So what's next, locusts? Or do the seas become blood? I'm so confused over which plague is next.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 08:54 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Former President Carter displayed rare common sense when he stated the following:

"... the U.S. continues to suffer terrible embarrassment ..."

It's true: Carter's constant stream of nonsense is a major source of embarrassment to the US, but we've learned to deal with it as best we can.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 08:50 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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OKay, dead and immobile are fair game, too, but we really want to grab more moolah for the absolutely necessary federal program to supplement blow-dry hair styling in Death Valley.

Only 43 states have signed up? What's wrong with the other 7?

Posted by: Physics Geek at 11:21 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Better yet, like the whole freaking world is watching. It's especially effective if you're a no talent, rhythmless dork whose best move resembles nothing so much as a seizure. Say, I think I'm qualified to discipline hooligans in this manner. Excerpt:

Yep, that's right. This morning I was sitting on the bridge once again, waiting for the train to pass. As fate would have it, who was right in front of me but Radiokid (that's right, that's what I call him now)! I was so happy I almost thanked him for the opportunity to right my wrongs!
Just as polite and cheerful as could be, I hopped out of my faithful 'Yota and trotted up next to him. "Hi!" I grinned. "Say, would you mind turning down your music, please?"
His response was direct and coarse, and I shall not here repeat what he said. Except to say that it sounded a lot like Fuck you.
That made me even happier. I looked at him real mean, like I was about to rip his guts out through his throat, and I said, "Turn it down right now or I swear I'm going to start dancing." I waited a second until he realized what I'd actually said, I got a great double take, and then I said, "And you don't want that." I then followed up with some more taunting, like Bring it on, and Don't think I won't.
Sure enough, he cranked up the volume until his whole car was reverberating. So nice of him to oblige.

And so, right there on the bridge, in full view of the morning traffic, the CT River, and the city of Brattleboro, VT, I worked it, baby. I didn't just put on a little cha-cha. Oh no. This sucker incurred the full measure of my wrath. And I don't mind saying, it was a damned fearful thing. Men trembled. Women shrieked. I give Radiokid credit -- he lasted nearly a half-minute before he pulled out of line and skinned out. I know exactly which move it was that crossed the line for him, too. But you don't want to know about that.

Thanks to Claire Wolfe for the link.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 11:18 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Lileks has started the Screedblog. Add it to your blogroll now.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 11:40 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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ANd it's been dead for years. Nice ruling by SCOTUS, huh?

As someone who has never smoked pot in my life, you'd think that this ruling doesn't affect me at all, but you'd be dead wrong. Any edict issued by the Supremes that centralizes more power in DC and takes it away from the individual states impacts everyone in this country, and not in a good way. Come to think of it, there isn't really a good way to do that. Excerpt:

Under the Constitution, Congress may pass laws regulating a state's economic activity so long as it involves "interstate commerce" that crosses state borders. The California marijuana in question was homegrown, distributed to patients without charge and without crossing state lines.

Stevens said there are other legal options for patients, "but perhaps even more important than these legal avenues is the democratic process, in which the voices of voters allied with these respondents may one day be heard in the halls of Congress."

The voice of the people has been heard, it's just being ignored, which is business as usual in DC.

Update: Ballon Juice expresses its pique over this nonsensical ruling.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 10:52 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Not surprisingly, it's from Protein Wisdom. Excerpt:

Now, how is all this possible, you ask? Because John McCain knows what’s best for you. He’s a maverick who bucks the system, infuriating partisans on both sides of the political divide (as he’ll be the first to tell you). And he’ll be damned if he won’t use the Senate to remake the world in his image—and nothing non-maverick (like, say, the will of the voters, the separation of powers, or the Constitution itself) will stand in the way of this hard-charging, tough-talking populist.

Or as I’m inclined to call him, “nannystatist fucktard.” Because face it: this guy is Bill O’Reilly with a tan.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 01:39 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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A guy named Joe finds himself in dire trouble. His business has gone bust and he's in serious financial trouble. He's so desperate that he decides to ask God for help. He begins to pray...

"God, please help me. I've lost my business and if I don't get some money, I'm going to lose my house as well. Please let me win the lotto."

Lotto night comes and somebody else wins it.

Joe again prays...

"God, please let me win the lotto! I've lost my business, my house and I'm going to lose my car as well".

Lotto night comes and Joe still has no luck. Once again, he prays...

"My God, why have you forsaken me?? I've lost my business, my house, and my car. My wife and children are starving.I don't often ask you for help and I have always been a good servant to you. PLEASE just let me win the lotto this one time so I can get my life back in order."

Suddenly there is a blinding flash of light as the heavens open and Joe is confronted by the voice of God Himself:

"Joe, meet Me halfway on this. Buy a ticket."

Posted by: Physics Geek at 12:03 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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This week's Carnival of the Recipes is simmering over at Conservative Friends. Be sure to leave a tip for your host, Drew.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 09:50 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Celebrate National Donut Day tomorrow by eating 2 dozen from Dunkin Donuts.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 09:34 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Since this will be your first beer, we're going to keep things as simple as possible. Terms that you likely won't hear in this series:

1) sparging
2) protein rest
3) saccharification
4) isohumulone

Things that you are likely to hear:

1) boiling
2) carbonation
3) bottling
4) drinking

Anyway, there a variety of items that you could use for homebrewing, but I don't want to stress you out. In the motto of the American Homebrewers Association: Relax. Don't worry. Have a homebrew.

Okay, first things first. You will need a kettle to boil your beer in. Technically, the beer will be called wort at this stage. And now you've added a new word to your vocabulary, although I haven't found a way to use it in conversations NOT about brewing.

Back to the boiling pot. It should be at least 3 gallons, although 5 gallons is probably better and 10 gallons would be better still. But if you want to save money, stick with the smaller pot. Some people get a little too serious about the type of kettle: ceramic coated stainless, pure stainless steel, pots that come with your own personal Emeril to screech "BAM!" every time you add something to it. Me? I went the inexpensive route and bought an aluminum pot. But hey, it's your setup. Whatever makes you happy.

Next on the list as a must have item is a fermentation vessel. You have a couple of realistic choices here as a homebrewer: glass or plastic. 5 gallon glass carboys are easy to find and they're not too expensive. Since you'll typically brew 5 gallon batches, though, you will need to use a blowoff tube for the first couple of days and then add on a fermentation lock. If that sounds like too much effort, a 6-1/2 gallon carboy is probably a better choice because you can stick the lock on top from the get go. And having said all that, I suggest that you go with a plastic fermentation vessel for your first batch. They're usually 6-1/2 to 7 gallons in capacity and have airtight lids with a single opening for your fermentation lock. Also, they're pretty much unbreakable, which isn't the case for glass fermentation vessels. Again, it's your call.

On second thought, you'll probably want to go ahead and order a 5 gallon glass carboy, or at least put it on lay-away. Glass is absolutely required for secondary fermentation. Granted, we won't bother with that for our first beer, but we will for future brews.

How will you get the beer into your fermentation vessel? You're going to need a pretty large plastic funnel. Maybe not for your first beer, but definitely for the next one.

If you want some idea of the potential alcohol in your brew, you'll need a hydrometer, a device used to measure the specific gravity of liquids. The more sugar that's dissolved in the beer, the greater potential alcohol content. And a floating thermometer is useful as well. It's bad form to add yeast to your brew while it''s too hot. Also, you'll need to know the temperature of your wort when taking the specific gravity if you want to correctly determine the specific gravity of your beer.

Since I mentioned fermentation locks in the preceding paragraph, I might as well discuss those next. There are several types available. A picture of the two most common ones can be found here. They both accomplish the same task: let carbon dioxide from the fermentation escape while preventing anything from getting back into the beer.

Once fermentation has completed, you'll need a bottling bucket. I suggest that you buy one with a spigot already attached. You will rack(siphon) the beer from the fementation vessel into the bottling bucket using a racking cane. This prevents having a lot of yeasty sludge from ending up in your bottles. Also, you'll probably want to buy a spring-loaded bottle filler, which makes filling up the bottles a much simpler task. It also leaves about the perfect amount of headspace in each bottle. In my opinion, this small piece of equipment will make your bottling experience less painless.

You'll need bottles, too, about 50-60 12-ounce bottles, or 25 24-ounce bottles. How do you aquire them? Well, you could buy brand spanking new bottles from the store, but I tend to get them from my other friends that drink beer, asking them to save all of their empties. My pals are usually very helpful in this regard, especially after I've promised to give them some samples of my homebrew. By the way, ask your friends to rinse the bottles after they're empty. Cleaning mold out of bottles isn't an enjoyable task.

Okay, you''ve filled your bottles with your beer. Now you need to cap them. This means, of course, that you will need 50-60 unused bottle caps, as well as a bottle capper to put them onto the bottles. Again, go the inexpensive route and purchase a lever-armed bottle capper. Bench cappers are nice, but more expensive, and they require more effort on your part if the bottles aren't all the same size, which is likely to be the case if you're using castoff empties.

I almost forgot: you'll need a couple of pieces of plastic tubing, too. One piece will attach to the racking cane and another to the bottle filler.

I think that our brewing list is pretty much complete. Let's recap what you'll need:

1 3-5 gallon brewing kettle
1 5 or 6 gallon glass carboy
1 6.5 to 7.5 gallon "food grade" plastic fermenter with airtight locking lid
1 6 foot length of 3/8-inch inside diameter clear plastic tubing
1 racking cane
1 fermentation lock
1 rubber stopper to fit the fermentation lock(It's bad form to not notice until you're pitching the yeast that they don't fit. Not that I know from experience or anything. I'm just saying.)

1 2-3 foot length of 3/8-inch outside diameter tubing which should fit the next item
1 spring-loaded bottling wand
1 large plastic funnel
1 floating thermometer
1 hydrometer
1 bottle capper, for which you'll need lots of new bottle caps.
50-60 beer bottles, preferably the non-screwtop type. Brown glass is the best, but pretty much anything will work.

I forgot to mention how important proper sanitation is. Let's go the cheap route yet again and use unscented household bleach. You don't want your beer to taste lemony fresh. Ugh.

That's enough to get started. We'll go over the limited ingredient list in the next post in this series.

What's that you say? You don't have a brewshop in your town? Have no fear, there are shops all over the country that will gladly ship the stuff right to your door. Check here and here. If you don't find what you're looking for there, then check out these links. Oh, and lots of places sell beginner kits containing most or all of the equipment listed above. Your mileage may vary.

See you next post.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 06:43 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Good grief. Looks like another update from the "let's turn all of our boys into dickless wonders" front. Then again, as I mentioned at the comments at Ace, maybe, just maybe, they're training our boys to be clowns. Thkn about it: pogo-sticking and unicycling. Maybe driver's ed will taught in a little bitty car that farts smoke.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 04:17 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I scored 83% on this silly quiz. Then again, I've actually read The Sound and the Fury.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 04:07 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Periodically I will boot from my Knoppix distro CD. While I have two CD-ROM's on my computer, it's sometimes a nuisance to only have one available when Knoppix is running. Barry Kauler from Australia has removed that little problem with his distro creation, Puppy Linux, which boots from the little old thumb-sized memory sticks. Excerpt:

"I think one of the key advantages of Puppy is the simplicity," said Barry Kauler, the developer of Puppy Linux, in an e-mail interview. "When other distributions start up, you see all these servers loading, but in Puppy it's really basic and bootup is remarkably fast. However, I still managed to stick to the requirement of it all loading into RAM and freeing up the CD drive, on a reference 128MB PC."

That small-is-beautiful theme is Puppy's raison d'etre, according to Kauler. "If I were pressed to list why I think people use Puppy, it would be [that it's] very simple under-the-hood, very easy to use, very fast, highly portable, and easy to install."

Posted by: Physics Geek at 03:27 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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If this had been an actual post, there would be something useful before you eyes, maybe even some information about brewing beer.

Work is making like a Hoover on steroids this week. They actually want me to do something for the salary they pay me. The nerve of some people.

I've got the beer equipment post about done and will put it out for public consumption sometime tomorrow.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 12:07 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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