daveeza

"Brewing beer is, in theory, fairly simple. A small farmer can grow all the barley and the hops needed on a little plot of land—it’s easier to grow than corn. And a microbrewery can pump out a few humble barrels of finished beer in anything from a spare room to sprawling warehouse. But a step in the middle can stand in the way. Malting the barley—soaking, drying and then heating the grains to turn their starches into simple sugar ready to ferment—is more complicated. In fact, it can be something of a bottleneck for brewers like Dustin Brau, CEO of Brau Brothers Brewery in tiny Lucan, Minnesota. “There aren’t a lot of maltsters, so what you get is a lot of breweries buying from a relatively [small] number of maltsters worldwide,” he says. That homogenizes the final product, which is not a compliment from a booster of microbrews. Malting also drives up the carbon footprint needed to make the beer—and the limited number of malt suppliers ramps up the price, with Brau estimating that... more... - daveeza from Bookmarklet

"Mimi Alford, then Mimi Beardsley, interned at the White House in the summer of 1962, quickly caught the president’s eye. The 19-year-old joined the 45-year-old president for a noon swim four days into her internship. Later that day, he took her virginity in “Mrs. Kennedy’s room.” “After he finished, he hitched up his pants and smiled at me.” Alford says their sex life was “varied and fun” and describes an affair that was more than just sex. They apparently spent an “inordinate amount of time taking baths” and listened to music together. He confided in her during key personal and professional moments, such as when his infant son died and during the Cuban Missile Crisis. But he never kissed her on the lips. At one point, during another noon swim, Kennedy allegedly asked Alford to “take care” of an aide. He watched as she performed oral sex on him. Kennedy ended up apologizing to both of them. At a later date, Kennedy asked her to “take care of my baby brother,” meaning Ted Kennedy,... more... - daveeza from Bookmarklet

"In place of these failed institutions, he proposes a new type of society founded on a biosocial contract, which he describes as a “truly voluntary bargain among various (empowered) stakeholders over how the benefits and obligations in a society are to be apportioned among the members” that is “grounded in our growing understanding of human nature and the basic purpose of a human society.” Such a contract, he writes, must be focused on fairness and the obligation to address the “shared survival and reproductive needs” of our species." - daveeza from Bookmarklet

"When she arrived sometime in late 1774 or 1775, she became the first woman known to have circumnavigated the globe. There was no one at the dock to welcome her. No one (except perhaps her husband) knew what she had done, but she'd done it. Hulton Archive/Getty Images Louis Antoine de Bougainville Still, she wasn't entirely ignored. Her lover's family, the Commerson family, honored her contract and paid her a handsome sum for her services, but most surprisingly, unbidden, the French Navy bestowed "upon this extraordinary woman" a pension of 200 livres per annum for her work gathering plants. Ridley figures she must have had a secret admirer. And her guess is, it was Capt. Bougainville, whose name has been famous ever since. But the last word should go to the Prince of Nassau-Siegen, the young gentleman in velvet and heels who hiked with her. In his memoirs, he says of Jeanne Baret: I want to give her all the credit for her bravery, a far cry from the gentle pastimes afforded her sex.... more... - daveeza from Bookmarklet

"The first international drug treaty was signed a century ago this week. So what was the war on drugs like in 1912? Today it is taken for granted that governments will co-operate in the fight against the heroin and cocaine trade. But 100 years ago, narcotics passed from country to country with minimal interference from the authorities. That all changed with the 1912 International Opium Convention, which committed countries to stopping the trade in opium, morphine and cocaine. Then, as now, the US stood in the vanguard against narcotics. While the UK's position is unequivocal today, a century ago it was an unenthusiastic signatory, says Mike Jay, author of Emperors of Dreams: Drugs in the Nineteenth Century. The real concern a century ago was over alcohol, he argues. "There was a big debate over intoxication as there was concern about the heavy, heavy drinking culture of the 19th Century." Continue reading the main story The death of Billie Carleton Rising star of musical theatre... more... - daveeza from Bookmarklet

"The two often cited benefits of Keystone XL is that it is a job creator and would help us get off foreign oil. TransCanada's job projections (500,000 ... really??) have been debunked by many people. The State Dept. puts it at something closer to 4,000-5,000. Regarding foreign oil, Kestone XL will indeed supply about 510,000 extra barrels of crude per day which sounds like a lot until you realize that this would only meet about 2.5 percent of our daily needs ... and at what cost? A barrel of tar sands oil costs about $30 to produce (versus about $5 for a barrel of Saudi oil). And beyond the nearly incomprehensible environmental devastation it causes — 65 square miles of toxic tailings posts, cleared boreal forests, and polluted rivers — it is incredibly resource-intensive. Tar sands production uses three barrels of freshwater for every one barrel of oil produced and requires enough natural gas to heat 3 million Canadian homes, making it four times more carbon polluting than regular... more... - daveeza from Bookmarklet

"The Eurozone has been significantly more averse to stimulus measures than the United States - what do you attribute that to? The main difference here is between the ECB and the U.S. Federal Reserve. The Fed has been willing to use quantitative easing and push down long-term interest rates. It should also be noted that when the Fed creates money and uses it to buy U.S. Treasury bonds, the resulting debt has no interest burden, because it is owned by the Fed and the interest is refunded back to the Treasury. In other words, it is net debt creation that matters, not gross debt. This is of course what the ECB needs to do, but it has refused to do it. Even the bond purchases it has made have been “sterilized,” that is, the ECB sells other assets so as to avoid increasing the money supply. How to account for this difference, which makes the Republican Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke look like a socialist in comparison with the ECB? It is partly a difference in the people in charge – Bernanke has... more... - daveeza from Bookmarklet

"The suicide of Jamie Hubley in October was a rude awakening for the people of Ontario. His suicide after suffering from depression and being bullied in school for being gay was a shock. This doesn’t happen in Ontario, especially in a city like Ottawa. In response the Liberal party, current governing party in Ontario, proposed Bill 13 and put it before the legislature. The Conservatives didn’t like this legislation and proposed their own, Bill 14. Conservative MPP Randy Hillier has been particularly vocal about it with an opinion piece in the Ottawa Citizen that was also posted on his web site.  Mr. Hillier suggests that many who support Bill 13 (the one from the government) have not read the legislation. I have. I have also read Bill 14 put forward by Elizabeth Witmer of the Progressive Conservatives. In this post I am looking at the two pieces of legislation as well as Mr. Hillier’s post about it. Read the rest of this entry" - daveeza from Bookmarklet

"The Salk scientists are the first to discover an essential intracellular machine whose components include proteins of this age. Their results suggest the proteins last an entire lifetime, without being replaced. ELLPs make up the transport channels on the surface of the nucleus; gates that control what materials enter and exit. Their long lifespan might be an advantage if not for the wear-and-tear that these proteins experience over time. Unlike other proteins in the body, ELLPs are not replaced when they incur aberrant chemical modifications and other damage. Damage to the ELLPs weakens the ability of the three-dimensional transport channels that are composed of these proteins to safeguard the cell's nucleus from toxins, says Martin Hetzer, a professor in Salk's Molecular and Cell Biology Laboratory, who headed the research. These toxins may alter the cell's DNA and thereby the activity of genes, resulting in cellular aging. Funded by the Ellison Medical Foundation and the Glenn... more... - daveeza from Bookmarklet

"The internet is a great tool to alert politicians to all the dangers of this treaty, just as the internet was a tool to mobilize people against the SOPA and PIPA bills in the US. For any lobby to be effective, however, it must be fact based. Misinformed criticism helps those supporting ACTA. The dangers and threats of the ACTA treaty are shared by free-speech advocates and access to medicine groups alike. ACTA is seeking to deal with a number of widely differing issues, and hence does not do a good job at any of them. Additionally, there are serious concerns about the collateral damage that ACTA would cause. Regrettably, concerns by businesses, NGO’s and politicians have not led to a better result. This is partly due to the intransparant way in which ACTA has been established and negotiated. As a democratically elected representative, I believe it is not the role of government to protect outdated business models, and I do believe it is our job to ensure democratic oversight. Besides... more... - daveeza from Bookmarklet

"On June 25th 2005, the homepage of the EliteTorrents.org tracker displayed an ominous message. Thousands of members trying to log in to get a sneak peak at a leaked copy of Star Wars: Episode 3 were surprised and confused in equal numbers. Had the FBI really raided one of the largest BitTorrent communities and put up a badly made Word document, or were hackers to blame? There’s no denying it was a very confusing day. For a while the site just didn’t respond for me. The rumors were starting to circulate. Had the EliteTorrents site really been raided by the FBI? Many furious refreshes later and there it was, a crude webpage with a blood-red background, with a DOJ graphic on one side and an FBI one on the other. In the middle sat part of the EliteTorrents banner (enlarge). The page was so crude that it gave the tens of thousands of worried users a little relief – if the FBI was really behind the shutdown they would’ve made a better job of the page design than this, surely? The... more... - daveeza from Bookmarklet