day too – even the sky was Carolina Blue!

The Old Well is a key landmark of UNC’s Chapel Hill campus.

New Google Brain to Keep “Golden Copy” of Your Deepest Hopes, Fears, Secrets

Today Google introduced a new product, Google Brain. Building on its popular Google Goggles, a headset that records users’ audiovisual sensory input and uploads it to Google’s servers, the Brain attachment will build and transmit to Google a constantly-updated computer model of the user’s mind. Users will be able to access their brains from any computer using their Google Account and a nifty AJAX interface.

“Storing your precious memories and deepest darkest secrets in your own gray matter is an unnecessary inconvenience and leaves users’ minds vulnerable to disease, blunt objects, and substance abuse,” said Google spokesman Joe Orwellian. “But with Google holding a copy of your brain, you know it’s safe! And just imagine the customized user experience Google will be able to offer when your every dream and nightmare is being scanned by our ad-bots.”

In response to privacy concerns voiced by EFF, Orwellian replied: “They just don’t understand: sometimes you have to give up a little privacy for convenience. Besides, the copies of users’ brains on Google servers will be encrypted to prevent snooping.” Asked if Google itself would have the key and be able to decrypt brains at the request of law enforcement or civil litigants, Orwellian responded, “Well, duh.”

Don’t forget to check zeitgeist.google.com to see what Google Brain users are thinking about right now!

via the EFF – those guys crack me up!

… at least not when it’s time fo my triple bypass, because you’d increase my chance of experiencing complications during recovery by seven percentage points, according to a recent study:

Percentage of Patients Having Complications After Surgery:
52% – Patients who were receiving prayers and did not know this.
52% – Patients receiving no prayers and not being told anything about prayers taking place anywhere for anyone.
59% – Patients knowing they were receiving prayers

Does this mean that knowing people are praying for you is bad for your health? Some say that the stress of thinking ‘I must be really ill if people are praying for my health’ may have contributed towards the health complications.
Praying Doesn’t Help The Sick Get Better, Christian Nordqvist, Medical News Today, April 1, 2006.

No, this is not an April fools joke – they really did this study, and the results are about to be published in the April 4 issue of the American Heart Journal. The John Templeton Foundation shelled out $2.4 million (!) for this study, where Harvard Medical School researchers divided 1,802 bypass patients at six hospitals into three groups. Two groups were uncertain whether they would be the subject of prayers. The third was told they would be prayed for. Too bad for them, because they had the highest rate of complications.

OK, so if you must pray for me, do me a favor and keep it to yourself.

The BBC reports on a weird trend of people taking their mobile phone to their grave. The origin of this idea was fear of being buried alive, according to Martin Raymond, director of international trend-spotting think-tank, The Future Laboratory. However, that does not explain cremations with cell phones:

“We came across this in places like South Carolina in the US – people were being burned but unknown to the crematorium, they had left the phones in their jackets,” Mr Raymond said.
“If you heat a mobile phone battery, it tends to explode, and the first reports were about explosions, and that’s how they started noticing this trend.”
BBC NEWS | Handsets get taken to the grave, Wednesday, 29 March 2006.

Besides the exploding crematorium, wouldn’t it be weird if you were walking alone in a graveyard past a fresh grave, and you’d start hearing the beeps or a chirp or ring-a-ling of a phone from the general direction of that grave?

To be clear: I still think Bush is Nuts, but I do agree with the shrubman on the guestworker issue. For different reasons, but I do agree with removing millions of hardworking immigrants from the legal twilight zone of being “undocumented” or “illegal” aliens. On this issue, the racist, anti-immigration wingnuts are the real nutcases. Build a frigging wall along the border to Mexico? These people are crazy. Before you know it they’ll want to invade countries in the Middle East to secure access to oil … uh, never mind …

The immoral system of quasi-slavery and exploitation under which so many immigrants suffer is one of the great human rights crises on this continent. The only way to deal with it is to give everyone who wants to come to this place to work a reasonable way to do so legally. That’ll put the coyotes out of business, and it’ll make it much harder to smuggle drugs into the US via the southern border.

AMNESTY MAKES AMERICA SAFER because it reduces the incentive for crime along the southern border. Authorities will KNOW who comes into the country and where they are. A guest worker program will make it possible to control smuggling, because the existing resources can be focused on what illicit activity is left along the border.

AMNESTY MAKES AMERICA SAFER because law enforcement can concentrate on fighting the real bad guys when police officers and sheriff’s deputies don’t have to fill in for the alien chasers from the DHS. I mean, do our law enforcement folks need yet another unfunded, and possibly unconstitutional, mandate? Besides terrorism watch, disaster preparedness, now also immigration enforcement? No, I want them to fight crime and enforce traffic laws.

If you care about the quality of life in America and reducing crime in this country, and if you care just the slightest bit about tradition and the “American Way” then you really have to support amnesty for all immigrants. Because their struggle to make a difference, to take care of their families, and to better themselves is the same struggle that brought all those Irish, German, Russian, Polish and — uh … Swiss — immigrants over here. That struggle is a big part of America, and if you are of European extraction, you better shut up about “those illegals” because chances are, some of your ancestors came over here with nothing but their clothes on their backs in the bowels of a ship. If your ancestors came here as economic refugees, you are in no position to turn around and slam the door on the new arrivals today.
(crossposted on my other blog …)

Don’t know exactly what’s come over us, but recently Laura and I have been listening to some of our records. You know, vinyl records, the black, 12-inch wide disks with grooves all over them. You put a needle on them and they produce a scratchy hiss with some music. You put one of those things on, get a glass of wine and settle down on the couch. Then you have to get up and flip the damn thing. And they skip …ey skip …ey skip …ey skip rrrup … sometimes. But they are fun, and I have not listened to many of these records in years. So Laura and I have spent a couple of evenings sitting around and taking turns at the turntable, dredging up some of our analog memories.

The kids are on spring break, and they get to go to horse camp all week. We found out about this cool horse ranch that offers full-day camp during intersession with riding lessons. The kids essentially spend all day among horses, between the barn, a nice playground and the ring. They teach the kids how to ride horses, how to groom the animals, how to clean the tack, how to stay safe around them, and how to clean the stalls and shovel the manure. And the ranch is only 10 Minutes from our place. I am so jealous!

Last Saturday I went to the peak Oil Conference at Duke University, which was also combined with an annual membership meeting for Piedmont Biofuels Coop. the conference was pretty interesting; the featured speaker was Larry Shirley, of the North Carolina Energy Office, and a tireless energy-efficiency and alternative-energy crusader. His peak-oil talk was really good, lively, but very technical and detailed, which was appropriate for the audience.

At the Piedmont Biofuels membership meeting the board appointed a new Bull City Biodiesel advisor to the board – yours truly – so I’ll have to make a monthly trek over to Moncure to attend board meetings. But that’s fine – I am pleased to get more closely involved with the coop, and a significant number of the membership of Piedmont is now based in Durham and associated with Bull City Biodiesel. So that’s all good, I think.

Sure, you can argue about the styling – I have seen much worse, especially in the less-than- $15.000-category. And I’ve seen much, much worse in the a-new-mortgage-for-every-fillup category.

This little vehicle is pretty revolutionary in many ways: to enter it you flip open the entire front (see below the fold); the structure of the passenger cabin is light-weight and very safe (Loremo claims).
This little car will be powered by a simple, small turbo-diesel engine that only uses 1.5 liters of diesel on 100 kilometers (equivalent to 157 miles per gallon). No high-tech hybrid, fancy techno-tricks, just brute-force economy. It’s that type of innovation that will keep humanity mobile, probably on biodiesel, after peak-oil hits, and long after the dinosaurs (Ford, GM) will have shut down the last of their factories.
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Good riddance to the Serbian mini-Hitler.

Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has died in the detention centre at The Hague tribunal.
The tribunal said he was found dead in his cell on Saturday morning and that although the cause was not yet clear, there was no indication of suicide.
Mr Milosevic, 64, had been on trial at the UN war crimes tribunal for genocide and other war crimes since 2001.
A full autopsy will now be carried out on Mr Milosevic, who had high blood pressure and a heart condition.
Milosevic found dead in his cell, BBC NEWS, Saturday, 11 March 2006

Now, I just wish we could erase the term “ethnic cleansing” from our collective memory. It makes me sick when fascist propaganda makes it into the collective vocabulary. There is nothing “clean” about ethnic persecution, so we should not use a stupid term like “ethnic cleansing” when we talk about ethnic persecution and genocide.

Monday we lost a cultural treasure and a generous human being: Ali Farka Touré, a son of Mali, and one of the world’s great musicians died in Bamako, Mali. He was born in Timbuktu in 1939, and worked as a docker on the river Niger and a driver for Mali’s national radio and television company, ORTM. In 1980, his musical talent was discovered by the BBC and in 1994 he recorded a Grammy-award winning album with Ry Cooder. His success with his haunting blues guitar made him the king of desert blues.

When he won his first Grammy award, he even refused to travel to the United States to collect his prize, saying:

“I don’t know what a Grammy means but if someone has something for me, they can come and give it to me here in Niafunke, where I was singing when nobody knew me.”

He then threw himself into farming, fishing and raising cattle in his home town.

Later, he became mayor of Niafunke in a bid to use some of his wealth and international connections for the good of his people.
Obituary: Ali Farka Toure, BBC, Tuesday, 7 March 2006

I discovered Touré a few years ago, and was immediately hooked. Even listening to his music at the record store I could immediately feel the hot breath of the Sahara emerging from his haunting blues guitar. His music got me interested in the rich music of Mali and I began to explore classical kora music as well. So I was very excited when I discovered In the Heart of the Moon – his recent collaboration with Toumani Diabate, one of the greatest masters of the kora. This is going to be one of my favorite musical recordings ever. Right next to Svyatoslav Richter‘s austere interpretation of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition and Miles Davis’ classic In a Silent Way.

Touré’s talent and generosity, and his smiles, will be missed by many. He has made this world a better place, and I am grateful for it. May he rest in peace.

So the FDA figured out in the 1990s that two common preservatives used in soda pop, when combined, can produce enough benzene in the soda to exceed legal levels for this stuff in drinking water. They just neglected to tell us, Foodnavigator.com reports:

Chemists from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said they were surprised that recent tests showed benzene levels in some soft drinks above the country’s legal limit for drinking water.

They were not surprised, however, to hear the suspected source of the problem was two common ingredients regularly used in soft drink formulas – sodium benzoate and ascorbic acid (vitamin C).

That is because both the FDA and US soft drinks association have known about this for 15 years, as testified by an internal FDA memo, dated January 1991.

One FDA chemist, who was also at the meetings with industry back then, told BeverageDaily.com the industry had agreed to “get the word out and reformulate”. No public announcement was, therefore, ever made.
The benzene trail, Chris Mercer, Foodnavigator.com, 3/6/2006 (via Effect Measure)

Despite the knowledge of this reaction, apparently neither the FDA nor any food regulatory agencies in Europe have any limits on benzene levels in soda. This means they have no leverage to enforce any limits, and so the pop makers can hawk their wares which may contain benzene at levels above the limits for water. But how difficult could it be to say that soda pop has to conform to the same standards as drinking water, when it comes to known carcinogens?

What can we do? Well, read the labels! I checked the sodas in our fridge and found the following:

• Diet Mountain Dew lists both sodium benzoate and ascorbic acid
• Fresca Citrus lists sodium benzoate and ascorbic acid
• Coke Zero lists potassium benzoate, but no sodium benzoate or ascorbic acid
• Vault lists sodium benzoate, but does not list ascorbic acid (what the heck is erythorbic acid??)
• Pepsi One lists sodium benzoate and citric acid
• Diet Pepsi lists sodium benzoate and citric acid

The Beck’s I am sipping while typing this, supposedly was made only from water, barley, and hops.

Prost!

Ready for March Madness? This was a good weekend for TarHeel basketball – the boys beat the Boohoo-Devils in Cameron and the girls secured the ACC Championship!

After last year’s championship men’s team scattered to the winds, coach Williams seems to have managed to put together a brand-new top-notch team. Looks like they are fast and have nerves of steel.

And congrats to coach Sylvia Hatchell’s women’s team. They totally dominated the ACC this year.

This year’s NCAA tournament should be another good one. That is, if the sports writers restrain themselves a bit: “The game had that sausage casing-tight feel as most any other Duke-Carolina game.” (Luciana Chavez at the N&O) C’mon! I don’t know what’s sausage casing-tight here, but the editing ain’t it. Granted, I have never been to a basketball game, let alone to a Carolina-Duke game at Cameron. But sausage casing-tight!! Wow – you’re really pushing my imagination here. Maybe the Camoron Nutcases (or whatever they are called) are sausages in Dork-blue tights. Oh – whatever …