Once more unto the breach

…to close a bunch of tabs before Firefox memory issues eat my computer.

Let us begin with my praise of BibliOdyssey. They pulled me in earlier this month with the scans from an antique geomancy almanac, and I’ve been exploring their archives since then. Wow, is there a lot of stuff in there for a bibliophile to gawk at. Cosmological maps drawn by the first European to work in the of China, Hungarian monarchs, maps from ancient Greece, alchemy-transforms-into-chemistry books from the sixteenth century, and so on.

Yes, I believe I will subscribe to that feed.

And I think I might have to mess around with the free 30-day trial of Font Creator, and some of that beautiful calligraphy… If I do end up making some fonts, I’ll put them up here later.

At least one of the coordinated people I know will definitely be getting power stilts for Christmas this year–probably my little brother. After watching some of the videos of people using these things, I am filled with a desire to use them myself. Since I am utterly devoid of balance and grace, this would be a recipe for disaster–hence I shall give them to a coordinated and athletic person and enjoy the experience vicariously.

Look at this (but mute the volume!):

Or, much better, check out the video on the hemoves.com page, which features a House of Pain soundtrack so you don’t have to mute the volume.

I take back some of the mean things I have said about the Sam Adams brewery. After reading about their hop sharing program–where they are selling hops to small breweries at cost to help keep them going during a hops shortage, I admit I am inclined to think well of them. I still want to shotgun a bottle of Utopias for iconoclastic reasons, but I have nothing but respect when I see a company act decently, against what might appear to be their own short term interests. (Even if there’s a cynical part of me that can’t help but notice this is filed under “promotions”.)

For a couple of months now, we’ve all been facing the unprecedented hops shortage and it’s affected all craft brewers in various ways. The impact is even worse on the small craft brewers–openings delayed, recipes changed, astronomical hops prices being paid and brewers who couldn’t make beer.

So we looked at our own hops supplies at Boston Beer and decided we could share some of our hops with other craft brewers who are struggling to get hops this year. We’re offering 20,000 pounds at our cost to brewers who need them. Specifically, we are able to spare 10,000 pounds of East Kent Goldings from Tony Redsell, a top English grower featured by Michael Jackson in Michael Jackson’s Beer Companion (page 75 has a picture) and 10,000 pounds of the German Noble hop Tettnang Tettnanger from small farms in the Tettnang region in Germany. These are both type 90 pellets from the 2007 crop and are the exact same hops we brew our own beers with. We’re not looking to make money on this so we’re selling them at our cost of $5.72 a pound plus $.75 a pound to cover shipping and handling for the Goldings and $5.42 per pound plus $.75 a pound to cover shipping and handling for the Tetts. They’re packed in 22# foil bags, boxed four bags to a box in 88 lb. boxes and will be shipped from cold storage.

The purpose of doing this is to get some hops to the brewers who really need them. So if you don’t really need them, please don’t order them. And don’t order them just because we’re making them available at a price way below market. Order them because you need these hops to make your beer. We’re not asking questions, so let your conscience be your guide.

I’ve been spending a measurable amount of time over the last few months explaining to various friends and acquaintances just exactly how the “subprime mortgage crisis” managed to happen in the States. (This happens more than my American friends might think, since there are several things that would make this impossible in Canada–like federally mandated mortgage insurance and minimum down-payment standards–and most Canadians take these things for granted. This just makes the situation more baffling to those who haven’t followed the details.)

Well, apparently I can save some time now, and just point those people to a slideshow on Google Docs that explains the whole thing with handy stick figures.

I’ll embed the show here, but you probably want to click through to the fullscreen presentation for readability.

Because I grew up somewhere that the tap water was not just OK, but actually tasted very good, I was quite shocked when I moved to urbanized southern Ontario and first encountered the prevalence of bottled water. Why would anyone pay for something they could have for free?

When I came to realize that companies were given a government license to bottle water (which is essentially a resource belonging to “the people”) and then sell it at a ridiculous markup, I was shocked that this went on.

Lately, when I’ve been seeing supposedly environmentally-conscious people drinking from bottled water, it’s all I can do to stop myself from launching into a speech about the environmental cost of shipping water. It’s ludicrous even for “domestic” water, but it’s well nigh criminal for water that comes from another continent. And there are the questions of packaging costs to the environment, etc.

So I’m happy to be seeing a bunch of articles lately that suggest that the zeitgeist is coming around to my point of view on this.

Good old David Suzuki is quotable on the subject:

“It’s nuts to be shipping water all the way across the planet, and us — because we’re so bloody wealthy — we’re willing to pay for that water because it comes from France,” he said in an interview.

“I don’t believe for a minute that French water is better than Canadian water. I think that we’ve got to drink the water that comes out of our taps, and if we don’t trust it, we ought to be raising hell about that.”

Macleans ran a piece last year about it:

When Alice Waters opened Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., in 1971, it was at the vanguard of a “think globally, eat locally” gastronomic uprising. Now, in banning bottled water, the restaurant is at the forefront of another insurgency. Finally cluing in to the fact that importing bottled water from Italy is a flagrant violation of its mantra, Chez Panisse stopped serving Fiuggi still water last summer. It now serves free, filtered tap water. When it gets a carbonator up and running in the next week that will add fizz to tap water, the restaurant will stop selling sparkling Acqua Minerale San Benedetto.

Now the Telegraph tells me that the UK government is getting the picture:

“We have to make people think that it’s unfashionable just as we have with smoking. We need a similar campaign to convince people that this is wrong,” said Tim Lang, the Government’s naural resources commissioner.

Phil Woolas, the environment minister, added that the amount of money spent on mineral water “borders on being morally unacceptable”.

Their comments come as new research shows that drinking a bottle of water has the same impact on the environment as driving a car for a kilometre.

And all of that, of course, is before I even start worrying about the US and the bulk water exports issue.

Why would the fact that they come in tiny video game/D&D looking bottles make a caffeinated “energy” drink more appealing?

I don’t know.

And yet, somehow, I find myself wanting to order a case or two of the Mana Energy Potion. Partly it’s the bottle, and partly it’s the notion of single shot that kicks you like a couple of Red Bulls.

They won’t ship to me at the moment… but ThinkGeek will.

Hm…

I’m pinching this one from Will. I don’t think it needs any explanation.

Over 242,000 people have been born today. And counting.

That’s just one of the myriad statistics tracked at Worldometers.

I find myself just staring at this page several times a day. Sometimes for minutes at a time.

Let’s end this little linkapalooza with one more video.

This is the latest (shot-in-Halifax) music video from the the Wordburglar, a.k.a. Haligonian-living-in-Toronto Sean Jordan. I know Sean from his days working behind the counter at Strange Adventures. In addition to Sean, you may also spot Dave Howlett (manager of Strange Adventures) and Mike Holmes (artist of Shenanigans) in the video.

All Canadians (at least all of them east of Manitoba) would get the reference, but for my American friends here are some links to help explain the “Bleu Nuit” reference: one, two.