Russian Sledges

Would you drink a professionally brewed pilsner labeled with an animated, bespectacled, fire-breathing Danny Bowien dragon?  You’ll soon have that option.

Copenhagen-based Mikkeller — which also has its only American outpost right here in San Francisco — has now produced a special Mission Chinese Food beer.

Apparently, Danish brewer Mikkel Borg Bjergsø met the guys from Mission Chinese during many late night visits. They hung out. They ate Kung Pao Pastrami and Salt Cod Fried Rice. And of course, they drank beer. During the opening rush for San Francisco’s Mikkeller Bar, the two parties tossed around the idea of actually working on a beer together. Well, roughly six months later, Mikkeler has itself a Mission Chinese Food beer. Right now, they just have two batches of approximately 20 bbl each (roughly 620 gallons).

The beer itself is a German-style pilsner. Naturally, it carries a smokey note and Sichuan peppercorns. And really, it shouldn’t be any other way.

A shipping hiccup has delayed its arrival on American shores, but according to the Mikkeller folks, the beer is definitely expected to arrive in San Francisco in time for SF Beer Week (February 7-February 16).

Though some other venues might also procure some, the beer will definitely be available at two San Francisco locations: Mission Chinese Food and Mikkeller Bar.

When will the kale salad trend take a rest?

It’s everywhere, replacing Caesar salad as the de rigueur item at restaurants of all kinds. Last weekend I had two very clear examples at two very different restaurants. On Saturday night I ate at Ozumo, which will be the subject of my Thursday Update review. I had the fixed-price menu ($125), so I wasn’t sure what I’d be getting. Sandwiched between the octopus with green beans and the nigiri presentation was a kale salad. Of course this one had a Japanese flavor with ginger and lime dressing and a snow-liked mound of smoked bonito flakes over the top. And off to one side: two wedges of beets, another ingredient that seems to be on just about every menu.

On Sunday I made my third visit to Penrose in Oakland and a new item appeared that wasn’t on previous menus: kale with thin slices of apples, grapes, walnuts and a tangy mustard vinaigrette ($12).

It’s evident kale salad knows few ethnic boundaries. At Betelnut, the kale salad survived the name change from Betelnut to Hutong and back. It’s in a mustard lime dressing with cucumbers, Asian pears and radishes ($9.88).

Mexican flavors emerged at Sabrosa, where chef Jose Ramos also  adds beets as a contrasting element, along with avocado, watermelon radish and walnuts in a dressing with preserved lemon and chile de arbol ($9). Padrecito offers a version ($11) with pickled baby carrots, corn nuts and  serrano-manchego dressing that thickly coats the leaves.

The salad was one of my favorite dishes at Palmers Tavern, where it’s distinguished by an anchovy lemon vinaigrette and enhanced with walnuts, brioche croutons and finely grated asiago cheese ($9.75). Still, my favorite comes from Trick Dog, where the salad is a linebacker’s portion of raw ribboned greens with avocado, a creamy dressing made with slow-cooked egg yolks, pepitos and a thick dusting of Parmesan cheese ($9).

A brewery in Central Massachusetts is launching a brand new beer that should be arriving in stores this week--and this is not just any kind of brewery.

The Boston Globe is reporting that Saint Joseph's Abby in Spencer is getting ready to debut Spencer Trappist Ale, with its brewing facility being one of only nine Trappist breweries in the entire world, and the only one in the United States (or any country outside of Europe, for that matter). According to the article, Spencer Trappist Ale is made using Belgian yeast that has a connection to Trappist breweries from the middle of the 20th century. Dan Kenary of Harpoon helped advise the monks early on in the process, while one monk brewed with the folks behind Pretty Things Beer & Ale Project and two others went to Belgium to help gain knowledge in developing the recipe for the beer.

[January 20 update: Based on a number of Twitter posts from a variety of beer and liquor stores, Spencer Trappist Ale is now available. (Call ahead, as it looks like at least some shops have limited quantities.)]

The Globe article mentions that the monks plan to brew 4,000 barrels of ale--or the equivalent of 1.3 million 11.2-ounce bottles--at the facility in 2014, with production being upped to 10,000 barrels in five years. (The brewery has the capacity to put out up to 40,000 barrels per year.)

To learn more about Spencer Trappist Ale and the brewery, please go to the link below:

http://spencerbrewery.com/

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absinthemakesyouawhore:

The Rose of Versailles, episode 19: “Farewell, My Sister!”

Japanese beverage giant Suntory is acquiring Beam, which makes Jim Beam and Maker’s Mark bourbons, among other spirits, for $16 billion. The two companies control nearly 10% of the global whiskey market, according to International Wine and Spirit Research. Combined, they will obviously be going after a larger share.

A quick gander at global whiskey consumption helps show where the promise lies. India is far and away the world’s biggest guzzler, owing in part to its large population. Roughly half of the world’s whiskey is drunk by the sub-continent, according to Euromonitor. Most of it is made by UB India, the world’s largest whiskey company by volume.

But when those numbers are broken down per capita, India falls well outside of the picture. France, Uruguay, and the United States soar to the top.

Beam, based in Deerfield, Illinois, is responsible for over 40% of US  bourbon sales by volume, and bourbon accounts for roughly half of the overall US whiskey market. Outside the country, Germany, Australia, and the UK are big consumers of US whiskey.

Peter Mayhew, who played Chewbacca in the original Star Wars, took to Twitter Thursday night and unleashed a veritable trove of annotated behind-the-scenes photos from the original trilogy. Some of these shots you'll no doubt recognize, but many of them were new to us – like this ridiculously adorable photo of 11-year-old Warwick Davis!

Read more...

midcenturymodernfreak:

1939 Electro Chef Stove & Oven - Via

Symbiosis design fuel. 

Some telling signs, in some quarters, at least.

by Jeva Lange

"I woke up one morning recently to discover I was a seventy-year-old man…."
—David Cronenberg's intro to a new translation of The Metamorphosis.

Be sure to leave this book around everywhere/wave it at people/flaunt it on the subway because A. this cover is amazing and B. everyone will think that you think you're really smart. And, if you get bored, you can read it! It’s good! Also, David Cronenberg!

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The post A Really Good Reason to Buy "The Metamorphosis" Other Than It Being "The Metamorphosis" appeared first on The Awl.

de L’Isle’s map of the Holy Land (1782)

Map “Palestine: The Holy Land” by Guillaume de L'Isle (Delisle) in 1782. Terra Sancta : Palestina. Date: 1782 Author: Guillaume de L'Isle Dwnld: Full Size (6.9mb) Print Availability: See our Prints Page for more details pff This map isn't part of any series, but we have other maps of the Middle East that you might want to check out. It's old favorite Guillaume Delisle, but not, this time, depicting the...

the BIG Map Blog - Interesting maps, historical maps, BIG maps.

houghtonlib:

Jeu d’armoiries des souverains & etats d’Europe, [ca. 1700]

SG 3102.106.1

Houghton Library, Harvard University

The cards and the descriptive book for this game for learning the royalty of Europe are preserved together in the original marbled-paper carrying case, below.

Bennett Haselton writes "Google created controversy by announcing that Google+ users will now be able to send email to Gmail users even without having those Gmail users' email addresses. I think this debate misses the point, because it's unlikely to create a deluge of unsolicited email to Gmail users, as long as Google can throttle outgoing messages from Google+ users and terminate abusive accounts. The real controversy should be over the fact that Google+ users can search a public database of the names of all Gmail users in the first place. And limiting the ability of Google+ users to write to those Gmail accounts, won't do anything to address that." Read below to see what Bennett has to say.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Corporate Japan’s relentless march into new territories is back.

Suntory Holdings, the 115-year-old, family-owned Japanese beverage distributor this morning struck a $16 billion deal to buy American whiskey maker, Beam Inc. Barring a rival bid from the likes of France’s Pernod Ricard or Diageo, the two biggest drinks makers, Suntory will now add brands like Jim Beam and Maker’s Mark bourbons, Canadian Club whiskey and Courvoisier cognac to a liquor cabinet that already includes a number of Japanese whiskies and Midori liqueur.

It’s the biggest deal of 2014 so far, and the biggest purchase of an overseas asset by a Japanese company since Softbank bought American wireless carrier Sprint for $22 billion last summer.

Indeed, the rationale behind Suntory’s purchase of Beam is arguably the same one that motivated Softbank to buy Sprint (and potentially soon bid for T-Mobile), and that has forced many other Japanese consumer companies—like brewer Kirin, which secured Australia’s Lion Nathan for $3.3 billion in 2009—to look abroad.

Essentially, Japan is the maturest of mature markets, with a population that is not just aging rapidly, but also shrinking. “Japanese corporate managers are aware of this and recognize that the pursuit of top-line revenue growth must take place outside of Japan,” a report from law firm Skadden said last year.

That being said, outbound Japanese mergers-and-acquisitions activity declined noticeably last year.

That set off some nervousness that the success of Abenomics—prime minister Shinzo Abe’s economic stimulus plan, which has driven down the value of the yen and is beginning to stoke domestic demand—would dissuade Japanese corporates from bingeing on overseas acquisitions. Thankfully, for M&A bankers at least, Suntory’s purchase of Beam suggests otherwise.

An anonymous reader writes "A team of researchers at Johns Hopkins has published results demonstrating that caffeine seems to boost long-term memory. In a double-blind study, participants were shown a series of images soon after taking either a caffeine pill or a placebo; 24 hours later they were tested on a similar, but not identical, series of images. Those who took the caffeine pill were more likely to correctly classify images as being different, identical, or similar to those seen the previous day; researchers refer to this as a 'pattern separation' test. The beneficial effect of caffeine on the long-term memory of honey bees was covered by Slashdot earlier."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Holy crap, Ronan Farrow is dead serious in his dislike for his estranged father Woody Allen.

Laziness, panic, narcissism, low self-esteem, ambition, deliberate self-sabotage: Why so many poets are plagiarizing… more»

It’s merger Monday with a kick.

animals-riding-animals:

capybara riding tortoise

animals-riding-animals:

bird riding capybara

animals-riding-animals:

capybara riding capybara

If you’d like to learn some simple programming skills to further your research process, you’ve come to the right place. The Programming Historian 2 (PH2) is a tutorial-based open access textbook designed to teach humanists practical computer programming skills that are immediately useful to real research needs.

The Victoria and Albert Museum says:

Viols were bowed instruments ranging from treble to bass, but by about 1780 they had been superceded by the violin and cello. However, this bass viol belonged to John Cawse (1779-1862), one of the earliest pioneers in the revival of Early Music. The body may have been made by Joachim Tielke (1641-1719), but the neck, fingerboard and tailpiece date from the mid 1720s. Cawse lent his instrument to be played in the Concert of Ancient Music at Windsor Castle, an event organized by Prince Albert (1819-1861) in 1845 and perhaps the first of its kind. Despite what was then a highly unusual enthusiasm, Prince Albert felt compelled to make economies in the Royal Household and abolish the obsolete post of Royal Lutenist at about this time.

Okay, so this happened! The producers of Girls were doing a Q&A panel for the Television Critics Association, when an unidentified male reporter stood up and unfortunately asked this question. (From EW and Today.)

"I don’t get the purpose of all the nudity on the show — by [Dunham] in particularly. I feel like I’m walking into a trap where you go, ‘Nobody complains about all the nudity on Game of Thrones,’ but I get why they do it. They do it to be salacious and titillate people. And your character is often nude at random times for no reason."

Exec producer Judd Apatow's response:

“That was a very clumsily stated question that’s offensive on it’s face, and you should read it and discuss it with other people how you did that,” Apatow said, speaking to the reporter who asked the question. “It’s very offensive.”

Creator Lena Dunham's response:

“[The nudity is] a realistic expression of what it’s like to be alive. But I totally get it. If you’re not into me, that’s your problem and you’re going to have to work that out with professionals.”

Apatow continues:

"Do you have a girlfriend?" executive producer Judd Apatow asked the reporter, who responded that he did.

"Does she like you? " Apatow replied. "Let’s see how she likes you when you quote that with your question, just write the whole question as you stated it. Then tell me how it goes tonight."

Other questions were asked, but later EP Jenni Konner interrupted her own response to circle back around to the offending reporter:

“I literally was spacing out because I’m in such a rage spiral about that guy,” she said pointing to the question-asker. “I was just looking at him looking at him and going into this rage [over] this idea that you would talk to a woman like that and accuse a woman of showing her body too much. The idea it just makes me sort of sick.”

So far the reporter is unidentified... but I sincerely doubt the judge and jury of the internet will allow that to be the case for long.

UPDATE: The reporter identifies himself and responds... poorly.

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