Category: Personal Page 27 of 59
There will be a brief pause in the action here at Blacknell.net for the next few days. On a quick trip, and convenient access just isn´t at hand. If I can remedy that, I´ll be back. Otherwise, see you Friday. Happy Thanksgiving and all that.
And I’m not talking about Atrios’ DFH (NTTAWWT). The New Yorker takes a wonderful walk through the state of American beer from the perspective of (sorta) local brewer Dogfish Head. In case any local readers don’t know, DFH operates a bar serving many of their less-available brews out at Seven Corners. Of course, if you can bear the Bay Bridge, you can always check out the original brewpub in Rehoboth. The article shares a little bit about the history of that location:
As it turned out, there was a reason that Delaware had no breweries like Calagione’s. Prohibition had been over for sixty years, but it was still illegal for a pub to bottle and distribute its own beer. Calagione found this out not long after he’d signed the lease. Luckily, Delaware was also very small and very friendly to business. “I literally drove to Dover, asked which one is the House and which is the Senate, and started knocking on doors,†he remembers. “They said, ‘You want to do what, son? Well, write up a bill!’ †Six months later, the governor signed the bill into law. The only hitch had come when Calagione was applying for his liquor license, and one of the commissioners brought up his recent arrest for driving under the influence of alcohol. Calagione admitted to the incident—a few weeks earlier, on his way home from a restaurant, he’d run into a parked car and dislocated his shoulder—but added a small correction. The actual infraction was a P.U.I., he said: pedalling under the influence. “Commissioner, I was on a bicycle.â€
I’m sure that *none* of you could identify with that. At all.
Reason Magazine has an interesting look at Tor Books, one of the most successful publishers of science fiction in the past 25 years (I have shelves and shelves full of nothing but Tor and Baen books). The author, naturally, takes a particular interest in how Tor’s books have furthered an openness toward the libertarian political philosophy. The piece makes a number of observations that go well beyond that, though:
Patrick Nielsen Hayden, the goateed and bespectacled Tor eminence who edited two of the house’s Prometheus finalists this year, draws a direct line between youthfulness and openness to libertarian ideas. “Young people read fiction to figure out how the world works,†he says, “and science fiction is an extremely effective, quick way of testing your views of how the world works.†Paraphrasing the late novelist and critic Thomas Disch, Hayden says, “Enormous quantities of science fiction and fantasy are about power, and who needs power fantasies more than teenagers, people who have a little bit of power for the first time in their lives and need to think about how power works?â€
Oh, how true that is.
The first artist is someone that didn’t really appeal to me on the first listen. Or even the third. He has, though, turned out to be one of those artists that lives in the back of your consciousness, biding his time until you come around to appreciate him. (And come around, I did.)
Warren Zevon – My Shit’s Fucked Up:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2aUJF3gdog[/youtube]
Well, I went to the doctor
I said, “I’m feeling kind of rough”
“Let me break it to you, son
Your shit’s fucked up.”
I said, “my shit’s fucked up?”
Well, I don’t see how–”
He said, “The shit that used to work–
It won’t work now.”
The next artist brought a somewhat inverse experience – the aesthetic appealed right away. The deeper meaning, though, I think it changed over the years.
NIN – Down In It
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXtQhtSI_9I[/youtube]
I was up above it.
Now Im down in it
I used to be so big and strong.
I used to know my right from wrong.
I used to never be afraid.
I used to be somebody
I used to have something inside
Now just this hole thats open wide.
I used to want it all
I used to be somebody
And this next? Timeless.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TH6-bQYuiU[/youtube]
Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn’t you?
People’d call, say, “Beware doll, you’re bound to fall”
You thought they were all kiddin’ you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin’ out
Now you don’t talk so loud
Now you don’t seem so proud
About having to be scrounging for your next meal.
How does it feel
How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?
There are a million reasons (most of them good, I’d like to think) that I don’t write about the practice of law or my area of expertise, here. One of the reasons (maybe not so good) is that most interesting legal issues are never what they seem to the public, and are often more work to explain than they’re worth.
But this? This is straight up disgusting.
Once upon a time, I was trying to gauge interest among a group of friends in splitting the cost of a newly-announced Eclipse 500 jet. Turns out that my earnestness was a little optimistic, but I still think that we’re likely to see both the production of a (relatively) affordable Eclipse 500-like jet and the development of an alternative to the big-jet spoke and hub travel system in the US. If this is an area that interests you, author James Fallows is your man. Start with this post at the Atlantic.
This touches upon one of the benefits of last Tuesday’s election that I’ll most enjoy:
I now have the luxury of debating only thoughtful, sane conservatives who argue in good faith, and I intend to enjoy it.
There’s much more to it than that, though. Go read the rest.
