July 2007 – Page 3 – A Good Beer Blog

Is Wisconsin The Continent’s Beervana?

Slumming around the internet, I came across this article about beer and Wisconsin which made me wonder whether it is the beer friendliest jurisdiction in North America.

From handing out free samples at grocery stores to shunning a proposed tax increase, Wisconsin lawmakers love their beer. One of the first bills they passed this year made sure bar patrons didn’t lose drinking time when the clock jumped back an hour this spring. Other pro-beer bills are brewing.

Free beer at the grocery store! Good Lord. There are places in Canada where they hold exorcisms for folks who think like that. But then there is this: “Wisconsin is also one of only a handful of states that allows parents to purchase alcohol for their children to consume in their presence.” Holy Moly. I had no idea. Well, sure, this is progressive and good and all – especially if you believe like most conservatives that the family is the source of the best instruction and all that stuff…but I had no idea. Who knew?

Chitchattery Fridayesque

Another week is gone. It was a good one except for the Red Sox starting their August collapse a little early. In other sporting news, apparently there was a move to press gang the Chilean U20 soccer team for the Hudson Bay fleet last evening. And I play vintage base ball this weekend in another country. Who knew? Sunday sees me and the other member of the Kingston St. Lawrence Base Ball team taking on Sackets Harbor, NY in a game that will use rules somewhere between 1860 and 1875. Gary may even be seen tomorrow but we are still uncertain as to what the day will bring. I may, too, be in a canoe. What a wonderful week. Here is the linkfest:

Constitutional Update: Where is the balance of powers when one branch asserts autonomy?

Update: The Flea guides us to the new enemy – New Victorians.

I caught a good story from Reuters about a journalist embedded with Canadian Forces in Afghanistan.
I haven’t read any Harry Potter and boycott the movies due to the lack of claymation so I see not reason to give a hoot about spoilers and the release of a page or two early. Doesn’t there seems to be an over-enlistment of the authorities in the propping up of a franchise?
Are we entirely over 9/11? It appears that travel has hit a high but are we forgetful or confident. Americans are staying home we assume due to the dollar…but is that it? Why does no one come to Canada?

Americans are coming to Canada much less than they used to…”Canada needs to add more fun and adventure to its image,” the report, released by Deloitte and the tourism association, said. “We need the right product — the right active tours and adventure experiences. And most importantly, we need to promote them.”

Soon lighters will return.
It has been announced that a father and son team of metal detecting nerds hit the motherload with a Viking treasure trove being announced in England this week. Did you know that metal detection is really cool? That you can get a Bill Wyman model metal detector? I wish I metal detected.
Acquitted conduct. I was listening to CBC Ottawa last evening on the drive home and there was a “sentencing consultant” from the US being interviewed who said that Conrad Black faces the prospect of facts relating to the charges he was acquitted upon being still included in the sentencing on the charges he was found guilty. That makes no sense and I am sure, ten years past any criminal work, that it is entirely unknown in Canada. Wow. I actually feel a little bad for Connie this morning.

That is all for now. I wish I were in England where I could spend some time watching for ocean-going rubber floaty toys. I bet I’d meet up with Bill Wyman if I only spent more time doing things like that.

Group Project: Federal Poll Breakthrough!!!

Just kidding.

Please provide your ideas for any party to make a change, capture the national imagination, bust out of these doldrums. Maybe the Greens should come right out and promote attacking Yemen. Maybe the Tories should promote a useless infrastructure project in a dumb place like the Arctic…oh, they did that already. Or is national vision even needed? Maybe the NuGovernment has invented UnPolicy as the NuVzn?

Shake the tree.

Yankees As Yankees

All my big talk about the Sox is just a front. I know that. You know that. Sooner or later the giant awakes and begins the march to October. Did it happen last night?

There was an urgency to last night’s game, the Yankees said, because of the opportunity it presented. They were facing Roy Halladay, who is probably tougher on them than any other starter. A loss would have been understandable, but a victory could make a statement. After losing this month to Dan Haren, Johan Santana and Scott Kazmir, the Yankees still needed to prove they could outlast a team with an elite starter. Andy Pettitte matched Halladay for seven strong innings, and the Yankees won the kind of tight game they have lost far too often.

Conversely, attentive readers will recall that last year, the Sox sucked in September losing to Tampa Bay and Kansas City. To be fair to that season, August saw seven of none starters on the DL but losing to Kansas City is a huge warning sign even though many good people and much good music and good BBQ come from there. Last night, the Red Sox lost badly to Kansas City.

A Bat In The Basement

Dozing off at the end of the evening, I dreamed that there was something flitting in the blue glow of the TV light. Then I realized there was no dream as I wasn’t sleeping. We had a bat trapped in the house and it was down here in the basement. So here are my bat removal tips gleaned from seven minutes of experience:

Turn on the lights where you do not want the bat to go. They will flit in those rooms but will exit again.
Bats are quite cheery when there is just one of them and one of you.
A table cloth held up as a screen works as a good corralling device.
Keep it moving.
At least one bat in the world has a hard time seeing the wall above a door and will whap into it over and over.
Bats tire after ten minutes of swooping and wall whapping.
Once tired, bats are happy to land and be gathered up in a table cloth and taken outside.
Our cat is not a bat attacker.

One more thing. Human reactions can range from terror to fascination in these moments.

Group Project: The “Ridiculous Position” Question

There is a funny thing about the word ridiculous. Anyone that uses it in serious discussion makes me think of Don Rickles. Nothing in a serious discussion is “ridiculous”…yet…

Prime Minister Stephen Harper defended his government’s decision to pursue free-trade talks with Colombia despite persistent human-rights problems Monday, saying it’s “ridiculous” to stop economic talks until conditions are ideal. “We are not going to say, ‘Fix all your social, political and human-rights problems and only then will we engage in trade relations with you,'” Mr. Harper said at a joint news conference with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. “That’s a ridiculous position.”

Of course we do that. It is called an embargo and it is a useful tool from time to time. The US uses it against Cuba. Canada’s conservatives advocated its use quite handily against South Africa to great effect. Harper in the general sense, then, is being ridiculous in his general proposition. And there is a little something of Don in Steve when you think about it, something about the inability to smile without sending a second message.

But what about the specific? There are certainly situations where trade is a better tool than embargo. Customers and clients are better to have than criminal drug lords. Yet the US Congress has determined in this particular case that is not the case and has stopped their free trade relationship discussions from moving forward. Is it that Harper has picked a country in need of good news to get some of his own? Is he the patron of dumb causes like Arctic paratroopers? Is he leaving out other more sensible choices like Brazil and Argentina which could make a real difference in the movement of goods because they are, you know, “pinkos”? Or is he the vangard of free stable democratic government and picking a hard case for a good cause, indirectly trying to work to halt the murders of trade union leaders and other forms of repression that country is plagued with?

And if there was free trade with Columbia – what would you buy?

Corporate Hand Puppets

The thing I find strange about this is not that it happens but that it doesn’t happen all the time…or that we do not recognize it happening:

…John Mackey, the chief executive of Whole Foods Market…used a fictional identity on the Yahoo message boards for nearly eight years to assail competition and promote his supermarket chain’s stock, according to documents released last week by the Federal Trade Commission. Mr. Mackey used the online handle “Rahodeb” (an anagram of his wife’s name, Deborah). In one Internet posting sure to enter the annals of chief-executive vanity, Mr. Mackey wrote as Rahodeb, “I like Mackey’s haircut. I think he looks cute!” With all a chief executive has to do, the 14-hour days spent barking orders, digesting reports, motivating employees and courting Wall Street, why would they spend their time sparring with anonymous critics online? And what makes them think they won’t be revealed?

It is hard to say that is is not more common than is thought. Is it so different compared to me running a contest over at the beer blog sponsored by a brewery that sends trinkets or a blog that speaks on a political or public topic that gains the blogger access to people and events that he would never have otherwise? How is it that this is not manipulation? And do we care (and not in the Amiel sense of “care”) whether folks as insubstantial and sub-vermin (to borrow and Amielism) as bloggers are in a pocket of one size or another?

Post-Trial Blackness

This, of course, is the real question, the real angle on the Conrad Black trial – the Mrs.:

As the judge in Conrad M. Black’s fraud trial began reading through the verdict in the criminal fraud prosecution against him last Friday — finding Mr. Black guilty on four counts — Mr. Black’s wife, Barbara Amiel, was observed scribbling a note and passing it to her husband. It isn’t known what the note said, but someday it could be. Some Canadian publishing executives believe that Ms. Amiel might be willing to write a book dealing with the experience of being by her husband’s side during the unraveling of his storied career as a newspaper magnate.

The NYTs article does raise a couple of questions. First, why does the Globe call him “Lord Black” when that is not his name but a title given by another country? It’s not like you give up your name in the way that a nun does and it’s not like he was born to the title. Second, long before the criminal activity was in the news, when Black was a topic of gossip and CBC interviews of mutual contempt, Barbara Amiel was one of the bigger issues, apologist for the meanest of human causes though a few that were not, pal to the privileged that she, too, craved to join without any apparent entitlement – and something of a garbage mouth. And though she is now described as a journalist I can’t recall any reporting or news-breaking she took part in. And a columnist mainly for McLeans, playing the role the counter-point right-wing nut-bar.

The meanness in many of us watch to see what she will do should Conrad go to the Big House, should all the assets be seized in the end, the corporate veils pierced. Should we care? Or is that something of a corruption of the word “care”?

Book Review: The US Brewing Industry by Tremblay and Tremblay

Like any member of the bar, I think a lot of myself. I think there are not too many documents I cannot wade through and conquer. I think I have met my match, not because it is too complex or on a topic that I cannot grasp but that it is in a language I have never come across before – economic analysis. The book’s full title in fact is The U.S. Brewing Industry: Data and Economic Analysis so I should have know. It’s that last word that gets me. You are trucking along in a chapter and, whammo!, mathematical formulae. It’s never the gaant charts or the flow charts or the pie charts or the multi-coloured graphs that get me – it’s the algebra. I think that makes what is called beeronomics econometrics. Click in the picture below and you will see what I mean.

But of course it is more than math that escapes me. Conversely, both authors are professors of economics at Oregon State University [Ed.: Go State!] and they explain their book in this way:

Victor and Carol Tremblay have authored a book The U.S. Brewing Industry: Data and Economic Analysis, MIT Press, 2005. This represents the culmination of almost 25 years of research in which they analyze the important economic issues facing the brewing industry, 1950-2002. These include changes in demand and cost conditions, the causes and consequences of rising concentration, price, advertising, and other firm strategies, and the impact of advertising, excise taxes, and antitrust regulations on the economic performance of the industry. They focus on the macro or mass-producing brewers but also discuss the microbrewery and import sectors of the market. A unique feature of the book is that it provides a comprehensive dataset, including annual industry data on demand and cost variables (1950-2002), annual financial data from the 25 leading brewers (1950-2002), and annual production data from the leading 100 brewers (1947-2003).

For careful readers, you will appreciate this means the statistics pre-date the current craft brewing boom. Craft brewing is described but, as is concisely pointed out in the Introduction, we have to admit craft beer in 2001 accounted for 3% of total consumption – half a percent behind “ice beer”. No, this is not a book by boosters by boosters but the cold hearted results of 25 years of economic study brought together in one handy to describe the causes of industry concentration, basic cost issues, pricing and advertising strategies as well as public policy issues. That means it is a great over-view of the whole of the industry and could provide insight to craft brewers whose work now, by my reasonable guesstimate (not a concept in econometrics), now sits at about 4% to 5% of total beer consumption, eclipsing ice beer to stand maybe at half the importance of imports. I say guesstimate because I have not been able to find relative statistics in all the recent press about 31.5% growth in US craft beer sales over the three years ’04 to ’06. Nice to have access to a discussion of the economics of the industry that is made up of more than press releases.

So, am I glad I have this book? Definitely? Can I read it in one sitting? Not a chance. I think this is a book to get through gradually, to immerse myself in over a while – and also one to return to as a reference over and over. I expect it could serve anyone well, to give guidance both in relation to key elements of the industry as a base line for data…unless you happen to be an econometrician in which case you can zip through it during your next flight or maybe a lunch break.

Good Luck To Ya, Kid

Another three games in the books and the Red Sox are still holding on to twenty games over .500 and a double digits lead in the AL East. Last night’s game was very entertaining as have been the last two against the Jays. It was good to see Wakefield beat Halladay on Tuesday and even though Friday’s night was a loss, it was an entertaining one with Pedroia, Papi and Manny all getting a ninth inning chance to win the game. Coco is on fire.

Despite having to listen to the Jay’s announcer Jamie Campbell, king of calling the home runs the never were and general homey extraordinaire, I was caught finding myself momentarily saddened for Toronto’s Troy Glaus getting robbed by a bad call early in the game. He made a quite excellent sneaky slide – very Tim Raines circa 1983-84 – into second deeking out Pedroi…err, but not the ump somehow. But I have this recollection that Raines never hid his last minute move from the ump with his body, that he knew not to waste the moment. That’s when I stopped feeling bad for Glaus. To be fair, he was far from the goat that he was when we saw him play live in May though I still thank the Lord daily that things did not work out differently.

Today, as illustrated, All-Star game winning Beckett seems to be taking on the Jay’s surprise call up Howdy Doody in an afternoon game to close out the series. Good luck with that.

In other news, the Yanks have secured a weekend split with Tampa. They must be pleased.