Today is Dain’s Birthday and the 5th anniversary of his bar, Dain’s Place! I went there for lunch today and gave Dain a bottle of last year’s barrel-aged Sexual Chocolate stout. Happy birthday, oh Bearded One!  

The Great Beer Quest of 2012 was a smashing success! Just look at these four beauties! Last night at 11PM, I met Oz, Derek and Dan in Hillsborough, they piled into the Beast and we roared over to W/S to Foothills Brewery. We hung out at the release party for the Sexual Chocolate Stout and […]

Michael Glawogger’s film “Ghosts” on AlJazeera is a fascinating portrait of the sulfur miners at Kawah Ijen – an active volcano in East Java, Indonesia. It’s a quiet film with authentic voices and eerie, haunting images of men scraping sulfur from the smoking mouth of the volcano and carrying their heavy baskets out of the […]

(Blackout template by Zachary Johnson) Today’s unprecedented Internet protest against SOPA/PIPA censorship laws was a huge success. Thousands of websites observed a “blackout” and even Google displayed solidarity and has forms posted for contacting lawmakers. So far 13 Senators – mostly Republicans – have withdrawn their support for PIPA. This is not a partisan issue. […]

Wednesday, Jan. 18, some significant parts of the Internet will go on strike. The websites will only show one page related to the protest against the SOPA legislation the US Congress is considering. This law would allow the US government to shut down any site if there is any suspicion of copyright infringement. If the […]

… and no end in sight. Despite his promises, President Obama has not closed the beacon of injustice that is the prison at Guantánamo bay. Arond this week’s 10th anniversary of the opening of this facility, the story of one of its former inmates, Lakhdar Boumediene, has been making the rounds: In 2001, Lakhdar Boumediene […]

Auf Deutsch … 2011 was a rough year. I’m trying to come up with some good stuff that happened this year, and it’s not easy. One personal highlight was participating in the Doughman race with the 11-foot-8 team. We raised $340 and came in 8th place (out of 75 teams). Besides the race, I ran […]