Nathan

A great reddit thread. Here’s the top one so far:

Mammoths were alive when the Great Pyramid was being built.

community maintained, completely legal reuse  

ending sentences with a period can feel abrupt and harsh in text messages  

FAIRFIELD, CALIF.—When candy makers at Jelly Belly Candy Company set out to create the world’s first beer flavored jelly bean, the question wasn’t how; it was what. Ale or Lager? Stout? Lambic? Pilsner? In the end, the company opted to pay homage to its German ancestry with a Hefeweizen-inspired ale flavor, and Draft Beer Jelly Belly® jelly beans took shape. The new flavor will debut at Winter Fancy Food Show in San Francisco and ISM in Cologne, Germany.

Beer has been a highly-requested flavor by consumers for decades. Jelly Belly is known as much for flavor innovation as perfection. The research and development team wanted to get it just right before announcing the new flavor to the world.

“This took about three years to perfect,” says Ambrose Lee, research and development manager for Jelly Belly Candy Company. “The recipe includes top secret ingredients, but I can tell you it contains no alcohol.”

The effervescent and crisp flavor is packed in a golden jelly bean with an iridescent finish. Beer connoisseurs will find the flavor profile to be clean with notes of wheat and a touch of sweetness. The aroma is mildly bready. While Draft Beer packs a flavor punch, it is alcohol free.

“Usually the factory has a sweet and fruity aroma, but when we’re making this flavor it’s just like being in an ale house,” says Jeff Brown, vice president in charge of manufacturing for Jelly Belly Candy Company.

“Anyone who enjoys a good, cold beer will enjoy Draft Beer Jelly Belly beans for the simple fact that it tastes just as you’d imagine,” says Rob Swaigen, vice president of marketing for Jelly Belly Candy Company.

“I love the flavors in a good beer and Jelly Belly has managed to get that from brew to bean in an incredible way,” says Jackie Dodd, beer expert, cookbook author, and the voice behind the popular cooking with craft beer blog The Beeroness. “Jelly Belly found a way to fit 15 pints in the palm of your hand, they deserve an award.”

Draft Beer Jelly Belly beans are a wonderful gift for beer lovers for Father’s Day, birthdays, and even St. Patrick’s Day and Oktoberfest . The new flavor will be available at candy counters throughout the world in early 2014.

Draft Beer is the latest in a long line of flavor innovations from Jelly Belly Candy Company. The company first created a non-alcoholic gourmet flavor in 1977 with Mai Tai. Since then, more flavors from Blackberry Brandy to Strawberry Daiquiri were developed, inspired by popular cocktails. Over the years, favorite flavors like Piña Colada (1983), Margarita (1995) and Mojito (2010) have helped carve out the Jelly Belly Cocktail Classics® collection of six cocktail flavors.

Flavor innovation doesn’t stop with the Jelly Belly bean flavor itself. Thoughtfully combining Draft Beer with other Jelly Belly bean flavors create “beer cocktail” flavors, a beverage trend among craft beer connoisseurs, including The Beeroness blog:

• 2 Draft Beer + 1 Peach = Beer Sangria
• 2 Draft Beer + 1 Red Apple = Beer cider
• 2 Draft Beer + 1 Lemon Lime + 1 TABASCO® = Michelada

The Beeroness will host a Tweet Up at 21st Amendment, 563 Second Street in San Francisco, on January 21 to introduce the new Draft Beer flavor to her beer-loving fans. For more information, visit thebeeroness.com.

 

finally, a free dolphin school test cheating simulator for the Oculus Rift  

A tavern with locations in New York City and Texas is looking to open a new spot in one of Boston's hottest neighborhoods for dining out.

The Boston Hospitality and Tourism Industry Blog is reporting (via The Boston Herald) that The Ginger Man is planning on opening in the Fort Point area, with the proposed eating and drinking establishment looking at a location on Congress Street. The Herald says that this will be the second time that the bar has tried to come to the neighborhood, as it had attempted to open on Farnsworth Street a couple of years back, only to have it fall through due to concerns from residents in the area. The folks behind The Ginger Man do have a signed lease for the 6,000-square-foot spot on Congress Street, but have not yet received a liquor license (the Boston Licensing Board will meet on a possible license transfer and planned 2:00 AM closing time for the place next week). If the restaurant and bar is able to open in Fort Point, expect farm-to-table fare as well as an extensive array of beers on tap and in bottles.

Currently, The Ginger Man has a location on E 36th Street in Manhattan, as well as in Austin, Dallas, Ft. Worth, Houston, Plano, and Southlake (all in Texas).

The address for this proposed tavern in Fort Point is 374 Congress Street, Boston, MA, 02210.

Tweet

Sparing neither man nor animal nor giant, slimy snake, the good folks over at Auralnauts have collected every single one of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s on-screen fatalities and posted it on YouTube just in time for Christmas.

The Governator’s largest killing spree comes courtesy of 1985’s Commando—perhaps because that film opens with Arnold petting a baby deer, and all magic has a price. The creative endings range from simple strangulation to alien explosives, with many semi-automatic weapons used in between. 

You can watch the entire 28-minute compilation with or without commentary, though the chatter does provide a little context for oddities like Schwarzenegger's bit parts on ‘70s TV show The Streets of San Francisco.

Austin, TX – Celebrating their 10^th Anniversary later this year, Independence Brewing Co. kicks off this key milestone with a significant expansion and update to the brewery. As one of the three original craft breweries in Austin, Independence debuts its new facility in January, more than doubling its current 7,500 square foot space to an expansive 17,500 square feet. With the new space, the brewery will begin hosting brewery tours Friday at 4:00 and 6:00 pm, beginning February 7^th in addition to the long-time immensely popular First Saturday events. Tours are free of charge.

Independence Brewing’s new and improved system replaces current outdated equipment with this new state-of-the art equipment, efficiencies increase greatly, allowing Independence to remarkably increase production. For example, with the previous system it required around 8,000 lbs. of grain to brew a 60-barrel batch of Convict Hill Stout whereas on the new system, it only requires 5,000 lbs. to brew the same amount in a single batch. One of the most noticeable end results will be with the brewery’s capacity to expand to new markets. With the new system in place, they will be able to considerably expand their distribution to Houston, Dallas-Ft Worth, and more.

“We’re thrilled about this huge step forward for our facility, as the new expansion and updated equipment allow us to increase our reach throughout Texas,” says Co-founder and President Amy Cartwright. “Being one of the original breweries in Austin, it’s refreshing to see the local craft beer scene flourishing and we’re excited to be able to play a part in such a supportive and creative industry.”

The New System:

Included in the new JV Northwest system is an updated mash tun, kettle, whirlpool, hot water tank and cold water tank. The equipment has a 60 barrel batch size and will yield nearly 60 barrels for beers up to 9.5% ABV. The brewery is starting out with two 60 barrel and two 120 barrel fermenters, which will yield a 15,000 barrel capacity with the intention of later adding additional vessels to reach a potential 100,000 barrel capacity. Phasing out the original system, which relies heavily on manual operations, the brewery expects to make the last batch using the old system in April, decommissioning it with a Berliner Weisse. Additionally, this year will also mark an impressive milestone, the brewery’s 3,000^th brew that will be completed in February.

About Independence Brewing Co.

Founded in 2004, in a vastly different landscape prior to the Texas craft beer boom, Independence Brewing Co. has remained on the forefront of the industry. A finalist for the Good Food Awards three years in a row, Rob and Amy Cartwright have always been passionate about producing beers that they not only personally love, but that come from the highest quality ingredients. The Cartwrights are big supporters of all things local, from community involvement with local nonprofits like Austin Pets Alive to their First Saturday events which promote local bands, food vendors and more.

 

Signature Brews from Independence include:

Austin Amber, Stash IPA, Convict Hill Stout, Bootlegger Brown, Independence Pale Ale, White Rabbit White Ale, and more.

summing up years of work in a sentence; also on Twitter  

Moti Fridman alerted us to the existence of the schnitzel-laser. Fridman wrote: ”They showed how a laser can find by itself the correct phase to lase at in order to go through a thin chicken breast with no aberrations, when it is put inside the cavity. In a talk they called it the schnitzel-laser. This research shows beautifully the principle of operation of lasers to many people outside of the laser community.” The researchers published a study about it:

“Real-time wavefront-shaping through scattering media by all optical feedback,” Micha Nixon, Ori Katz, Eran Small, Yaron Bromberg, Asher A. Friesem, Yaron Silberberg, and Nir Davidson [pictured here], arXiv preprint arXiv:1303.3161 (2013).  The authors report:

“we applied our technique to focus light through a thin scattering biological sample. Specifically, we replaced the diffuser with a slice of approximately 200μm thick chicken breast in water and Glycerol solution, placed between two microscopes slides. As with the optical diffuser, the light of an incident focused plane-wave was scattered to a random speckle pattern without a noticeable ballistic component (Fig .4a). However, the lasing intensity pattern maintained an effective tight focus through the scattering tissue on the target (Fig. 4b)…. We have demonstrated an all-optical technique for wavefront-shaping, focusing light through highly scattering media at unprecedented speeds, without requiring the use of adaptive algorithms, SLMs, or electronic feedback.”

BONUS: Video of a fellow named Nicko demonstrating how he makes chicken schnitzel. His method includes the playing of annoying music:

BONUS: A recipe for Chicken Schnitzel with Zigeuner Sauce

on-screen source code in movies, and what it actually does  

Professionalism!

one of the best movie trailers I've ever seen  

awesome data journalism by Alexis Madrigal with a genre generator by Ian Bogost  

"If those services don't trust me enough to give me an RSS feed, why should I trust them with my data?"  

someone show these people how to use Kickstarter  

the best of data visualization, the nominees are all great  

2MINUTE 2FAST 2FURIOUS! from Everything Is Terrible! on Vimeo.