Author: Alan

CBC’s Freestyle

I listened to the first edition of the new afternoon Radio 2 to 4 show Freestyle as I worked away yesterday and I was not upset at all. New CBC things usually get quite upsetting but this did not.

To be fair, host Kelly Ryan was one of my favorite people in the undergrad gang and I like to hear her brightness mid-afternoon. People will get moany about things like the pop music being played seeing as it is just twenty years since they removed classical music – was it RSVP? – from the afternoons on CBC 1. That’s kinda breakneck whiplashy for Canada.

I hope that Kelly’s news background and interviewing strength will come through more and more especially with their use a technique of no introductions to interviews used on BBC radio which gives a bit of pace. It will find its place.

My Favorite Legal Article

I just came across the searchable, on-line, member’s only archive of the Canadian Bar Review which I immediately whirled into use to find my favorite law journal article of all time “The Early Provincial Constitutions” by J.E.Read from 1948. Classic nerd knowledge fills every page: The content of that ur-document the Letters of Patent for Nova Scotia from 1749, the fact that the British Empire was a unitary state without rival sovereignty, the cite for Re Cape Breton (1846), 5 Moo P.C. 259 confirming the use of Royal prerogative to unify two colonies into one.

Wow. Neato. I’ll be back to you guys later.

Canada The Powerhouse

There are plenty of folk who use blogs – imagine – to blindly criticize our fair land, saying it is a shame that we do not have standing armed forces of 250,000 to rattle our swords now and then, saying it is a shame that we are taxed for sensible public services looking with envy southward where conservatives get to spend but not pay for it, saying that it is a shame we let people actually live as and with whom and how they decide without asking for permission. So it is good to be reminded that Canada is doing very well these days as it has been doing for quite some time. We’ve even it the lowest unemployment rate for 30 years despite the dollar being now about 25% higher in relation to our largest customer compared to where it was about two years ago.

You wonder when some folk would ever be happy.

Lee’s Mild, 8th Anniversary Ale, Stone, California

What can you say about a beer that says so much about itself. I picked this one out of the stash, $5.99 USD last time I was south. It is a one off brew made in August 2004 from Stone of a previous standard of theirs called Lee’s Mild…which makes it more of a revival than a one off. At 7.8% I am wondering where I will find the mild in it but these things do happen sometimes.

Mild is generally the lightest of the dark ales – below porter, sub-dark and under brown. Big in, say, Wales circa 1910, milds are now rare. They also were a bit of an innovation when they came out as they were a break from stales or beers that had attractive sour tang to them. The idea of an actually sterile and fresh to the consumer beer was very 19th century
industrial revolution. I think the only true one I have had – other than those I brewed myself – was at C’est What in Toronto last winter. The perfect session ale. But that one was only 3.3%…or 42% the strength of this one of Lee’s. So what will this bottle provide when opened. The BAers give great hope. More in a moment when I get the danged thing open.

It pours a really attractive reddish mahogany with a rich and lace leaving tan head. Good and black rummy – sweetness worked through and dried. Masses of malt with notes of fig, date and pumpernickle with a good swath of green and twiggy hops cutting but not severing betwixt and between. It is just a notch below an old ale or something that might come out for Christmas but not by much. A long long finish. Another impressive big ale from one of the great US brewers.

Contract Enforcement

This is an interesting situation and an educational point on the enforcement of contracts:

“If they don’t comply with the contract … we can do whatever we want with these aircraft, whatever the hell we want. Maybe we’ll give 10 planes to Cuba or to China so they can study the technology,” Chavez said. “We could give them away and buy aircraft from China or from Russia. … We don’t need any U.S. imperialism,” he said. A U.S. defense official said there had been no communications with Venezuela’s government about any sale of F-16s to other countries, but he noted that U.S. laws on foreign arms sales were “quite strict” regarding third-party transfers.

Via the Unabrewer.