
April 24, 2013 4:01pm GMT | Herd Groyne Lighthouse | River Tyne, South Shields, England

April 24, 2013 4:01pm GMT | Herd Groyne Lighthouse | River Tyne, South Shields, England
Mid-April means taxes (did you remember?!), but it also means the release of the previous year’s beer sales figures, helpfully compiled by the Brewers Association. We already know that craft breweries continued to grow in 2012, accounting for 6.5% of total beer sales (up from 5.7%), but it’s always interesting to see who’s really moving product on a large scale. If you compare the numbers below with those from 2011, there wasn’t a huge amount of movement, except for Lagunitas, which moved up to sixth place. Brooklyn Brewery also hopped two places up to 11 after expanding its Williamsburg facility.
Did you realize all of the breweries below were so big?
Top 50 U.S. Craft Brewing Companies
(Based on 2012 beer sales volume)
| Rank | Brewing Company | City | State |
| 1 | Boston Beer Co. | Boston | MA |
| 2 | Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. | Chico | CA |
| 3 | New Belgium Brewing Co. | Fort Collins | CO |
| 4 | The Gambrinus Co. | San Antonio | TX |
| 5 | Deschutes Brewery | Bend | OR |
| 6 | Lagunitas Brewing Co. | Petaluma | CA |
| 7 | Bell’s Brewery, Inc. | Galesburg | MI |
| 8 | Matt Brewing Co. | Utica | NY |
| 9 | Harpoon Brewery | Boston | MA |
| 10 | Stone Brewing Co. | Escondido | CA |
| 11 | Brooklyn Brewery | Brooklyn | NY |
| 12 | Boulevard Brewing Co. | Kansas City | MO |
| 13 | Dogfish Head Craft Brewery | Milton | DE |
| 14 | Abita Brewing Co. | Abita Springs | LA |
| 15 | Shipyard Brewing Co. | Portland | ME |
| 16 | Alaskan Brewing Co. | Juneau | AK |
| 17 | New Glarus Brewing Co. | New Glarus | WI |
| 18 | Long Trail Brewing Co. | Bridgewater Corners | VT |
| 19 | Great Lakes Brewing Co. | Cleveland | OH |
| 20 | Firestone Walker Brewing Co. | Paso Robles | CA |
| 21 | Anchor Brewing Co. | San Francisco | CA |
| 22 | Rogue Ales | Newport | OR |
| 23 | Summit Brewing Co. | St. Paul | MN |
| t. 24 | Full Sail Brewing Co. | Hood River | OR |
| t. 24 | SweetWater Brewing Co. | Atlanta | GA |
| 26 | Victory Brewing Co. | Downingtown | PA |
| 27 | Oskar Blues Brewery | Longmont | CO |
| 28 | Cold Spring Brewing Co./ Third Street Brewhouse |
Cold Spring | MN |
| 29 | Flying Dog Brewery | Frederick | MD |
| 30 | Founders Brewing Co. | Grand Rapids | MI |
| 31 | Ninkasi Brewing Co. | Eugene | OR |
| 32 | CraftWorks Restaurants & Breweries, Inc. | Chattanooga & Louisville | TN/CO |
| 33 | Odell Brewing Co. | Fort Collins | CO |
| 34 | Bear Republic Brewing Co. | Cloverdale | CA |
| 35 | Stevens Point Brewery | Stevens Point | WI |
| 36 | Blue Point Brewing Co. | Patchogue | NY |
| 37 | Southern Tier Brewing Co. | Lakewood | NY |
| 38 | Lost Coast Brewery and Cafe | Eureka | CA |
| 39 | Karl Strauss Brewing Co. | San Diego | CA |
| 40 | BJ’s Chicago Pizza & Brewery, Inc. | Huntington Beach | CA |
| 41 | Breckenridge Brewery | Denver | CO |
| 42 | North Coast Brewing Co. | Fort Bragg | CA |
| 43 | Left Hand Brewing Co. | Longmont | CO |
| 44 | St. Louis Brewery, Inc./ Schlafly Beers |
St. Louis | MO |
| 45 | Saint Arnold Brewing Co. | Houston | TX |
| 46 | Ballast Point Brewing Co. | San Diego | CA |
| 47 | Big Sky Brewing Co. | Missoula | MT |
| 48 | Allagash Brewing Co. | Portland | ME |
| 49 | Uinta Brewing Co. | Salt Lake City | UT |
| 50 | Tröegs Brewing Co. | Hershey | PA |
Top 50 Overall U.S. Brewing Companies
(Based on 2012 beer sales volume)
| Rank | Brewing Company | City | State |
| 1 | Anheuser-Busch Inc. (a) | St. Louis | MO |
| 2 | MillerCoors (b) | Chicago | IL |
| 3 | Pabst Brewing Co. (c) | Woodbridge | IL |
| 4 | D. G. Yuengling and Son Inc. | Pottsville | PA |
| 5 | Boston Beer Co. (d) | Boston | MA |
| 6 | North American Breweries (e) | Rochester | NY |
| 7 | Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. | Chico | CA |
| 8 | New Belgium Brewing Co. | Fort Collins | CO |
| 9 | Craft Brew Alliance, Inc. (f) | Portland | OR |
| 10 | The Gambrinus Co. (g) | San Antonio | TX |
| 11 | Minhas Craft Brewery (h) | Monroe | WI |
| 12 | Deschutes Brewery | Bend | OR |
| 13 | Lagunitas Brewing Co. | Petaluma | CA |
| 14 | Bell’s Brewery, Inc. | Galesburg | MI |
| 15 | Matt Brewing Co. (i) | Utica | NY |
| 16 | Harpoon Brewery | Boston | MA |
| 17 | Stone Brewing Co. | Escondido | CA |
| 18 | Brooklyn Brewery | Brooklyn | NY |
| 19 | Boulevard Brewing Co. | Kansas City | MO |
| 20 | Dogfish Head Craft Brewery | Milton | DE |
| 21 | Abita Brewing Co. | Abita Springs | LA |
| 22 | World Brews/Winery Exchange (j) | Novato | CA |
| 23 | Shipyard Brewing Co. (k) | Portland | ME |
| 24 | Alaskan Brewing Co. | Juneau | AK |
| 25 | August Schell Brewing Co. (l) | New Ulm | MN |
| 26 | New Glarus Brewing Co. | New Glarus | WI |
| 27 | Long Trail Brewing Co. (m) | Bridgewater Corners | VT |
| 28 | Great Lakes Brewing Co. | Cleveland | OH |
| 29 | Firestone Walker Brewing Co. | Paso Robles | CA |
| 30 | Anchor Brewing Co. | San Francisco | CA |
| 31 | Rogue Ales | Newport | OR |
| 32 | Summit Brewing Co. | St. Paul | MN |
| t. 33 | Full Sail Brewing Co. | Hood River | OR |
| t. 33 | SweetWater Brewing Co. | Atlanta | GA |
| 35 | Victory Brewing Co. | Downingtown | PA |
| 36 | Oskar Blues Brewery | Longmont | CO |
| 37 | Pittsburgh Brewing Co. (n) | Pittsburgh | PA |
| 38 | Mendocino Brewing Co. (o) | Ukiah | CA |
| 39 | Cold Spring Brewing Co./ Third Street Brewhouse (p) |
Cold Spring | MN |
| 40 | Flying Dog Brewery | Fredrick | MD |
| 41 | Founders Brewing Co. | Grand Rapids | MI |
| 42 | Ninkasi Brewing Co. | Eugene | OR |
| 43 | CraftWorks Breweries & Restaurants, Inc. (q) | Chattanooga & Louisville | TN/CO |
| 44 | Odell Brewing Co. | Fort Collins | CO |
| 45 | Bear Republic Brewing Co. | Cloverdale | CA |
| 46 | Stevens Point Brewery (r) | Stevens Point | WI |
| 47 | Blue Point Brewing Co. | Patchogue | NY |
| 48 | Southern Tier Brewing Co. | Lakewood | NY |
| 49 | Lost Coast Brewery and Cafe | Eureka | CA |
| 50 | Karl Strauss Brewing Co. | San Diego | CA |
[via Brewer Association]
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Russian Sledges"Cordero and Tejeda aren't English speakers, so nobody interviewed them, so nobody knows they were there"—firehose
“Ramsey arrived after she was outside with the girl,” Cordero said. “But the truth who arrived there, who crossed the street, who came and broke the door, it was me.” Wintel Tejeda, who lives across the street from the suspect’s house, said others helped and when Berry came out, they gave her a phone. “She was able to call police from my house,” Tejeda said in Spanish. Now with Ramsey’s interview making headlines, both men said they’re not jealous. “I did what had to be done. I helped her,” Cordero said. “They have their daughter, daughters are safe over there.”
For his 2012 kinetic sculpture “The Music Box,” artist Dave Cole converted a 22,000 pound soil compactor machine into a massive music box that plays the “Star Spangled Banner.” Though Cole stripped most of the weight out of the compactor to make the sculpture more manageable, it still weighs in at 2,000 pounds. The sculpture was commissioned by the Cleveland Institute of Art.
photos by Carly Gaebe
via designboom
Russian Sledgesmeanwhile, in Portland
Remember our happy mutant comrade John Brennan, who removed his clothes at the Portland Airport during a TSA screening? He was acquitted of a ridiculous indecent exposure charge, and now he is appealing an equally stupid fine from the Transportation Security Administration for “interfering with the screening process.” This might sound silly, but it's serious business. As Brennan points out in his press release below, "This is the first time the TSA has followed through on assessing civil penalties for 'interference with screening" purely for nonviolent, non-obstructive protected expressive conduct.'"
I'm grateful to Brennan for being a civil liberties champion.
John Brennan’s TSA Hearing for Nude Protest on May 14, 2013
May 09, 2013
Portland, OR - John Brennan, the man who protested TSA at Portland International Airport in 2012 by removing his clothes, has a TSA hearing at 9AM on May 14, 2013, in Portland, Oregon. Mr. Brennan is appealing a fine from the Transportation Security Administration for “interfering with the screening process.” Under docket # 12-TSA-0092, Administrative Law Judge George J. Jordan will preside at U.S. Bankruptcy Court 1001 SW 5th Avenue, Suite 700 Portland, OR 97204 Room: 9th Floor, Courtroom #2. Robert Callahan of the Northwest Law Center represents Mr. Brennan.
Mr. Brennan is charged with an alleged civil violation of Title 49 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) § Part 1540, Section 109, which states, “No person may interfere with, assault, or intimidate screening personnel in the performance of their screening duties under this subchapter.” The first step in appealing this fine is an administrative hearing. Mr. Brennan was acquitted of the criminal charges of indecent exposure in 2012.
Mr. Brennan’s TSA hearing is of note for several reasons: This is the first time the TSA has followed through on assessing civil penalties for "interference with screening" purely for nonviolent, non-obstructive protected expressive conduct.
Mr. Brennan’s hearing will have an administrative record resulting from a public hearing, the first of its kind in the United States with TSA legal proceedings according to Freedom To Travel USA, http://fttusa.org/.
The Administrative Law Judge has no authority to consider the Constitutionality of TSA regulations or orders.
While the criminal charge of indecent exposure, initiated by the State of Oregon, were resolved within months of Mr. Brennan’s protest, the civil charges, initiated by TSA, are on-going. TSA provided verbal notification of an investigation at the time of Mr. Brennan’s arrest, April 17, 2012, and written notification on April 26, 2012. On August 30, 2012, Mr. Brennan was notified in writing that TSA proposed to assess a civil penalty. Mr. Brennan’s hearing on May 14, 2013, comes more than a year after his protest.
If Mr. Brennan loses at this hearing, his next action is an administrative appeal to the head of the TSA. If he loses the administrative appeal, Mr. Brennan will have 60 days from the administrative appeal decision to file a "Petition for Review" of the TSA decision by the Circuit Court of Appeals.
On April 17, 2012, TSA referred the Port of Portland Police Department (POPPD) to John Brennan, who was going through TSA screening and chose to engage in a political protest of the TSA after allegedly testing positive for nitrates, an explosive. In, what he says was “effective and appropriate” protest (and a way to show TSA that he was not carrying explosives), Mr. Brennan removed all his clothes. POPPD arrested Mr. Brennan for the criminal charges of indecent exposure and disorderly conduct. Disorderly conduct charges were immediately dropped, and Mr. Brennan was acquitted of the indecent exposure charges on July 18, 2012. The trial judge concluded, “…it is the speech itself that the State is attempting to punish and that it cannot do, so I am finding Mr. Brennan not guilty.”
Follow John Brennan on Twitter

If you need to wrap a pigeon for aircraft-drop, this will help. From the surprisingly useful Pigeon Service Manual, Air Ministry, 1919 (featuring "Some meritorious performaces," "Writing the message," and more).
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Russian Sledges"J.J. [Abrams] is keen on having as much stuff around you physically as is possible, and using CG as little as possible," said John Cho, in a roundtable interview with Pegg and some other reporters yesterday. "It makes it easier for an actor, certainly, to look up and see things, instead of green felt cloth."
Star Trek Into Darkness uses physical sets instead of greenscreen, as much as possible — they even filmed at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, for a key sequence aboard the Enterprise. And when we talked to Simon Pegg and John Cho yesterday, they told us some of their Enterprise scenes were so demanding, Pegg actually threw up.

President Obama came into office 2009 with a promise to make his administration the most "open" in history in terms of revealing information to the public about the inner-workings of government, a claim that has been challenged vociferously. But to further advance his open government ambitions, the President today issued an executive order requiring all major federal agencies under the executive branch to make their data "easy to find, accessible, and usable," with an important caveat: " wherever possible and legally permissible." The White House also released a new set of open source software tools on Github that federal agencies can use to get more of their data out onto the web in software developer and user-friendly formats,...

Harrison Ford doesn’t frown and he doesn’t smile. He simply expresses himself through one emotion known as FORDING -GM
Russian SledgesI knew

There's plenty of silliness sitting in the margins of illuminated manuscripts, and the Tumblr The Discarded Image collects some of the goofiest of the goofy: cats licking their junk, murderous bunny rabbits, prankster monkeys, amorous animals, and tongue-wagging jokesters. But perhaps the highlight of blog is its extensive collection of butts, and the poop and fart humor that goes with it. NSFWish images below.
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GUN-CONTROL legislation fell short last month in a close Senate vote, but some spy flickers of hope in the "world's greatest deliberative body". However, the sense of urgency that followed the Newtown massacre has definitely faded, and new studies from the Department of Justice and the Pew Research Center showing an astonishing drop in gun violence over the past two decades seem to call into question the need for new, stricter regulations. Americans have been improving control over their many, many guns without it.
Compared with 1993, the peak of U.S. gun homicides, the firearm homicide rate was 49% lower in 2010, and there were fewer deaths, even though the nation’s population grew. The victimization rate for other violent crimes with a firearm—assaults, robberies and sex crimes—was 75% lower in 2011 than in 1993. Violent non-fatal crime victimization overall (with or without a firearm) also is down markedly (72%) over two decades.

The Department of Justice recently reported similar stats. Gun-rights advocates are crowing. Charles C.W. Cooke of National Review says that the Pew and DOJ reports make "embarrassing reading for those who spend their time trying to make it appear as if America is in the middle of a gun-crime wave". Mr Cooke adds: "And those screaming '. . .but Sandy Hook!' will no doubt be pleased to know that school shootings, too, are down 33 percent since 1993".
This is all most excellent news, though I would resist the impulse to think that these welcome trends will somehow vitiate the felt need for further gun control.
The decline in gun violence is consistent with a truly amazing general decline of violence, a subject recently explored in Steven Pinker's fascinating book, "The Better Angels of our Nature". This trend defies easy explanation. Mr Pinker speculates that we have become more pacific through the gradual cultural refinement of rational capacities that have guided us away from ancient strategies of violence. One of my own pet hypotheses is that human life becomes literally more valuable to the living as we become wealthier and longer-lived. Wealthier lives have, other things equal, a better experiential texture. And as life expectancy increases, early death steals more years. So we become less likely to feel that life is disposable or cheap, and more likely to see intolerably profound loss in premature death.
Insofar as guns are seen as dangerous tools for killing, it makes sense that they would become increasingly odious to increasingly peaceful sensibilities. (And insofar as guns are seen as necessary tools of public safety and self-defence, gun control itself may seem increasingly dangerous. One's side in this debate perhaps depends more than anything on a judgment about the greater source of peril.) New demand for gun control may reflect the same shift in sensibility that has already made us less likely to use guns for violent ends. When the felt value of life increases, a small death toll can add up to a large sense of loss, and a large death toll can add up to an incomprehensible enormity. How many good hours of life were robbed from the children at Sandy Hook Elementary? Perhaps it's callous to the past to imagine that each individual life seems more valuable to us today than it did to our forebears a century ago. Still, I suspect it does. In which case, an almost-50% decrease in gun homicide may not represent quite as much progress as it at first appears. Would the 1993 rate of gun violence seem twice as intolerable today? Who knows? What I do know is that our sense of peril, our sense of what's at risk, does not track crime statistics in any simple way.
The twist in the Pew study is that Americans appear quite ignorant of these happy developments. Indeed, most Americans believe falsely that gun violence has increased. "Despite the attention to gun violence in recent months", the authors of the Pew study write, "most Americans are unaware that gun crime is markedly lower than it was two decades ago." This has some conservatives complaining of liberal "media bias", and there's probably some of that, though selection bias of the "if it bleeds, it leads" variety, and the centrality of gun violence to pop entertainments, probably has more to do with it. I'd add that the psycho-social dynamic I describe—our growing estimate of life's preciousness—might have something to do with it, too. Perhaps the salience of gun crime has increased for the same reason the danger of allowing children to walk to school alone, or to ride bicycles without shoes or helmets, has also increased in salience. Parents don't love their children any more then they used to, but they feel, probably correctly, that children now have more to lose.
In any case, general ignorance of the fall in gun violence ought to cut both ways. Once we understand how much safer we have really become, the felt need to own a gun in order to defend against guns ought to recede. Right?
(Photo credit: AFP)

EARLIER this year, when a lawsuit accused Anheuser-Busch of selling watered-down beer, it caused only a minor buzz. America’s biggest breweries have long produced flavourless tipples. And anyway, those seeking a more robust brew have plenty of options. Today’s beer market increasingly resembles that of the pre-Prohibition era, when smaller, regional breweries dotted the map. Such is the demand for good-tasting beer that, on average, more than one new brewery opened every day last year.
Small and independent breweries have thrived during the recession and its aftermath, taking market share away from traditional brands like Budweiser and Miller Lite. According to Beer Marketer’s Insights, a trade publication, craft beer has grown over 13% by volume in each of the past three years. America’s two biggest brewers, Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors, still account for around three-quarters of the domestic market, to craft’s 6.7%. But even they have noticed the change in consumer tastes. Whereas sales of their big brands have dropped off, gains have been made by offerings derisively called “crafty beer”, which look and taste like craft brews.
This has led to some debate over what constitutes a craft beer and an intra-industry squabble over taxes. The Brewers Association promotes the interests of “small, independent, and traditional” brewers that produce up to 6m barrels of beer a year. The largest craft brewer under this definition is the Boston Beer Company, maker of Samuel Adams, which produced over 2m barrels last year. That number also happens to be the cut-off for favourable treatment by the government, which gives small brewers a break on the federal excise tax.
As the craft-beer industry grows, the Brewers Association thinks more of its members will join Boston Beer on the wrong side of the tax code. So it is pushing Congress to pass a bill that would raise the excise-tax bar to 6m barrels a year. In March hundreds of small-brewery owners took their case to Congress. But the Beer Institute, which represents big and small brewers alike, unsurprisingly favours a different bill that would cut the excise tax for the whole industry.
Opponents of slashing the excise tax, which has not been adjusted since 1991, note that inflation has already reduced its potency. Moreover, some see higher alcohol taxes as a way to increase revenues. But others are sympathetic to the Beer Institute’s claim that taxes have become the most expensive ingredient of beer. Hence, perhaps, the bitter taste of some brews.
Russian SledgesI could never get there
A reader draws the thread to a dissenting close:
It seems to me that Tamerlan is the Lee Harvey Oswald of our time. Was Oswald motivated by communism? Maybe. But more likely he was motivated by a sense of restlessness, a feeling that he was a
great man who couldn’t quite get his shit together. Both he and Tamerlan were frustrated by professional failure. Both went overseas looking for something. Both had strikingly similar domestic situations. Is it a coincidence that Tamerlan, Oswald, Czolgosz and Booth — and even Timothy McVeigh — were all about the same age?
Never mind the conspiracy theories, Oswald was a lone wolf. And so was Tamerlan (plus his kid brother). Had he been a secret agent, an al Qaeda plant and part of a larger terror network like the 9/11 terrorists, that would be something. But the actions of men like this don’t really deserve political or ideological scrutiny. Their actions are just sad, all-too-familiar human tragedies.
Is radical Islam more violent than communism or anarchism or white racism? Hardly. For guys like Tamerlan, ideology is just something to wear in a cold world.
So is theology.
(Photo: Getty Images.)

Magnificent, surreal stages rise from the depths of Austria’s Lake Constance, rotating, glowing, rising and falling in time with the plots of famed operas, plays and musicals. Unparalleled in their scale and complexity, these stages are built every two years for the Bregenz Opera Festival, which began in 1946. With each season that passes, the sets get even more impressive. Here are 10 standouts.



Looking like the remains of some fallen civilization, a statue emerges from the lake, its head draped. Then the fabric begins to fall away, revealing a set of stairs that lead right up to the figure’s eye. This interactive set for Andre Chenier, an opera set during the French Revolution, grows even more amazing as the night goes on: the neck of the statue is severed, the head falling back to reveal an additional set.


A massive skeleton looms over an open book as the scene for A Masked Ball, an opera by Guiseppe Verde. One of the Bregenz Festival’s most iconic sets, this one from 1999 is fairly simple compared to the amazingly complex ones seen in more recent years.


Puccini’s Tosca played out against this unforgettable backdrop, which featured a giant eye with an iris that actually rotates to reveal a hidden room. Scenes for the James Bond movie Quantum of Solace were filmed in the front of the building and in the audience while this stage was still active, in 2008.
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I’ve spent most of this week screaming about Mary Frith (alias Moll Cut-Purse; 1584-1659), the cross-dressing thief, fence, and pimp who achieved such widespread fame that in 1611, Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton made her the subject of their city comedy, The…
The Edward Green Mercer is an elegant monk strap the kind of shoe you want to pair with a sharp grey or blue suit. The angled strap and clean forefoot creates an understated refinement that is classic Edward Green.
82 Last, Dark Oak Antique, Brass Buckles, Single Leather Soles
Russian Sledgesyessssss



3 Films by Carl Theodor Dreyer
The Passion of Joan of Arc, Ordet, Vampyr
photo via Princess Monster Truck
Princess Monster Truck is a Persian cat with an unusually fierce underbite found by New York City-based artists Joseph Bryce and Tracy Timmins. According to Buzzfeed, they found Monster while walking home from dinner one night and took her in because she was thin, hungry, and “she didn’t look like a survivor.” After taking her to a veterinarian, Joseph and Tracy learned that Monster’s extreme underbite was probably a birth defect rather than an injury or illness. You can see more photos of the glorious Princess Monster Truck on Instagram.
photo via Tracy Timmins
photo via Tracy Timmins
photo via Princess Monster Truck
photo via Princess Monster Truck
photo via Princess Monster Truck
via Buzzfeed
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