perfidy

Via a afterthought at Dean's World, the theory of Advancement, or why Val Kilmer and Lou Reed are the world's greatest artists, and Neil Young isn't.

"Males are little flying sperm missiles."

While some may argue the general applicability of this statement, it in fact comes from an article about the pervasiveness and sheer bulk of the world's ant population.

Ministry Crony Mapgirl is a useful little blogger. She shovels out the personal finance info with both hands, and is undoubtedly helping thousands to conquer the soul draining terror of indebtedness and lack of sound financial planning. Yet, I find that I miss the gossip and angst of the old mapgirl blog.

For instance, this useful post on a marvelous concept called "EBoC." The Emergency Basket o' Cash. Being who I am, I would change that to Bucket o' Cash, but your mileage may vary. The old Mapgirl would have layered this post with obscure references to people I might have heard of, and hinted at how someone, at some point, someone I may or may not have met and is only identified by initials or codename, once may have had need for an EBoC and a fast car.

Still and all, its good advice. Having a bucket o' cash can come in awful handy. Having it directly to hand, as in physically in a bucket in your home, is even more handy. For example, if the zombies come. Now, in all likelihood, the zombies will start out small. In the interim between the first casualties, ignored by the media and also by all right thinking people - but before the inexorable exponential curve of zombie population growth leads to the total collapse of civilization - having a bucket o' cash will be a very useful thing indeed. With a cold, hard, cash, you can buy essential items for your zombie survival kit that you had up to that point neglected. Items that the foolhardy will not yet realize are essential, and will for the sake of greed part with.

For example, Minister Johno is sadly negligent in acquiring sufficient firepower to deal with the looming zombie threat. However, should he have access to a ZSK EBoC, he could (once alerted to the arrival of the zombies) run down to the local gun nut lair and purchase a weapon and ammunition. Money will be useful almost right up to the total collapse of civilization, simply because most people will refuse to believe that civilization is in fact collapsing. Use that delusion for your own benefit. Besides, you wouldn't want some sap who'd rather have a thousand bucks in crisp twenties than a finely machined shotgun and a bag full of ammo at your back anyway.

So, even though Mapgirl was unwilling for the sake of appearances to discuss this crucial aspect; follow her advice, or have your brain eaten.

[wik] I wonder if we could get Tyler Cowen to discuss the inflationary aspects of the money economy intermediate phase of the zombie takeover.

The U.S. Patent Office refused to patent the common BB because they require two views.

As if tailor-made for our ongoing non-discussion of the sloppiness and inadequacies of human-based journalism, Reuters has a story about the need for the Big Apple to prepare to bite the Big Weenie: a huge hurricane.

Yeah ok fine- slow news day I guess, so Reuters goes with a news story about something that hasn't happened to fill space. I get that. But at least they could've made some effort to work in other stuff for New Yawkahs to prepare for and be afraid of, stuff that might be at least as plausible as a tremendous hurricane.

Better prepare for Bird Flu; SARS; SARS Flu; Bird-Fu; atmospheric nuclear detonations and EMPs; comets; asteroids; reinforced tungsten rods; black triangles; black helicopters; black shadow people; anything that comes through a stargate; possessive demons (never to be confused with progressive demons, who just want you to sign petitions and buy their crappy band's demo); sunspots; invaders from outer space, the hollow Earth, or extradimensional universes; hums, vibrations, harmonics and other resonances of a non-corporeal nature; the Second Coming (unless you're Jewish); the First Coming (if you are); terrorists; zombies; skeletons; ninjas; bikers; tsunamis; earthquakes; dust storms; sand storms; gravel storms; Grape Nuts storms; hail (of all hyphenated-ball sized) storms; the BBC/BBW nexus; any and all federal agencies, task forces, or commissions; the Bilderburgers, Brandenburgs, Habsburgs, hamburger, and the Hamburglar; all appliances, equipment, or accessories that glow in the dark; Ethan Frome; LCDs; LEDs; IEDs; LSDs; LSTs; DVDs and IUDs; and everyone on the subway, or pretty much everyone, period.

So make sure you store potable water and stuff and you’ll be fine.

Two-Cycle Cream Ale

4 lbs dry malt extract, light
1 lb rice extract solids
4 oz Crystal malt, 10L
4 oz Crystal malt, 20L
1 oz Perle hops, 7.8% AA (bittering)
1.5 oz Liberty hops, 3.8% AA (aroma)
1 packet SA-56 American ale yeast (dry)

Since summer is coming, I decided to make a decidedly light and dry-finishing beer with moderate bitterness and a light hop nose. Lawnmower beer! I used a pound of rice extract in place of some of the barley malt extract to both lighten the body and dry out the finish, and added a good amount of Liberty hops to provide the floral, crisp nose I'm after. Basically, I'm after a homemade version of Ballantine's or Genesee Cream Ale but with, you know, flavor.

Procedure:
Brought 2.5 liters (10 cups) water to 160 degrees, added the Crystal malts in a muslin bag, and held at temperature for about 45 minutes. Meanwhile, began to heat 3.5 gallons water in brew kettle. Swished grain bag around in brew kettle to get all the sugars out of the malt, and discarded. Added crystal malt tea to brew kettle and brought to boil. Turned off heat, added dry malt extracts and Perle hops, and set the boil clock for 60 minutes. Added Liberty hops for the last 5 minutes..

Removed kettle to bathtub with water and 35 pounds of commercial ice. I had the temperature in the kettle down to 79 degrees in about 40 minutes.

Added one gallon of chilled spring water to fermenter bucket. Added wort, and topped up to 5.25 gallons (approx) with some more spring water. (I like to add a little extra water to my recipes to make up for what I'll lose to the yeastcake and general inefficiency in the racking and bottling process. It makes very little difference to the final flavor, in any case no difference that I'd ever notice.) Poured back and forth between kettle and bucket to aerate wort, and pitched yeast at 69 degrees.

Here's the description of the yeast I'm using: "Produces well balanced beers with low diacetyl and a very clean, crisp end palate. It accentuates the hop flavors and is extremely versatile. Sedimentation is low to medium, and final gravity is medium."

I don't think I'll put this one in secondary fermentation. Although it would probably benefit from a couple extra weeks conditioning time off the yeastcake, I don't want to risk oxygen-damage or contamination upon transfer to the secondary vessel. In a beer this light, any off-flavors have nowhere to hide. Also, I'm running low on beer in the cellar, and it'd be really nice to be able to enjoy this batch a month from Friday.

This recipe is very similar to the Cream Ale kit recipe that my beer supply store sells. The only difference with theirs is they use even lighter Crystal malt (3 degrees Lovibond, the very lightest) than I do, plus some Carapils malt. Also called Dextrin malt, Carapils doesn't contribute sweetness as much as it contributes unfermentable starches that give a beer some body. In a cream ale, that would be very welcome: as long as this recipe works well, next time I'll use his grainbill and some spicy German Tettnanger hops for the nose.

[wik] On bottling, the beer is very good - light malt sweetness upfront with nice soft spicy complexity from the hops, and crisp and dry on the finish with more hop notes. Pretty much exactly what I was going for. It might be a shade too bitter - not a dealbreaker, especially since Perle are a fairly polite bittering hop, but we'll have to see how things develop in the bottle.

Primed with 4 oz corn sugar at bottling.

[alsø wik] The final estimation was "ok, not great." I would have done better to use a cleaner ale yeast, like a Kolsch or Chico strain, and some more flavor/aroma hops.

Every Friday, weather permitting, I walk with the Li'lest Lethal. Lady Lethal takes him every day, pretty much, but Fridays I have him to myself. We have a pretty good time, I like to think, and getting out of the house a little is good for both of us.

Oftentimes we go one town over, which is alot nicer than the town we actually live in. Not that we live particularly shabbily, but THAT town has longer and nicer sidewalks, many of which wrap around its stately olde towne common. The historic homes overlooking the olde towne common advertise their historicity with placards declaring how old the place is and who built it: Elihu Jehosephatt, 1713. Fitzhugh Broadwinnings, 1805. Jeremiah Broadwinnings, 1842. They're interesting in their details and pleasing to the eye. But in the back of my mind I think what a drag it is to own such a house, needing the local historical committee's permission to drive a friggin nail.

The war memorial sits in the center of the common, an arc of dry-stacked stone and aging words facing a single simple flagpole. The memorial includes the names of the town's men who fell in battle as far back as pre-Revolution campaigns against the native tribes. Some of the names on the cold, weathered bronze tablets are the same as on the houses we just walked past.

The only business near the common is the cosmetic surgeon and day spa, but even they are set up in small, restrained structures that fit the neighborhood. It's almost as if they were always there, where George Washington got his DaVinci veneers, and Paul Revere had a little nip and tuck after one too many Boston winters.

It's a nice place to walk, overall, on a cool spring day.

'Cept for the gay-bashers.

Last Friday a friend from my part time job, whose name is Storm (really), came over before work to hang out. Instead of lunch we got some beverages and walked on the common. We were just gabbing about this and that, work, that sort of thing. Storm was digging all the eye-candy in the area at that time of day, between a local college, random passers-by, and a heavy MILF concentration. At one point I said something along the lines of, "You know Storm, we probably look like a coupla homos with our adopted baby, between the big baby stroller and the Starbucks cups." Which, don't get me wrong, was fine- just that Storm is always on the lookout for female companionship, and with me looking a little bear-ish and he looking a little femme (he can't help it), well...well, it didn't happen for him that day.

But it turns out we weren't the only ones who thought we looked like a gay couple.

Not a half hour after making that observation, two peckerwoods cruising down the street in a car with crappy music blaring from crappy speeakers shouted something to us at the top of their lungs. I think I know what they said, but you know what, I won't even repeat it. It certainly wasn't welcoming, and absolutely wasn't an invitation to discuss evolving paradigms of modern life and marriage.

So we're in the middle of Idyllic Suburb USA, broad daylight, middle of the day- and get hassled for being gay.

Now, here are a couple of things that those two punks completely missed, in the same order that they occurred to me at that moment:

-My baby son was in his stroller, at arm's reach. When I heard the shouting and the language, surprising me and coming from behind- which could only be construed as threatening- I kicked into ultra defense mode. It was like, threat-baby-defend-adrenaline spike-defend-destroy. It's the kind of feeling that causes people to go from calm to rage in a straight-for-the-windpipe sort of way, which I did not fully appreciate until I was a parent, and for which I would have been in a heap of trouble had those two clowns been close enough to throttle. Dunno if that's a new daddy thing I'll grow out of, or what, but there it is and I don't have alot of control over adrenaline.

-On Fridays it seems I'm walking alone, but usually I'm not. Sure at the time Storm was with me, and of course the baby's always there. But I keep a close friend nearby; ideally you won't see him.

-My close friend has 8 little buddies he never leaves the house without.

-If you just shout stuff at people out of your moving car, you're not cool or even funny. You're just a douche.

-Oh, and I'M NOT GAY.

Fucking imbeciles.

Schizophrenic helicopter pilot Murdoc and I share alot of things: our love for fresh-cut tulips; a respect for raw, naked force; appreciation for the smell of diesel fuel; and the friendly staff of a certain Bangkok "spa". All good stuff, and well worth sharing.

One bad thing we share though is the ignorance of journalists regarding military matters. And like Murdoc, it's usually enough to set my teeth on edge and maybe bitch for a minute, but that's about it. It doesn't help when reporters are actually in the field with operational units and they still get it wrong, mixing up unit designations or vehicle models, but it rarely detracts from the overall point.

That's where the Zarqawi tape comes in, and Jamie McIntyre's effort to make excuses for the guy's poor weapons handling.

Murdoc, Confederate Yankee, and Counter Column all take McIntyre to task for appearing not only an apologist, but stupid too. Their tripartite Fisking covers all the pioints well, and any leftovers are sopped up by their commenters.

I will only add this bit of advice for Mr. McIntyre: the military has an idea of what a "heavy" weapon is. It's probably different from your idea; best not to assume it's the same. Given the man already knew it was a SAW he was looking at, there's just no reason for him to be so wrong about it, let alone cut Iraqi terrorist #1 some slack over it.

A final exercise for other Google-impaired journalists:

You may be afraid of it, but Google is your friend. Try it. Do a search for "heavy machine gun". Go ahead. And what's the first hit?

Browning M2. If you read the accompanying article, you'll find that the thing weighs about 80 lbs, sans tripod. Yeah, that's heavy. It also fires a big round, .50, which is also heavy. Altogether, it's NOT a SAW.

Now try "medium machine gun". What do you get? Why, M240. It weighs in at around 24-odd lbs, depending on trim package and options. Not so very heavy, but it throws a beefy round. It's also not a SAW. Although it IS manufactured by fat bastard Belgians, as is the SAW, it is NOT, again, a SAW.

Just for the fun of it, let's try "light machine gun". Guess what you get about five hits down? Why it's an M249 SAW. Gosh all, and a "light" machine gun...how about that? It only weighs about 25lbs, even with 200 rounds hanging underneath it. Oh, and it fires a varmint cartridge, little different from what you plink moles out of your garden with. See, light.

That takes about 30 seconds. No deadline is that tight.

Biologically, zebras are pink animals with black and white stripes.

Over at Space.com, I read that Burt Rutan has said of the proposed NASA CEV, that it is more like archaeology than rocket science. All too true, and I nearly aspirated my diet coke.

Other choice quotes:

“They are forcing the program to be done with technology that we already know works. They are not creating an environment where it is possible to have a breakthrough,” Rutan advised. “It doesn’t make sense,” he said, contending that programs must encourage risks “in order to stumble into breakthroughs.”

...Rutan said if he was the NASA Administrator, he would call a major press conference about the agency plans to go back to the Moon. “I’d go in front of the microphone,” Rutan said, “and I’d scream at the top of my lungs, ‘this is stupid,’ then turn around and head back to the office and go back to work. If we copy what we had it won’t be affordable enough or safe enough,” Rutan said, to foster human space travel beyond low Earth orbit, to the Moon, and outward.

NASA’s space shuttle is complex and generically dangerous, Rutan pointed out. Still, not flying the shuttle to the Hubble Space Telescope is symbolic of a larger issue. “The budget forecast [for NASA] is to go out and spend hundreds of billions of dollar to go to Mars and yet you don’t have the courage to go back to the Hubble … it looks like you got the wrong guys doing it,” Rutan concluded.

If there is a benevolent and loving God watching over us, the government will not get in his way, and we will have real space travel in our lifetime. You figure the odds, 'cause Rutan just pissed off a lot of people. All the more so because he is exactly right.