Now, I like IPA (India pale ale, which is a light, extremely hoppy type of beer, for the non-beer drinkers reading this), but I’m more of a porter or stout kind of beer drinker. I have some friends that are much bigger IPA fans than me, though, so this news should make them pretty happy:
A beer a day could keep brittle bones at bay. That’s because beer is rich in silicon, an element that has been linked to bone health. But what type of beer should you drink?
Previous studies have shown that silicon can aid bone growth, and that moderate beer drinking is linked to increased bone density. Now Charles Bamforth and Troy Casey at the University of California, Davis, have discovered how much silicon each type of beer contains.
They analysed 100 beers from around the world and found that the brews contained between 6.4 and 56 milligrams of silicon per litre, with an average of 29 milligrams per litre. Looking at the silicon levels in beer’s ingredients, they found that most of it comes from the husks of malted barley.
The pair found that lighter-coloured beers made from pale malted barley and hops, such as pale ales, are richest in silicon, while low-alcohol beers contain the least, along with stouts, porters and wheat beers.
Maybe I’ll up my light/dark ratio a bit. You know, for my health. You can never start too early to keep your bones nice and strong! Thanks to Instapundit for the news filtering for the day.
This year’s crop of hyper-expensive Super Bowl commercials was, in this blogger’s opinion, a little underwhelming. A few stood out on the plus side, but man, did one stand out on the minus: the “green” Audi commercial. Yes, I know it was some sort of satire and meant to be taken with tongue firmly in cheek. Still, I just don’t get the impression that the maker’s of this piece of alt-history really got how scary this would be. They offer up this eco-totalitarian world where you can be arrested for all sorts of ridiculous things, but wait! Here’s your way out! The diesel Audi! Is the scenario impossible? Probably, but I’m positive that there are a small minority of people watching it that are nodding inwardly saying, “Well, of course we wouldn’t go through people’s garbage, but really, there oughta be a law about (fill in the blank eco-faux pas)”.
Anyway, watch for yourself. Am I just not seeing the humor in it? Does this help or hurt Audi’s brand?
[Update: 2/8/2010] Jim Geraghty noticed the same issues, and ties it in with Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism.
Burt Rutan is a genius, and happens to be one of my Dad’s heroes (he’s built, worked on, and flown planes from his designs for a couple decades). I’ve posted about him before. He’s the guy behind lots of the most inventive aircraft ever built — that actually worked, that is. The Veri-EZ and Long-EZ, one of the most used home-built designs ever, are his. So is the Voyager, the plan that flew around the world on one tank of gas. Finally, he won the X-Prize, and his company, Scaled Composites, is the main designer behind Virgin Galactic. Cool stuff. A legend.
He’s also an outspoken and passionate voice against the “climate change” crowd. I read this recent interview published by the British magazine the New Scientist with him, and had to share it. It’s a quick article, but gives a nice insight into the guy. I thought it was interesting that he flat out won’t do interviews with Scientific American, due to their reporting of global warming / climate change. He’s definitely a man of strong opinions!
I had no idea. Anyone that’s been to a Disney park has probably noticed all those pins that people wear on lanyards, and for sale in the shops. What I didn’t know is there are special ones: hidden Mickey pins. Apparently you can only get these pins by trading other ones with cast members. Man, Disney is good. That really has to be almost irresistable to obsessive collectors that live near the parks, or visit regularly. Luckily, I’m not obsessive.
(My wife arches her eyebrow in my direction.)
OK, at least I don’t live near the parks. Honestly, though, after reading this post on the Disney Parks Blog, it’s pretty neat. There’s so much back story to, well, everything that Disney does. Layers upon layers.
A few days ago, my friend Michael Totten posted an interesting — and disturbing — post on his site about a potential earthquake that very well could hit the Pacific Northwest in our life time. Read the whole thing, and the referenced article on Willamette Week:
In the reasonably near future, perhaps within our lifetimes and quite possibly as soon as tomorrow, an earthquake will strike Portland with roughly the same force felt this month in Port-au-Prince.
But while the Jan. 12 Haitian quake lasted less than 40 seconds, the shaking in Portland will continue for at least four minutes. Portland will feel a quake with a strength, duration and destruction never before experienced in the developed Western world.
Our cataclysm will begin 75 miles off the Oregon coastline. The ocean floor will split, sending shock waves racing under the water as fast as 17,000 mph. Those shock waves, felt first as a rumble, will slam into Portland in 30 seconds. The rattling will grow into a pulsing undulation that will repeatedly shove the ground up and down as much as 6 feet.
Landslides will ensue in the West Hills, sending mansions crashing on top of each other. Several of the 10 bridges across the Willamette River will collapse—the Steel Bridge, Sellwood Bridge and Marquam Bridge, most likely—and the rest will be impassible. Big Pink and other office towers will sway so violently their granite and glass facades will shear off and crash into the street, piling rubble up 4 feet deep. The Multnomah County Courthouse will tumble. Underground gas, power and water lines will be pulverized. The soil beneath the Portland International Airport will temporarily turn to soup.
About half an hour later, a 30-foot wall of water will crash into the Oregon coastline, with the tsunami flooding as high as 100 feet above sea level, sweeping in and out for hours.
This is not a pitch for the next Hollywood disaster movie. It is the scientific consensus on what will happen here sooner or later. And the latest data suggest it may in fact be sooner.
Wow. In the past, I’ve heard that the Portland, Oregon area has the potential of being hit by a serious earthquake, but honestly, I didn’t have a clue that it could be that bad.
My wife and I try to take emergency preparedness seriously, and this is one very good reason you should, too. Especially, of course, if you life in the Pacific Northwest, but really, this just shows that there’s no completely safe place. Store some food that will last, water, a couple flashlights in good working order, and some emergency medical supplies. You don’t need to go crazy, but I’d say a couple weeks worth of food and water should be considered a minimum for things like this. It the kind of situation outlined above my the Willamette Week, it just might be a couple weeks before dependable help could make it to your location. Play the “what if?” game in your head. What if an earthquake happened when I was at work? What if it happened when my kids were in school? What if my neighbors needed help? Could I offer assistance? Lastly, from the stories in Haiti — and around the world in similar situations — the last thing you want to be is a refugee.
The last thing you should ever think is that it could never happen here, where ever you may be.
The Toy Whimsy blog over at Amazon (and no, I didn’t sign up for it, but Amazon kind of ignores your list of subscribed blogs for the most part) put together a list today of “Nerd Toys to Develop Young Nerd Minds“. It’s a scatter shot of toys for two year old nerds-to-be (20 Sided Plush Dice Danglers!) all the way up to a fantastic Christmas present for that well-aged nerd in your life (Dismember-Me Plush Zombie!).
But seriously: where’s the Star Trek stuff? Babies LOVE Star Trek! Right?
They don’t work, according to this study by the Highway Loss Data Institute. Thanks, Instapundit, for the head’s up. Listen, I’m all for giving people tickets for driving dangerously. But isn’t there already laws against “distracted driving”? Isn’t there already punishments for careless/reckless driving and negligent manslaughter? All these laws banning texting and requiring hands-free sets to talk on your phone amount to is your state representative or senator being able to say, “See? I’m doing something!” It’s not the right thing to do, but it sure polls well.
We don’t send our representatives to the state and national capitals to “do things” or “pass laws”. They are there to protect our rights to life, liberty, and the persuit of happiness. Bragging about how many laws they passed is a sign of a broken system.
I discovered the Strange Maps blog a few weeks ago and just can’t get enough of it. Here’s the latest post, which breaks down Europe into three alcohol belts. As you might suspect, there’s three of them: wine, beer, and vodka, which get progressively cooler. Identifying more with the British/Scottish culture, and living in the microbrew capital of the United States (Portland, Oregon!), I’m all about the beer belt. So, this probably is my favorite part of the post:
For cultural reasons, however, the Vodka Belt has been losing ground to the Beer Belt. Scandinavians tend to drink more beer than before (although possibly this doesn’t mean they drink less wodka). Maybe this is due to the perception of beer correlating more with ‘core European’ behaviour (as it is the preferred alcoholic beverage of Britain, Germany and other influential and centrally positioned countries). That might explain the emergence in Poland, some years ago, of a Beer-Lovers’ Party (which actually won seats in the Polish Parliament in the early 1990s). Beer has since surpassed wodka as the most consumed type of alcohol in Poland.
That’s what we need in the USA! A Beer-Lover’s Party! It does sound much more fun that the Tea Party, doesn’t it?
It’s been a couple days since Steve Jobs at Apple announced and showed off the iPad. I’ve had enough time to mull over all the features — included and not included. Overall, I’m fairly impressed and excited by the device. It’s pretty much what I expected to see come out in the first rev. I probably won’t be buying one, though, unless I win the lottery. The chances of picking up the second revision, however, is high.
So, here are my thoughs, no in any particular order:
The big move forward here is in the interface. It’s what Microsoft keeps saying they’re going to do, but never does (not including commercial level toys like Surface). It’s fantastic.
The lack of a camera is disappointing, because there’s so many possibilities with one. A quick video call/chat session with your SO? All that’s lacking is the camera and the bandwidth. I expect that a future version will have one, and probably v2. I mean, the Nano has a camera.
iBooks is nice, but not really superior to the Kindle for reading books. I don’t care if there’s color or not when I’m reading a novel. For newspapers or magazines, though, this blows away Amazon’s device. This might be the Chosen Device that the periodical industry has been waiting for.
No announcement yet on the issue of DRM on their book downloads. I would be (sadly) surprised if it was DRM free. This is a big deal, and just holds the eBook market back from truly being a replacement for dead trees. I can pick up a book I bought 20 years ago and read it — which I actually do once in a while. DRM’d copies of books, though, almost certainly won’t let you do that. At least, not without breaking the law and stripping the protection off of the files. As it is, because of this, eBooks really aren’t worth more than the price of a throwaway paperback, and perhaps even less so, since you can’t pass it along to a friend. Any more than $5-6 a book is probably overpriced.
I suspect that anything less than 64 GB will be limiting for the average user, given the size of movies and TV shows. At that point, you’re talking about some serious money, so it’s another reason to hold off until v2. 16 GB isn’t nearly enough.
What I’d like to see is a truly wireless device. I want it to sync automatically with my home PC, as well as anything in the cloud, without having to tell it “sync”, and without having to plug it in. I also want to be able to access all my home PC and file server data from anywhere without headache and without major security issues. The bandwidth is there right now for this, and Apple has some really smart coders working for them. This would be flat-out revolutionary.
I think a pound a half, while light compared to netbooks, is still too heavy. The target should be about a pound or a little lighter.
I LOVE the iWork apps. I believe it to be truly a window into the future of computing.
The big hurdle to all these mobile computers that hasn’t been addressed yet (by anyone, including Apple) is providing an interface for lots of typing. With the iPad, if you want to type a long email or document out, well, either suffer on the virtual keyboard or use a real one. And who wants to carry around a keyboard everywhere they go? Hopefully there’s smart people in Cupertino working on this right now.
I think this could be a natural fit for someone with an iMac at home and an iPhone in their pocket. I’m not sure if it’s a great fit for someone that already has a laptop with them all the time, though.
I’m impressed by the monthly AT&T fee structure, but cheap or not, it’s still another monthly fee that will have to be considered and absorbed.
That’s long enough, I think. While I’m learning towards waiting for iPad v2, my wife is salivating NOW for one. So, perhaps I’ll be able to play with one sooner rather than later. We’ll see.
