Russian Sledges

What's in a cocktail name? There are straightforward drinks that tell you exactly what you'll be sipping—"cucumber martini" leaves little to the imagination. But then there are the cocktails with more conversation-worthy titles. At Lantern's Keep, who is the Wildest Redhead? And what is it that Any Major Dude Will Tell You at Vinegar Hill House? We decided to find out what inspired some of the cocktails currently being shaken and stirred around NYC. Click through the above slide show for the stories and recipes, told to us by the bartenders who created the drinks.

Cousin Scotty Fails His Driving Test

Created by: Brian Bartels at Chez Sardine "I have a cousin named Scotty. He's two years older than me. I was in the same grade as Paul, his little brother. We were smartasses. Scotty was very excited the day he went to take his driver's test to achieve a legitimate Wisconsin Driver's License. I'll never forget when he came back home. It was something I have come to understand as "schadenfreude." Scotty came back and the first thing we saw was his keys flying across the kitchen and crashing into the wall. He stormed up the upstairs steps with his fists clenched and all Paul and I wanted to do was tease him for failing. This is what our families did best. If I'm not mistaken, it took Scotty three attempts to get his driver's license. My brother Tim, too. And my niece. So I guess it runs in our family." Recipe: Johnny Drum Bourbon Carpano Antica Vermouth House Sake-Agave Syrup Angostura Bitters Stirred in a mixing glass, then strained over ice into an old-fashioned glass; garnish with wide orange peel.

I Hear Banjos (Encore)

Created by: Jason Mendenhall at The Wayland "I Hear Banjo's (Encore) is the third iteration of one of the original—and most popular—cocktails served at The Wayland. Deliverance is a great movie from the '70s about white-water rafting in the backwoods, and there's a guy picking a banjo throughout the movie. When I started to create the drink, the eerie sound of that banjo popped into my head. I Hear Banjos (Encore) has apple pie moonshine, rye, apple pie bitters, and cinnamon bark and applewood smoke—it tastes like a smoked apple pie and is reminiscent of being at a campfire in the woods." Recipe: 1-1/4oz apple pie moonshine (unaged corn whiskey cut with apple juice and infused with cinnamon) 1-1/4oz Old Overholt Rye 2 dashes spiced apple bitters Garnished with cinnamon bark and applewood smoke capped over the drink.

Wildest Redhead

Created by: Meaghan Dorman at Lantern's Keep "I came across a drink called a Wild Redhead in Stan Jones' Barguidewhile perusing for drink inspirations. As a redhead, I was totally disappointed by the brilliant name and boring mix (equal parts lemon juice and Cherry Heering). A few weeks later when I was working on making an original Scotch cocktail for the opening list at Lantern's Keep I revisited the Wild Redhead and decided to update it to the Wildest Redhead—more complex and a whole lot boozier. This drink is available at both Lantern's Keep and Raines Law Room." Recipe: 1.5oz blended Scotch .75oz fresh lemon juice .5oz honey syrup (3:1 honey to hot water) .25oz all-spice dram .25oz Cherry Heering Add first 4 ingredients together in cocktail shaker and shake with ice. Pour over one big rock (preferably) in a double old-fashioned glass. Drizzle Cherry Heering over ice (creates a red fade effect).

The John Lee Hooker

Created by: Greg Seider at Summit Bar "Walking to work I was listening to the song ["One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer" by John Lee Hooker]. And I thought, How can I possibly combine all those ingredients in the same cocktail and make it taste damn good? So you must the beer glass with Peat Monster scotch. Mix Buffalo Trace bourbon, cinnamon agave, fresh lemon juice, sarsaparilla bitters. Shake it up. Strain it over Ice and top with [Lagunitas] Hop Stoopid Double IPA beer. Boom... Boom Boom. Boom." Recipe: 2oz buffalo trace 1oz Vietnamese cinnamon agave .5oz lemon juice 2 dashes sarsaparilla bitters 1 dash orange bitters Shake all ingredients in shaker. Strain into Scotch misted pilsner glass over ice. Top with IPA. Orange twist.

Laurel & Hardy

Created by: Tristan Willey, Bar Manager and Head Bartender at Booker and Dax “When creating this recipe, which relies heavily on very precise measurements to keep it balanced, we needed a way to describe the unique pours. When we added the Fernet Branca, we needed just a hair more than a quarter ounce so we called the measurement a 'fat' quarter. When measuring out the Luxardo Maraschino, we needed a hair under a half ounce so we called it a ‘skinny’ half. Since the measurements were funny and referenced skinny and fat as a duo, we named the drink the Laurel & Hardy after the comedic duo.” Recipe: 8 drops of Bittermens Xocolatl Mole Bitters 2 barspoons of Benedictine Fat 1/4oz Fernet Branca Skinny 1/2oz Luxardo Maraschino 3/4oz Louis Royer Cognac 1.25oz Rittenhouse Rye Whiskey Stir, strain, and serve in a coupe, no garnish.

Any Major Dude Will Tell You

Created by: Garret Smith at Vinegar Hill House "The name comes from a Steely Dan song about keeping faith and losing worry in the midst of a hard time, and we hope this cocktail might help someone toward that light just like the song, which kind of tells it all." Recipe: 2 and 1/4oz Laird's Bonded Applejack 2/3oz lemon juice 1/2oz honey syrup 1/4oz Saint Elizabeth's Allspice Dram

Behind God's Back

Created by: Jason Littrell at Death & Company "'Behind God's Back' is a phrase that implies something either secret, or something that happens on the other side of the island." Recipe: .25oz orgeat .25oz cinnamon syrup .25oz cane syrup .5oz pineapple juice .75oz lime juice 2oz Chairman's Reserve St. Lucian Rum. Swizzle ingredients in crushed ice, top with Angostura and Peychaud's bitters, and garnish with fresh mint.

I'll Have Another

Created by: Caitlin Doonan, Manager at Má Pêche “This cocktail is inspired by a mint julep, the drink closely associated with the Kentucky Derby. The name of the drink is the name of the winning horse in 2012. It also works well as a cocktail name because the drink is light and refreshing, and it's very easy to ‘have another.'" Recipe: .5oz Cynar .75oz Demerara Syrup (it's simple syrup made with demerara sugar) 2oz Rittenhouse Rye Dash of Fee Brothers mint bitters 4-8 mint leaves Stir, strain, and serve on crushed ice in a double old-fashioned glass. Garnish with mint leaves.

Doctor Johann

Created by: Chad Walsh at The Dutch "I was working on a drink with Blanco Tequila, different orange liqueurs (we occasionally sub in Mandarine Napoleon or Royal Combier, but the Shrubb's spiciness is perfect), and a ton of Angostura, which is such a delicious and often misunderstood product. It was foamy at first, and then it was a long drink (over crushed ice and topped with soda), but it wasn't until this version that I felt like it was expressing the essence of Angostura in the way I had been hoping for all along. It's named after the guy who invented Angostura, who was the surgeon general of Simón de Bolívar's army. The cocktail has more Ango in it (8 dashes) than I've ever put in a drink." Recipe: 1oz Partida Blanco 1oz Rhum Clement Creole Shrub 1/2oz lime juice 8 dashes Angostura bitters 2 dashes Regan's Orange Bitters

In our previous coverage of the couple accused of manufacturing explosives in their West Village apartment, we referred to Aaron Greene as an undergrad student at Harvard University and a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, based on an initial report by five New York Post reporters. That information was also cited by the Associated Press, Reuters, and other news outlets carrying the story. But reached by telephone today, a spokeswoman from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government tells us, "Aaron Greene did not attend Harvard Kennedy School, or Harvard undergrad." [ more › ]

More about the popular online image of an airline passenger bound by tape during a flight to Kennedy International Airport.

Any New Orleans piano player worth his fingers owes a debt to Henry Roeland Byrd, aka Professor Longhair. The late musician's home is still standing on Terpsichore Street, but it's in serious disrepair.

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A single bluefin tuna sells for $1.7m in Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market. almost triple the record price set last year.

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.

Drugs and sexuality constitute the primary subject matter in Santo Domingo, but the collection’s larger function is to investigate the many altered states of the human mind. The collection therefore contains a substantial number of volumes on the occult, such as this work: The anatomy of the body of God, by occultist Charles Stansfield Jones (1886-1950), a member of Aleister Crowley’s order. Jones here writes under the name of Frater Achad, one of many titles and pseudonyms he adopted during his career. Several diagrams accompany this cabalistic text, including this colored frontispiece.

This edition”This first edition of The anatomy of the body of God consists of 22 copies, lettered Aleph to Tau, and 228 copies numbered 1 to 228″–Colophon. This copy is number 6.

Frater Achad. The anatomy of the body of God. Chicago: Collegium ad Spiritum Sanctum [i.e. Will Ransom], 1925. BF1999 .J55.

Thanks to rare book cataloger Ryan Wheeler for contributing this post.

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.

The two volumes featured today demonstrate the enduring appeal of the scatological. La crépitonomie, ou l’art des pets (1815) and L’art de péter: essai théori-physique et méthodique (1776) are two humorous works on flatulence: the former a book-length poem and the latter an essay. Though their authors are anonymized in the books themselves, we know them to have been written by Ducastel de Saint-Paul and Pierre-Thomas-Nicolas Hurtaut. Both volumes feature frontispieces that satirize the symbolic grandeur that might attend such illustrations in more serious works.

Ducastel de Saint-Paul. La crépitonomie.  A Paris: Chez L. G. Michaud, imprimeur du roi, MDCCCVX [1815]. FC8.D8558.815c.

Pierre-Thomas-Nicolas Hurtaut. L’art de péter. En Westphalie, [i.e. Paris]: Chez Florent-Q, rue Pet-en-Gueule, au Soufflet., MDCCLXXVI [1776]. FC7.H9477.776ab.

Thanks to rare book cataloger Ryan Wheeler for contributing this post.

Charles Simic

Here, briefly, is the story. In March, 1917, while walking on Broadway, Buster Keaton bumped into a friend from vaudeville who happened to know Fatty Arbuckle, the famous silent movie comedian and Chaplin’s rival. Asked if he had ever acted in motion pictures, Keaton said no, and was invited to drop by Arbuckle’s studio on 48th Street the following Monday. Keaton first declined, because Arbuckle had stolen one of his vaudeville routines in the past, but then changed his mind because his curiosity was piqued by the opportunity to see how movies are made and especially how the gags are filmed.

Francine Prose

Cell phones are officially banned from public schools in New York City, and students at low income schools, many of whom are poor enough to qualify for the free lunch program, pay a dollar a day to leave their phones in the privately owned trucks parked outside. Why, they ask, are the students in more prosperous neighborhoods unofficially allowed to ignore the ban, as long as they aren’t caught? And why are the poor kids in the eighty-eight New York schools that have been equipped with metal detectors forced to spend five dollars a week—an expense that, for some, means going without food?

Concrete is one of the world’s most popular building materials, with over 20 billion tons produced annually around the world. The production of concrete alone accounts for 5 to 10 percent of the world’s overall atmospheric CO2, so cutting down on its production could have major environmental benefits. Civil engineers at MIT have finally discovered what causes “creep,” the deformation of concrete that occurs over time. This discovery is the first step toward prolonging the life of concrete by slowing the rate at which creep occurs.

The MIT team discovered that creep is caused by tiny nano-scale rearrangements of particles. The discovery means that the engineers can use this new understanding of concrete creep to create incredibly long-lasting buildings and infrastructure objects. Until now, concrete structures have had to be pretty thick in order to remain stable over the years. Thin concrete succumbs to creep quickly, so lightweight concrete buildings have always been impossible.

In the future, concrete structures could be lightweight and thin while using far less material than current generations. And because they would be far stronger and longer-lasting than our current concrete structures, they will require fewer repairs and will last longer than any other concrete buildings. In theory, this nano approach to concrete engineering could result in concrete that lasts for thousands of years.

Keep Going - Check out this Great Related Dornob Article:

Curing Concrete: Engineered Bacteria Naturally Heals Cracks


DIY Concrete Light Bulb: Make Your Own Coat Hooks

“You are so pretty. God love you, holy mackerel.” – Just one of Joe Biden’s one-liners during the Senate swearing-in ceremony. Watch the collection.

Boston MBTA Green Lne Average Weekday Traffic (2010) by Barrett Lane

Wednesday’s post, Subterranean Veins of Europe, and its discussion of design choices distorting data reminded me of this map/graph sent to me by Barrett Lane last year. At first glance, this is a really neat and cleverly devised concept: the ridership numbers for each station on Boston’s Green Line are presented in the form of a stylised map of the lines, with vertical bars representing those numbers. It looks great, there’s some solid data behind the graphic, and the visual conceit is very appropriate.

However, there’s one major flaw that — for me — stops this graphic from being a total success. Barrett has used three different vertical scales for his graphs, which prevents rapid visual comparison between numbers (which one might say is the whole point of graphical presentation of data).

The same height represents 5,000 riders on the “B” and “C” branches, 4,000 riders on the “D” and “E” branches, and 20,000 on the main trunk line. The graphic would be far more effective if the bars for the trunk line stations towered above those of the branch lines, don’t you think?

(Source: Barrett Lane)

This Paramount Studio location map from 1927 shows potential shooting locations in Southern California including ones for “New England,” and the “Sherwood Forest.” It can be found in the book titled The American Film Industry by Tino Balio and is originally from a publication titled “The motion picture industry as a basis for bond financing.”

via Retronaut, Caroline McCarthy

Dark Igloo has rendered lace doilies featuring the logos for Twitter and RSS.

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

Back to the Future's newspaper may be a great plot device, but its editorial instincts are less sound. New York Magazine exposes the shoddy and inconsistent practices of the Hill Valley Telegraph, which will devote front page headlines to a local man's unremarkable gambling win but report on a Presidential veto without even bothering to mention the law in question. Even Marty McFly's time-traveling shenanigans — so helpful for other civic institutions — seem to only make its coverage worse.

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In a post entitled "How Almost Anyone Can Take You Off Facebook (And Lock You Out)," BuzzFeed editor Katie Notopoulos demonstrates that it only takes a minute to deactivate someone's Facebook account, assuming someone with the same name died recently. Dropping a recent (in this case, six-month-old) obituary URL and your friend's email address into a "Memorialization" form can register their account as deceased and disable them from being able to log in.

It took about a day before victim (and fellow BuzzFeed editor) John Herrman was unable to access Facebook, he told The Verge, which implies Facebook did attempt to verify and confirm the memorialization request. The company chose to ignore the fact that "the names aren't even spelled the...

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jaidefinichon:

el amor para batman

Philadelphia artist and teacher Andrew DeGraff illustrated a great series of maps that each represent a film from the original Star Wars trilogy: A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. They were created for his upcoming gallery show with artist Bennett Slater opening on Saturday, January 5th at Gallery 1988 in Los Angeles.

Each character is represented as a colored line, and follows their progress through the entire film. The alternating colored lines represent characters traveling together who have a special bond, sometimes for only a short time. I’m also doing all three of the first Indiana Jones movies.

images via /Film

via /Film, GeekTyrant, Nerd Approved

Alex Krasny demonstrates how to tie the incredibly fancy & quite unusual Eldredge necktie knot.

via Aaron Muszalski

Patricia Yeo was formerly the chef at OM.

The former Harvard Square (h)om(e) of Chicago-bound Patricia Yeo seems to have shuttered, even though her name's still all over the website. A poster on Chowhound reports that they're no longer on Open Table; a phone call by both the baffled Hound and Grub Street yielded no answer. Mysteriously, the restaurant is reportedly "a mess. All the downstairs barstools and couches are gone and a ladder propped up in the middle of the floor. Called out but no one answered." Bizarre!

Does this mean the end is also near for that other Yeo-affiliated venture, Moksa, as well? Anyone been there recently? Let us know! Hopefully the hungry Hound found a satisfying meal elsewhere. [CH, Earlier]

Read more posts by Kara Baskin

Filed Under: rumor mill, moksa, om, patricia yeo

This is according to Evan Saunders, the CEO of Saunders “Attract China,” a start-up that helps American restaurants and hotels "get noticed online" in China. PRI's The World reports: "Saunders said the word ‘legal,’ when associated with a restaurant, can be confusing for Chinese people. He said they market tested it and people in China thought legal meant 'maybe a government-associated company, that is involved in making sure people go to jail if they’re not serving the right things.'"

Don't worry, though: Saunders, who counts Legal as a client, is "trying to correct that by branding Legal Sea Foods in China as 'America’s Best Sea Food Destination.'" Uh, wonder what he thinks of all those new ads—you know, the ones with obituaries, Brokeback Mountain references, and Jesus fish?

Massachusetts Looks East to Lure Chinese Tourists [PRI]

Earlier: Has Legal Sea Foods Made a Grave Mistake?

Read more posts by Kara Baskin

Filed Under: lost in translation, legal sea foods, tourists

William Shatner so: „@cmdr_hadfield Are you tweeting from space?“

Und Commander Chris Hadfield, kanadischer Astronaut und grade auf der ISS, so: „Yes, Standard Orbit, Captain. And we’re detecting signs of life on the surface.“

[Photo: All Heart PR]

The restaurant at The Sinclair in Harvard Square will officially open this coming Monday, January 7. Until now, only ticket holders to shows at The Sinclair, which doubles as a music venue, had access to the space, but in just a matter of days, anyone can waltz in and order grilled artichoke salad, steak frites, or a jar of chicken liver puree. Consulting chef Michael Schlow of Via Matta, Tico and more previously told Eater that brunch may also be in the cards at some point. Though Schlow has been on board to get things started, chef Marcellus Coleman, formerly of New York's Aureole and Alias, will now take the helm.

· All coverage of The Sinclair on Eater [~EBOS~]

[Photo: Robert Gillis]

For the second year in a row, Boston has been named the number one drunkest city in the U.S. by The Daily Beast, which compiled data from a market research firm and from the Centers for Disease Control. After Boston garnered the same distinction last year, Mayor Menino boldly came to the city's defense, saying "Who is The Daily Beast? What is their credibility? I am the beast of the city and what I say goes. We are not the drunkest city in America." Once again, Boston beats out legendary party cities like Las Vegas and New Orleans and legendary non-party cities like Buffalo and Fargo, which also make the list, presumably for different reasons.

So what it is about Boston that gives us this honor? The disproportionate number of all those crazy college kids? Red Sox consolation? Freezing temperatures? St. Patrick's Day? That there's so much good stuff to tip back?

Why do you think Boston is so darn drunk? Leave your thoughts via the comments.

· 25 Drunkest cities 2012 [The Daily Beast via BBJ]
· Mayor Menino to Boston: we are not drunk [~EBOS~]
· Boston's 15 most iconic drinks [~EBOS~]

One thing it is easy to get in Jodhpur is jodhpurs. There is a service in the Umaid Bahwan Palace, where we stayed. The nature of jodhpurs - their skin-tight bottom half and interconnection of three panels around the knee - means they should be made bespoke. Readymade versions use a lot of lycra.

We visited the workshop where the Palace's orders are sent. It consists of a cutter, six men on sewing machines and five women on the floor, finishing embroidery and snipping off loose threads. Some jodhpurs are still made entirely by hand, but the cost and time means that most people go for machine stitching: that costs Rs3000 ($63) and takes two days; hand sewing costs Rs5000 ($104) and takes a week.

Indian designer Raghavendra Rathore has done a lot of research into how jodhpurs were originally made. His work led to the creation of a pattern that he distributes freely to makers and heritage centres around India. "It's important that the panel on the inside of the knee, which rubs against the horse, is cut on the bias," he told me. "It is supposed to shrink with the sweat of the rider, curving the leg of the jodhpur. If it's not cut on the bias, the shrinkage is in the wrong direction."

Jodhpur-making is a cottage industry. The workshop sends out its sewing work to 16,475 women in the surrounding villages (though most of those are doing embroidery). A bus goes out each Monday and visits a selection of them, dropping off and picking up work. Most are visited at least once a month.

Women's jodhpurs have buttons on the calves to fasten them

Jodhpur is proud of its polo and clothing tradition. The local government has helped support the cottage-industry system with tax breaks, and in an interview the Majarajah, Gaj Singh II, told me of the history of jodhpurs and the bandhgala jacket, which was originally designed for polo players to wear after matches. (His Highness has his clothes tailor made in Jodhpur and has only ever bought off-the-rack from Europe. "I'm not much of a shopper," he said.)

Jodhpurs were given their name by American pilots who were based at the local air force base. They wore the breeches for playing polo and for general wear - though, unlike the locals, usually with braces. When the pilots were stationed elsewhere they tried to have similar things made, referring to them as 'jodhpurs', but with little luck.

"I know they had some made in Japan, for example, but the Japanese versions used a heavy drill cotton or cord," said Rathore. "The jodhpurs used a lightweight cotton, which was necessary because of the heat but also washable, which was good because the pilots had no laundry service."

I didn't have any jodhpurs made. I don't think I would ever wear them, and that's a fate my plus-fours already suffer from.

"Unlike the best long-form series, which build their fictional worlds over months or years, the best movies present relatively narrow segments of time in which the crucial qualities are compression, concision and intensity." The Wall Street Journal 01/04/12

The cinematic adaptation of the broadway play doesn't live up to the hype. By Paula Marantz Cohen

Hugh Pickens writes "Facing a $10 billion revenue shortfall for transportation financing, the Oregon Legislature is expected to consider a bill to require drivers with a vehicle getting at least 55 miles per gallon of gasoline to pay a per-mile tax after 2015 to offset the loss in tax revenue for fuel efficient cars at the gas pump, where the government has traditionally collected money to build and fix roads. Oregonians currently pay 30 cents per gallon, a tax that is automatically added at the pump, but as cars become more fuel efficient and alternative fuel sources are identified, state officials project gas tax revenue will decline. 'Everybody uses the road, and if some pay and some don't, then that's an unfair situation that's got to be resolved,' says Jim Whitty of the Department of Transportation. Opponents of the Oregon proposal say it will hurt a new industry. 'It will be one more obstacle that the industry and auto dealers will face in convincing consumers to buy these new cars,' says Paul Cosgrove, a lobbyist for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. Other states, such as Nevada and Washington, are also looking at a per-mile charge and a Washington law that would charge electric car owners an annual fee goes into effect in February. Oregon did a pilot study of the mileage tax (PDF) where participants paid 1.56 cents per mile and got a credit for any gasoline tax they paid at the pump. Although initial media portrayals of the system were almost uniformly negative, 91% of test participants preferred the mileage tax to paying gas taxes."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In the 128 years since the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was published, one of its greatest guiding principles has been that no word should ever be removed, explaining why the complete dictionary spans twenty volumes and weighs over 140 pounds. Its editors believe that someone today picking up a book from the 1920s should still be able to look up obscure terms even if they’re no longer in common usage. Well, The Guardian reports that a single contrarian editor named Robert Burchfield (the same guy that added swearwords) single-handedly removed words by the thousands throughout the 1970s and '80s — a claim laid out in a new book called Words of the World by former OED editor Sarah Ogilvie.

Ogilvie found that...

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