You know, I've got all that brewing stuff...

The latest drug news in England is that their growing their own. The majority of the marijuana smoked by pot heads in Britian is grown in Britian. Click here for story. Apparently there has been a thriving indoor pot revolution happening.

The story quotes a seller of equipment to do such a thing as saying "A lot of customers settle their bills with their American Express cards. These are the kind of people who may have been smoking for years, but have moved on socially and prefer not to associate with dealers or ask around in pubs.''

Hmmm, do I really want to take up cheesemaking?

Well I did write "Don't Panic" on the top of my legal pad

Another silly test. But I kind of agree with the results.

You're The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy!

by Douglas Adams

Considered by many to be one of the funniest people around, you are
quite an entertainer. You've also traveled to the far reaches of what you deem possible,
often confused and unsure of yourself. Life continues to jostle you around like a marble,
but it's shown you so much of the world that you don't care. Wacky adventures continue to
lie ahead. Your favorite number is 42.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

It looks like Frodo was the only one to live happily ever after

So, you've just won an Oscar, your movies are quite possibly the greatest movie trilogy ever. Your Steve Jackson. You are finishing up the new King Kong flick. Sound like a good time to sue the studio you made the Lord of the Rings for. Click here for story.

Not that I blame Jackson. He alleges, and is most likely correct, that New Line Cinema undersold the rights to it sister companies in the Time Warner family. Thus the profits from the books, toys and other stuff held up in these other companies. If this is true, then New Line owes him roughly $100 Million bucks. So its not like their fighting over pocket change. The reality is that the studios have been using creative accounting to hid profits from artists for years.

Hey, the Hawks have a new GM.

The Blackhawks hired Dale Talon as their new General Manager. He fired Coach Sutter. But as the players and owners are still millions of dollars apart, he has no players. This is a brilliant strategy. Last year they didn't have to pay their players now they won't have to pay a coach.

Dollar Bill will be most pleased.

The power of the dark side is hard to resist.

The Cubs played the Sox today.

The Sox won.

I was conflicted. Happy and sad at the same time.

Well at least its not "Danger Zone"

Scientists have decided that a blackcapped chickadee is really sending out a warning to other chickadees when it sings its familiar song. Click here for story. The interesting thing is that there is a great amount of variety in the call that humans simply cannot pick up. If you want to here a chickadee call click here.

Great fish tale

Some fishermen have a reputation for exaggerating the size of their catch. This isn't one of those stories. Click here for story.

Hey all you Metal Heads

Rob Halford was just on Fresh Aire. Click here for the link.

The Independent's God Jokes

Apparently, some MPs in Britian have decided that its not funny to make jokes regarding religion. There is currently a move to outlaw religious jokes. So The Independent decided to publish its favorite jokes before the law passes. Click here for the jokes.

Worried that she's faking it, just strap her into a brain scanner and know for sure.

Leave it to those crazy Dutch. The faked female orgasm was recently the subject of a study where researchers had couples engage in "relations" while either the man or the woman had their head encased in a PET brain scanner at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Click here for story.

Of course, the study had a few problems. "Professor Holstege admitted that the study hit a few difficulties at first, with the laboratory conditions meaning that only half the couples felt able to rise to the occasion. The participants also complained of cold feet in the scanning room, prompting researchers to give them socks.

By the end of the study, the lowered lighting and socks meant that 80 per cent of the couples were able to have sex."

My only question on this story is why study the faked orgasm? How is this knowledge going to help anybody? No man really wants to know when his partner has faked an orgasm. And if she wanted him to know she wouldn't have faked it in the first place.

Meme?

In his blog, Jason tagged me. As I am unsure of the meaning of this, I will assume that he wants me to answer a series of questions. So here it goes.

How many books do you own?
I estimate around 700. This number includes my law books, a large number of scholarly texts which Sarah and I picked up during our school days. Plus a great number of cookbooks, brewing texts and mindless pulp.

Last book I bought?
It's either Radical Brewing by Randy Mosher or Exporting America by Lou Dobbs. I'm not really sure. Recently we have been borrowing books from the Berwyn Library. The two books I have recently borrowed are Cheesemaking Made Easy and Freakonomics.

Last book I read?
The easy answer is Freakonomics. But I have been thumbing through all of my brewing books on my way to and from the Beer Fest.

Books that mean a lot to me (Top five)
Animal Farm by George Orwell
parliament of Whores by PJ O'Roarke
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe
Bowling Alone by Robert Putman

The Second tier
Radical Brewing
The Brewmasters Bible
John Adams by McCullogh
Lee and Grant by Smith
Why Americans Hate Politics by Dionne

I've noticed a lack of legal books on my list. This actually does not surprise me. Law books, even the most important texts, tend to be written as reference books. Most of the interesting or argumentative books regarding the law are written by journalists.

Darn, that's the end.

Just like the Schoolhouse Rock song, my trip out east was filled with interjections. They were as follows:

Huh? When the directions I received from my father in law sent me the wrong way. And at 11 pm the mountains of Eastern Pennsylvania are really really dark.

Whoa. When the temperature stayed at 85 degrees at night.

Ahhh. When I went into the coal mine, a delightful 50 degrees. The tour guide thought I would be cold. After 3 days of hot and humid weather, I was in heaven.

Yum. When we all went to the ice cream store which even by Eastern Pennsylvania standards is in the middle of nowhere, but it seemed like everyone in the county enjoyed the drive and the ice cream.

Ha. When it rained during our trip to the local amusement park.

WOW. When he rain cleared up just enough for Sarah, Andrew and me to ride the Twister Rollercoaster. It was great.

What. When my 4 year old told me that he wanted to get out of the canoe, a mere 10 minutes after we rented it.

Cool. When I went to Fort McHenry in Baltimore, the fort which withstood the English barrage during the War of 1812. The bombardment of Fort McHenry was the inspiration for the Star Spangled Banner. A lot of neat things, but not nearly as much as I expected. More in another post.

Yeah! The insane amount and quality of Food, Beer and people at Club Night during the convention.

Sure. What I said to almost everyone who offered to fill up my cup and plate at Club Night.

Oooff. What I said when I finally made it back to my room after Club Night.

Hmmm. What I thought during the seminars on Saturday. I just might try that.

Excellent. What I said when I bought a ticket for $13 to Saturday's Oriole game at Camden Yards, just 2 blocks from the hotel.

Whew. When I finally walked up to my seat a mere 3 rows from the top of the upper deck. $13 don't get you much in Baltimore.

Darn. What I said when I reached the Skyway (please remember that I had two kids in the car). As it took me as much time to traverse the Skyway as it did to cross the entire state of Indiana.

Nick prefers an amusement park to a beach.

In the beginning of the week, the temperature here in Pottsville was an oppressive 90+ with high humidity. But on Wednesday, the weather broke and Sarah, Grandma and I took the kids to the beach. Did Nick want to play in the sand, no. Did Nick want to play in the water, no. Did Nick want to ride in a canoe, yes! Then ten minutes later no. What did Nick want to do? He wanted to run. Run up the hills and then down the hills. And I'm talking serious Pennsylvania hills. So that's what Nick and I did.

Today, the whole gang went to an amusement park out this way called Knobles. It's a pretty neat mixture of carny rides, kiddie rides and two roller coasters. It's nice for us because admission is free, parking is free and you can bring a picnic lunch. So we only had to pay for the rides we actually rode. Other that the intermittent rain, we all had a great time. Nick rode more rides than any of us.

I don't even know who this guy is...

Jay linked to a test to see which theologian you are most like. I'm apparently Anselm. But I have no idea who he is.

You scored as Anselm. Anselm is the outstanding theologian of the medieval period.He sees man's primary problem as having failed to render unto God what we owe him, so God becomes man in Christ and gives God what he is due. You should read 'Cur Deus Homo?' Anselm 100% Karl Barth 87% John Calvin 73% Martin Luther 67% Jonathan Edwards 60% Friedrich Schleiermacher 53% Jürgen Moltmann 47% Augustine 40% Paul Tillich 33% Charles Finney 33% Which theologian are you? created with QuizFarm.com

Time for a nice cool Yuengling.

Well this afternoon, I completed the mandatory trip to the Yuengling Brewery. I had a few things to accomplish. First, I needed to pick up a key chain bottle opener. I am collecting these as a physical record of the breweries that I visit. Not only are they cheap, but they're also functional. Now I have openers from Goose Island, Leinenkugels, New Glarus, Huber and Yuengling. I hope to stop in a couple of breweries in Baltimore to get more.

The second thing I needed was to pick out my Father's Day gift. I needed a beer t-shirt. Which strangely enough I never owned. I have several beer related sweatshirts, but as the temp in Pottsville has been hovering around 90 and Sarah's folks don't have air conditioning, I decided to leave them at home.

I will be picking up some Yuengling on my return trip but I don't have too much space in my car. I will bring home as much as I can, so mabye folks will get six packs instead of cases.

Off to the inlaws and to drink a lot of beer

Tomorrow the family starts its great eastern trip. We will drive all day from Berwyn to Pottsville PA to stay with Sarah's parents for the better part of the week. Then, I'll make my way to Baltimore for the National Homebrew Convention.

In fact, based on the amount time I will be taking in different things in Baltimore, I will be drinking, sleeping and sightseeing in that relative order.

Cheers...

A good reason to beat the Red Sox

With the weekend series between the Cubs and Red Sox, let us all remember the last time these two teams met was the 1918 World Series. Which the Red Sox won. Click here for a copy of the New York Times description of that 1918 series.

Well, after we confiscated the weapons he didn't seem that dangerous

In Maine, a man comes to the United States and is stopped by the border patrol. The agents found a homemade sword, a hatchet, a knife, brass knuckles and a chain saw stained with what appeared to be blood. Once they took the weapons away, they let him into the county. Click here for story. The next day police in Canada discover that the man's wife and elderly neighbor were hacked up in the man's home.

I know Stephen King sets all of his stories in Maine. So maybe the border patrol just assumes this is normal in Maine.

Give us money to fight poverty, while we pay our workers next to nothing

As most people know, the wrist (rubber) band is the latest thing in fundraising. These cheapo trinkets are easy to sell and don't cost much to make. This is why the Make Poverty History folks decided to sell them. The campaign is big on words, claiming, "Millions of people are stuck in the trade trap. No matter how hard they work, they earn less every year. The situation is so dismal, half the world's population now lives on less than US$2 a day - roughly the cost of a burger. Why are people cheated of a proper living?"

The problem is that the factory which makes their wrist bands is a Chinese sweatshop which pays its employees 16 cents per hour. Click here for story. Even if the workers did 48 hours per week, they wouldn't make $2 per day.

Now to be fair, the charity discovered this on an ethics audit. But this is a highly visible charity, they should have known going into the deal.

Scots prove US not the only screwed up Court System

Imagine your a prosecutor. You have a race car driver clocked at 156 MPH, while talking on a cell phone. It's your dream come true. But since the prosecution failed to send out a "notice of intended prosecution" the driver walks out of court without penalty. Click here for story.

But this is the right result.

Macaulay Culkin joke

Culkin just pleaded guilty to possession of marijuana and prescription drugs. Click here for story. This explains his ability to testify as a character witness for Michael Jackson.

Bible zoo

The good people of the city of Tulsa must be living in paradise. They have nothing better to do than to demand a display of the creation story at the Tulsa Zoo. Click here for story. The taxpayer funded zoo has not detailed just how its going to go about this. But I suggest that it closes every Saturday to observe the Sabbath. It would be irresponsible to adhere to the creation story and require the breaking of a commandment.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far... ah who cares

I decided that as Nick was truly enamored with the Star Wars toys and stuff, that he should at least see the first movie. Sarah, wasn't so sure that this as a good idea, she thought that certain scenes may be to much for him. But eventually I convinced her.

So we borrow the tapes from Phil and Nick is really excited. That is until the fighting stops and the plot has to be advanced through dialog. He is completely bored by the cantina scene and runs off to play in his room.

Apparently, his short attention span is more advanced than I had previously believed.