Author: Alan

Book Review: Pub Games Of England by Timothy Finn

pubgamesThis finally came from Amazon.co.uk after ordering it not long after mid-February, right around when I decided to create The Pub Game Project. The roaring silence that followed was lesson enough that this book was very much needed in the library.

And what a treat it is. Now I can trick the children and push the weaker willed of the family, inducing them into playing Knur and Spell, Aunt Sally, Daddlums, Lawn Billiards and Dwyle Flunking. Rules, diagrams, hints to play and photos of the games in action. First published in 1975. Excellent.

Extremism

Of all the “-isms”, extremism is the best. Mainly because it means nothing but also because in the 1990’s…or was it due, like so much, to Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure that extreme became a positive. Anyway, Nixon was against it and had the CIA rooting it out in Canada in the 1970s right about when they were working with the mafia on stuff. Apparently the mafia is not extreme.

Ottawa was one of at least 10 foreign cities targeted by the CIA in a clandestine operation in which the agency tried to ferret out those who were fostering U.S. “extremism” in the early 1970s. The program, codenamed MHCHAOS, was described by the U.S. spy agency in documents it released yesterday, chronicling misdeeds ranging from assassination plots and domestic and foreign spying to surveillance of journalists.

I thought it was “Mu-chachos” when I first read it in my uncoffee-ed state which would only make it more excellent although the “chaos” thing is all master of disasters, so maybe it is a pretty good code word.

I wish I had the job of writing the code words for stuff. I would have saved a special place for “Operation Excellent”.

About Oaked Beer: Musette, Allagash, Portland, Maine

Along with the Sour Beer Studies, there are other classes of beers that set themselves apart in some way other than reflecting traditional styles. Brewers are reintroducing techniques like beer on the wood to explore the limits of what beer can be and we’ll look at them in this series. Dave Line in his 1974 text The Big Book of Brewing wrote about using wooden casks from a home brewing perspective at a time when he saw it as a dying art:

It is a great thrill to draw your own beer from the wood. The management of this beer is an art and it may take years to develop all the skills. I am by no means an expert, but I take comfort in the fact that I am learning the art of one of our most treasured crafts, and that perhaps my efforts will prolong the traditions of our heritage.

Musette by Allagash is another nod to that tradition, this particular one aged on bourbon barrels for three months and then bottled in May 2006 – 32 years after Line feared for the loss of the heritage. At 10% it certainly reflects Line’s preference that beers attempted to be aged on wood be high gravity. At opening, there was a breath of autumn apple from the bottle that stayed with the ale after the pour, providing maybe a hint of calvados mixed with the raisin-malty aroma. It pours a thick clingy white foam head over deep orange amber ale. In the mouth plenty of roundness of raisin, date and apple with a Belgian musty yeast all cut by a hardwood vanilla dryness from the oak with a bit of tea astringency in the finish. Described by the brewer as aimed at the Belgian made Scotch ales like this silly one reviewed last January, the effect is somewhere between dubbel and barleywine. Very nice but not cheap at $15.59 USD for 750 ml.

Snooty Facebook

Seeing as I never did anything with MySpace (or Twitter, or Orkut, or Friendster….) I wonder if the fact that Facebook works for me and my undergrad pals says something about us:

The research suggests those using Facebook come from wealthier homes and are more likely to attend college. By contrast, MySpace users tend to get a job after finishing high school rather than continue their education.

What to make of that? I don’t know why there is so much buy-in from the people I know but it is as accessible as email in many ways keeping the participation threshold down. The lack of skins or visual personalization works in its favour as well. But the communal scrapbook thing is what I think works very well. Obsessing over who is that person in a photo from 23 years ago and tagging the separate people within them creates a pattern of continuity that expresses your own time line as well as branches out to do the same for people you know. So the illusion of a community gets some backing up compared to the post and reply of blogs or the thoughts of the day. It is a different thing to claim, having an actual mutual past – as opposed to a supposed present interest.

Bob Asks A Good Question About Dutch Beer

We all know the story of India Pale Ale but Bob asks in the comments whether the Dutch ever did a similar thing:

Bob Schneider [11:37 PM June 25, 2007]
bob.blustar@gmail.com
http://brewersonthelake.com
I realise that this is a review of a book but I was wondering if you could satisfy my curiosity. When I was brewing professionally in Holland, MI, I was trying to come up with a beer name and tagline that connected with the Dutch East India Trading Company (correct name?) similar to India Pale Ale shipped to British troops stationed in India. I did some research but ended up making an IPA with our house German ale yeast. When I put the beer on tap at the brew pub, the owners renamed it anyway. It was still one of the best IPAs I have made.

So my question is; Did the Dutch traders ship beer as a commodity in trade for Asian goods? If yes, what years, what style? Were hops used in any manner then?

Thanks
Bob

Good enough to be brought up to the surface for a little bit more of a think….or a thunk if I can’t come up with anything. I will check through Unger’s texts but if anyone else has any ideas, please share.

Snooty Facebook

Seeing as I never did anything with MySpace (or Twitter, or Orkut, or Friendster….) I wonder if the fact that Facebook works for me and my undergrad pals says something about us:

The research suggests those using Facebook come from wealthier homes and are more likely to attend college. By contrast, MySpace users tend to get a job after finishing high school rather than continue their education.

What to make of that? I don’t know why there is so much buy-in from the people I know but it is as accessible as email in many ways keeping the participation threshold down. The lack of skins or visual personalization works in its favour as well. But the communal scrapbook thing is what I think works very well. Obsessing over who is that person in a photo from 23 years ago and tagging the separate people within them creates a pattern of continuity that expresses your own time line as well as branches out to do the same for people you know. So the illusion of a community gets some backing up compared to the post and reply of blogs or the thoughts of the day. It is a different thing to claim, having an actual mutual past – as opposed to a supposed present interest.

A Second Career In The Military

An interesting article in The Globe this morning on the recruitment of older folk, in large part established professionals, for the Canadian military:

“In the last two years, our strategic intake plan has been heavily dominated by the combat arms,” says Captain Holly-Ann Brown, a spokeswoman for Canadian Forces Recruiting. “Are there people over 25 applying for combat arms? Sure. But, typically, the person coming to the military looking for a career in combat tends to be out of high school.” As a result, the average age fell to about 24 last year – still closer to 30 than the minimum entry age of 17 for full-time service. Older service men and women can be costly in terms of benefits, and there is also the dicey issue of whether they can hold their own with the young and spry. Yet military data indicate that nearly one-quarter of the 2,596 troops currently serving in Afghanistan are older than 40. More than a third are younger than 29.

That is quite the thing. I thought when I heard of Trevor Greene‘s decision to serve and subsequent injuries that his enlistment was maybe a rare thing. But recently learning of another Kingsman of my era, Stephen Murray, being out there building roads and other good things in the reconstruction team gave me some inkling that there were more than you might assume.

Group Project: NuGovernment Status Update

I am a bit at a loss at the political plan – you know, the plan to get re-elected. If making everyone unhappy is the road to electoral success, it seems the Not Pre-existing Government is doing a great job:

The receding tide of electoral support for MacKay defies most of the rules of politics. High-profile cabinet ministers aren’t supposed to be in trouble, particularly when they represent poor rural areas. MacKay is not only foreign affairs minister, he controls millions of dollars in local business grants as minister of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. He is well-liked and holds what was once the safest Tory seat in the country, a seat held for 22 years by his father, Elmer.

The prospect of someone other than a Tory getting in in Pictou County is frankly stunning but the cavalier attitude that goes along with the loss and other likely losses in Atlantic Canada does not seem to be linked to the picking up of seats elsewhere. The green agenda has weakened the resolve and maybe even the interest of many of the faithful. The uncompromising tone belies many last minutes back-tracks.

Aside from the personal affiliations that might make me less than interested in seeing Harper succeed, does anyone else think it is strange at how little he has done to establish his own agenda? To actually get more seats the next time? Or has he done very well with the cards dealt? Group Project rules apply – do not snipe at him – and is there any other pronoun for this government other than “him”? – but think about opportunities or challenges that might have been dealt with differently by another person in the same office.

Bees News

Bees are your most ignored life partner. I heard recently that if bees were to disappear, we’d have about four years to find an alternative or humans would die off.

Last night, right at the deepest part of dusk, I saw an extraordinary thing as I was watching a sugar maple as I listened to the Yankees lose in 13 innings on the radio through the rolled down car window. It was swarmed by honey bees. But it was not in flower. This being June, the whole of the green world is packed with sweetness and the air was full of it last evening. I think the bees thought the whole tree was a flower and they were looking for the mother lode of nectar that must have been there. The were not swarming in a pack but spaced out, one to each leaf or two, animating the entire tree.

Chat. Friday. Bullets. Go!

An interesting week. The Red Sox have gotten back in gear and gotten back into the groove as the Yankees again falter. Summer is now here which means it will be a bit colder this weekend compared to last. Gary reports a tornado yesterday from the cold front that gave us hail up here. That was the sports and weather. Here is the news:

  • Neato Update: Excellent. Excellent. Excellent:

    Your order #202-6921784-XXXXXX (received 18-February-2007)

    Amazon.co.uk items (Sold by Amazon EU S.a.r.L.):

    1 Pub Games of England (Olea…) £11.94 1 £11.94

    Shipped via International Mail (estimated arrival date: 29-June-2007)…

    Excellent. Did I mention this is excellent?

  • Update: Good thing they gave him a ticket.
  • Update: I have officially coined “Royal Sombrero” and, implicitly, the intense version “Sombrero Royale”. Alert the media.
  • Chris, Darcey, and the Flea all note the most offensive and apparently acceptable thing I have ever seen in a Canadian newspaper.
  • NCPR’s Brian Mann won an Edward R. Murrow award this week for his report on a rugby tournament in the Adirondacks.
  • My good pal the Pope announced his rules of the road earlier this week. I think this is a good thing. If the Conservative party is going to co-opt NASCAR, the Vatican was wise to grab the branding of the drive home. But I am sure he ripped this one off from me, something of a personal motto: “courtesy, uprightness and prudence will help you deal with unforeseen events.”
  • Remember when cable TV was in its teens and the new channels got notice? One, the History channel, quickly was dubbed “the war channel” as it was odd to see old battle footage documentaries all the time. The other night, I was watching one about WWI and followed up with some surfing and came across this extraordinary contemporary report on the fall of Brussels in 1914.
  • I find these addiction to email stats interesting. I can’t say I am addicted to email because it’s died back a bit compared to a few years ago as a tool for me. A bit over the top to write: “[h]alf of Britons could not exist without e-mail…” Also noteworthy is the observation that Facebook is establishing itself as MySpace for adults.
  • The forces of anti-Canadian flag waving in Los Angeles have backed down. I suppose there being so few Canadians in the area, the Dodgers didn’t know what they were looking at when they saw the Maple Lead flapping up there in the bleachers.
  • Having only lived in Canadian military towns for most of my life – without being a military kid (except for that Berlin airlift bit in the RAF) – it was odd to see the brief flap in Toronto over the yellow ribbon thingies on the Big Smoke’s emergency vehicles. In the end the right thing was done which is good as I support supporting. Russon’s a bit surprised that the Star supports supporting those supporting us.

Well, that is it for now. Not an earth shattering week but we are again the house of many mouths and that sort of keeps things local. Wizards tonight as well as maybe Steve and Barry’s.