I feel an almost-sexual tingle when I ponder this recipe.
This recipe is designed to be aged in a barrel… or in a glass bottle with a small, charred oak stave dropped into it. (The Black Grouse provided a stave for us to play with.) Fun results. The name of the cocktail is spot-on for this one.
Smoky Old Mate 4.5 oz. The Black Grouse
3 oz. Cynar
3 oz. Carpano Antica
3 dashes grapefruit bitters
Combine all ingredients in bottle with charred wooden stave. Contents will be ready to drink after one week, but liquid will continue to age as long as stave is in the bottle. Makes 3 cocktails.
To prepare: Pour 3.5 oz. over ice in a mixing glass and stir. Strain over fresh ice and garnish with an orange peel.
Plus, you can use them to craft freezing throwing stars.
Bioluminescence is one of the most beautiful and useful adaptations on the planet. From fireflies to angler fish, an organisms ability to create and emit its own light is a literal beacon of evolutionary sophistication.
It is also a convergent trait that spans many forms of lifeincluding a rare collection of fungi species. Observations of these glowing mushrooms date all the way back to classical Greece, but the evolutionary drivers of fungal bioluminescence have never been understood.
Now, thanks to new research published today in Current Biology, the motives behind at least one species of glowing mushroom have been explained. A team led by Dartmouth biologist Jay Dunlop discovered that the Brazilian Neonothopanus gardneri fungi glows in sync with its temperature-controlled circadian clock.
Circadian control may optimize energy use for when bioluminescence is most visible, attracting insects that can in turn help in spore dispersal, thereby benefitting fungi growing under the forest canopy, where wind flow is greatly reduced, the studys authors wrote.
Dunlop and his colleagues monitored that the amount of energy N. gardneri invested in luminescence. They noted that by day, the mushrooms used less luciferin, reductase, and luciferasethe main compounds behind their trademark glow. But in the evening, the presence of these compounds increased. Dunlop and his team believe that N. gardneri ramps up bioluminescent activity at night to attract a wide variety of insects that, in turn, will carry its spores.
Dunlaps team tested this hypothesis out further by placing acrylic mushrooms decked out with green LED lights into N. gardneris habitat. As expected, the faux-shrooms with the LED lights turned on attracted more spore-carrying flies, wasps, ants, beetles and other spore-carrying insects than the control group.
Like so many bioluminescent organisms, these mushrooms arent putting on enchanting light shows for free. They expect payment from their insect audience, which expand the mushrooms reach across Brazils lush coconut forests in exchange.
This study represents a big leap forward in understanding the behavior of these little understood light-makersbut there are still other questions that remain unsolved. Whether other species of bioluminescent fungi have different motives and rhythms, for example, remains unclear. Only more research into these living lanterns will help illuminate the underlying mechanisms of their eerie glow.
After Starbucks announced its ham-fisted #RaceForward campaign yesterday, in which it plans to solve racism in America by writing stuff on cups, several ambitious journalists set out to earn the scoop of the decade: talking to a Starbucks barista about talking about race. Unsurprisingly, it seems the only people interested in ... More »
The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, a new cybersecurity bill that would expand the powers of the NSA, is quickly moving through the Senate and could be voted on within a month. Similar legislation is expected to surface in the House of Representatives as early as later this week.
The basic framework of the bill allows the government and private companies to pass information back and forth freely.
It's good for companies, because it allows them to receive classified information from the government (which it cannot legally share now) in situations where that information could prevent hacking attempts on their systems. It's good for the government, because it allows companies to pass private information about their users in the event of a "cyber threat. No framework exists for this kind of information transfer currently.
And it's bad for you, because the definition of who could be a "cyber threat" is vague and could be easily abused, policy experts say. The information passed to the government will be shared with the NSA, and, in certain cases, will be shared with local and state police.
Besides sharing information, the bill also offers companies "liability protection," meaning that if they pass too much of your information to the government or do not properly anonymize certain types of your data, they cannot be held accountable in court.
This is to incentive companies to share as much information as they canif Facebook suspects you might be about to commit a crime, it would be allowed to tell the government that you might be a threat. Even if youre not a threat, you cant sue Facebook under the terms of the bill. Though the information sharing is voluntary, the general thought is that companies that share more customer information with the government are likely to get better help from the NSA if, say, it uncovers a plot to hack its computer systems.
"All of these standards can be used by law enforcement, and they're not clearly defined"
Though the bill's sponsors, Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Richard Burr (R-North Carolina) say that the bill "addresses privacy concerns" that were evident in earlier drafts of the bill, civil liberties experts say the new amendments don't go nearly far enough.
"The big takeaway here is that this is still piece of legislation that creates a program that would transfer our private information to the government in what could cause potentially massive privacy violations," Drew Mitnick, a policy lawyer at Access, a digital liberties group, told me. "There were some minor changes, but nothing to alter the fact that this bill is still enabling the transfer of large amounts of private information to the NSA."
In an emailed press release, Feinstein said that that government "may only use voluntarily shared data under this legislation for cybersecurity purposes, to investigate cyber attacks, to address imminent threats to life and imminent terrorist attacks, and to investigate computer-related crimes and serious, violent felonies."
A new addition to the bill, however, defines a cybersecurity threat as anything that can cause "serious economic harm" to a company or government assets, and does not define the term or limit it to "economic harm" through, say, a hacking attempt.
"It's a vague standard, which is part of the problem. All of these standards can be used by law enforcement, and they're not clearly defined," Mitnick said. "Nothing changes the fact that this is a huge cybersecurity program that, on its face, is supposed to be about protecting critical infrastructure but in practice greatly expands the surveillance powers of the NSA."
A slightly different version of CISA made it through the Senate Intelligence Committee last year, but was never voted on by the full Senate. That seems highly unlikely to happen again this year, for a few reasons. The Sony hack of late last year has politicians desperate to pass any sort of cybersecurity overhaul, though it's unclear that a law like CISA would have made any difference in preventing the Sony breach.
Secondly, large parts of the Patriot Act, which empower many of the NSA's mass surveillance programs, are set to expire on June 1, and it's expected that Congress is about to spend a whole lot of time debating how much power the NSA should have. Lawmakers want to get cybersecurity off their plates before the NSA-reform discussion begins in earnest.
"It seems Senate leadership is prioritizing this over other cybersecurity proposals. They want to get this done before there's more awareness of the Patriot Act sunset, because they don't want to mingle the CISA privacy conversation with the Patriot Act one," Mitnick said.
So that's why we could see CISA, and a yet-to-be-announced bill in the House of Representatives rushed through. CISPA, the bill that inspired CISA, was reintroduced in the House earlier this year, but Mitnick said that it looks like the bill is "dead in the water," because the Senate seems more anxious to pass CISA, so the House will likely go with something that looks more like that bill.
"There's going to be a bill, maybe two coming out of the House maybe as early as this week," he said. "It could look like CISPA or what we've seen in the Senate, but whatever it is, it'll have the same issues we've been talking about."
[UPDATE: See media reaction at bottom of this post. Also, be sure to read the correction at end of the NYT article and the response from the NYT public editor.]
I'm racing to meet a deadline, but this story in the New York Times is so dismaying I had to take a few minutes to call attention to it. The headline alone is a red flag: "Could Wearable Computers Be as Harmful as Cigarettes?"
It gets worse:
We have long suspected that cellphones, which give off low levels of radiation, could lead
"If Netanyahu prevails, the nature of Israel's diplomatic alliance with the United States will have to change — the U.S. cannot continue to extend its U.N. veto to a country whose government has formally disavowed negotiations"
You would think so, wouldn't you? But of course any president would be pilloried for such a change, and Obama more than most. It'll be quite interesting to see what he does with this quandry.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s wild swerve, from right-wing to ultra-right-wing, in the run-up to Israel’s elections is a desperate tactic to reverse the trajectory of his flailing campaign. But it also represents an important marker in his career, and a clarifying moment in the course of the Israeli right. Netanyahu has generally ... More »
Laboratory studies do not often go as planned, and while this is usually a source of endless frustration amongst scientists, some wonderful discoveries have been made by accident in the past, such as the pacemaker and penicillin. Now, researchers may have happened upon something that could turn out to be a powerful agent against a particularly aggressive type of cancer.
"A typical example of real street food eaten by actual Cuban workers is pan con jamon, which is just like an American ham and cheese sandwich—hold the cheese, hold the lettuce, hold the tomato, hold the mayo, hold the mustard. It is ham on bread. For an authentic "Taste of Cuba" at home, take a hamburger bun, insert a single slice of Oscar Mayer ham, marinate in tropical heat for five or six hours, and enjoy."
"Each person should feel happy at work. They should feel happy with their task as creators. They should instill all those around them with their revolutionary and creative enthusiasm." — Che Guevara.
Okay, well, now Starbucks is planning on starting a national dialogue on race that will consist of talking to your Starbucks barista, about race. What are you doing, Starbucks? What? Are? You doing?
No? No. Yes, this is a real thing reported by many of our nation's top news outlets, and here are the facts that you need to know in order to avoid experiencing what could be one of the most painfully awkward interactions of your life with a random Starbucks barista:
1. This thing is called "Race Together." What the fuck does that mean? Nothing, speaking objectively.
3. This thing, as far as we can tell, will consist of you walking into a Starbucks and ordering a coffee, and the barista surprising you by scrawling the words "RACE TOGETHER" on your coffee cup, and then, as if you had just hit some sort of awful jackpot, this Starbucks barista will somehow "engage" you in "conversation" about race in America, while you are there, at the Starbucks.
4. Jesus.
5. Why is this bizarre corporate charade, which sounds even more demeaning than McDonald's asking you to dance for your Egg McMuffin, happening at all? It is happening because weird zillionaire Starbucks CEO and woefully misguided do-gooder/ self-aggrandizer Howard Schultz has determined, after holding what we can only imagine were that the best way for him, a powerful business titan and billionaire, to affect America's race problem is by instructing his enthusiastic minions to confront startled latte buyers with provocative queries about race. Schultz views this plan as "an opportunity to begin to re-examine how we can create a more empathetic and inclusive society – one conversation at a time."
6. I assume what he meant to say was "this plan exemplifies what happens when a CEO's ego meets the most useless manifestation of 'corporate social responsibility' resulting in an inexplicable fiasco that will garner much PR for the Starbucks corporation without advancing America's incredibly complex racial problems one iota."
7. Howard Schultz should just give money to political causes to advance equality in America and not make up any more plans.
8. Denigrating a weird Starbucks Corporation plan to "talk about race" does not mean that you don't care about race issues in America any more than denigrating "Yo Quiero Taco Bell" means that you do not care about Latino issues in America.
9. Avoid Starbucks for the next few weeks probably. Go volunteer or something.
his is a bubble snail known as a Miniature Melo (Micromelo undata) which shares the same class (Gastropoda) as the nudibranchs. In the light, its shimmery body looks like its made out of stardust – no big deal.
