North Korean Photos

A rare view of life in rural North Korea is shown at the BBC where pictures an anonymous western business person was allowed to take are posted:

I could travel more or less where I pleased for my work, and even though we always had translators and minders, I was rarely prevented from taking photographs. I am under no illusions about the nature of the state. What I saw was how North Koreans live and work.

Quicknote: Celis Grand Cru, Michigan, USA

celisThis beer is from the Michigan Brewing Company but formerly was brewed in Austin Texas by Pierre Celis who had immigrated there after played a key role in the restoration of the entire Belgian white beer style. The brewery has a Flash time-line on all that history and here are three beer blog reviews of white beer and here are four more.

This ale is an example of a high-end white at 8% rather than the roughly 5% you would get with, say, your basic Hoegaarden. It pours fairly still, golden with a snow white head that disipates to foam and rim. The initial effect is definitely Duval mixed with Hoegaarden. There is the thickness and lipstickiness of the Belgian candi sugar and the heat of a Belgian golden strong beer like Duval as well as the corrianger-orange of a white. There is also pale ale grain, as opposed to just round maltiness, as well as balance from the cloy-cutting by the bitter if recessed hops. It would be interesting to compare this ale with others of this small style. I would buy again. BAers give it a 98% thumbs-up rating.

Day Ten: Act Two

OK. It is now act two. We have passed the first act, established a whole bunch of stuff, the main players have made their best opening statements and we have a sense of where the story is going. And we know we are nowhere near act four because the stage is not yet littered with bodies.

The election has gone well for everyone ten days in and we now that because nothing much has changed. No one has made a huge gaffe and the polls have not really shifted much except to indicate that the population is conspiring to maintain a Liberal minority.

  • Jay has staked his reputation and maybe a few ales on the conservatives ending up with about 50 seats, roughly half of what they have now and thinks that he is seeing that already coming to be. Other conservatives are not so bleak but one Grit is even strong on an announcement for stronger gun laws. That is confidence.
  • Jay also has found a great site keeping track of the polls called nodice.ca. The last poll they note shows:

    Liberal – 40%
    Conservative 28%
    NDP – 17%
    Bloc – 11%
    Green – 14%

    This is Liberal majority territory. Stephen Taylor is sifting for clues. It will be interesting to see if this is a blip from the subtly different world of 36.5, 29, 12, 18 and 4.5, to see if there is a recoil back from the brink to ensure another minority.

  • No one has gotten dirtymouthed yet and I think that no one will for now. If anyone starts saying bad things about others before the holidays it will only hurt them and nothing will be gained. So the NDP does not slam private medical clinics, both Layton and Martin will not say Harper is evil and Harper is rolling out large-ish spending like on childcare, reviving the baby-bonus in a way to the interest of some, even when he is cutting 4.5 billion or more from the budget with the GST cut and now another cut for small business. I think that the comment from a Liberal “handler” that the Conservatives were announcing too much for their own good is probably the most honest assessment of where we are. A word to the wise and an admission in one. Some call it hiding but if the polls are dropping why would you rock the boat?

Act two. In some plays it is like the second period of hockey, when you go away and do something else expecting either something interesting and different or the boringly same when you come back. No one wants to be the butt of Christmas party jokes, the only thing that the not so funny guy said that is remembered by everyone.

Lockerball

I have this memory of being in the car really early on a Summer morning when I was five or so. We are driving around Montreal, there for Expo 67 or Man and His World, and it is the day a Bealtes album was released and the car radio is just playing the lp straight though. I also remember the day that the Bealtes broke up a few years later in 1970, Mom remarking that it made the TV news. But 25 years ago this morning when I heard that Lennon was shot it was the morning of my Grade 12 English exam and we were playing lockerball waiting to be let in the room to write. Lockerball was just volleyball with a scrunched up ball of paper hit back and forth over the rock of lockers, one on one. You couldn’t see where the other guy was going to hit it. Like a good game of hack or bumball, it was one of those games that was only played in one place for a few weeks by a few people and then it passed.

Lennon was in a revival. We had copies of Double Fantasy and picture sleeve 45s of “Starting Over” and all had braced ourselves a few times on false alarms that the Beatles were going to play Saturday Night Live even though we also listened to the Talking Heads and the other new music. We grinded away at their songs on guitar in friends basements and argued by the resevior on Friday night who was more the most useless Beatle over whatever bad red Hungarian wine someone had been able to get. I had sold all my X-men comics one day on a trip to Halifax to buy German pressings of Beatles releases. I still have them. Lennon dying seemed to start a spate of shootings or maybe was the height of them. I heard Reagan was shot when I jumped in the car after soccer practice and the Pope was shot around then, too. But Lennon died and when I was 17 it was really bad, cursing by the lockers before the exam began.