Planes, trains, and automobiles

Traveling by car may be long and tedious, but it does leave one in control of one’s own destiny.  Last year, confronted with flooding in southern Wisconsin, my parents drove to a family reunion in Iowa by way of northern Illinois.  Seven months previously, Northwest Airlines reacted to an unexpected snowstorm over the Rocky Mountains by canceling every flight related to those delayed.

Long-time readers of this blog will recall that I am no particular fan of air travel.  Travel by car is, in a transcontinental sense, often somewhat inconvenient.  It gives me some sour satisfaction to discover that trains are no better.

• Amtrack Sucks (Reason.com)

(Hat tip: Jalopnik)

It does make it somewhat easier to face the prospect of a day wasted in air travel tomorrow somewhat easier to face.

Beers of Milwaukee, vol. 24

Nope, not done yet.

Today’s first beer is Mad Hatter IPA from the New Holland Brewing Company.  It reminds me very much of Tree’s Hophead IPA, only with a bit less bitter hoppy goodness and a bit more hoppy complexity.  It’s not as sweet as most IPAs I’ve tried that go for “aromatic floral/citrus complexity” rather than bludgeoning you about the head with hops, and that really makes the beer for me.

The second is Flying Dog’s “Double Dog” Double Pale Ale, which is apparently a double recipe of their Doggy Style ale.  Whereas Doggy Style is bitter and hoppy while carrying some smooth malty goodness along for the ride, Double Dog is thick and sweet as you sip it, but almost immediately gives way to a bittersweet richness that sticks around for a long time, much longer than Doggy Style’s abruptly-disappearing aftertaste.  It runs 11.5% ABV, which is perfectly appropriate: this is not a beer you’re likely to guzzle.  I’m enjoying it, but I’ve yet to fall in love.

Beers of Milwaukee, vol. 23

If a picture is worth a thousand words, here’s a beer review in one thousand sixty-two of them:

That’s Sierra Nevada’s Torpedo “extra IPA” being overshadowed by Stone Brewery’s Ruination IPA.  Torpedo is a perfectly good beer, and I wouldn’t hesitate to buy it if I couldn’t find Ruination, but it amounts to about 80% of the Stone beer in every significant way.

Beers of Milwaukee, vol. 22

So I picked up a bottle of Stone’s Imperial Russian Stout.  It tastes more like a porter to me, so that’s how I’m going to approach it.

My journey into beers with meat-loaf textures begins in… oh, about 1999 or 2000, when Calgary’s Big Rock Brewing Company came out with a winter porter named “Cold Cock”.  (It had a snow-covered rooster on the label.  Get it?  Geddit?)  Naturally every pub at my university had to get a keg or three of it, and my drinking crowd loved it for the double entendres.  I loved it for something more — it was tasty damn beer: thick, rich, and sweet without being overwhelming.  Oh, and it was about 7.5% alcohol by volume.

Big Rock pulled their Cold Cock off of the market after a few months.  Probably something about the name.

Shortly thereafter I came across a beer by Okanagan Springs going by the title of “Old English Porter”.  Now, anyone who writes “Old English” when they might be tempted to write “Olde Englishe” gains a quantum of my respect simply because they passed up an obvious opportunity to be retarded, so I bought a six-pack.  It was good — much like Cold Cock, but readily available and at least half a percent more alcoholic.

My basic problem with Okanagan Springs’ porter is that I tend to drink a six-pack in one evening, regardless of my better intentions, and my system is ill-equipped to recycle two litres of 8% ABV beer without a raging hangover.

I was reasonably satisfied with the Old English Porter until I discovered Flying Dog and their Road Dog and Gonzo Imperial porters.  Well, Road Dog is ridiculously tasty and reasonably forgiving, and Gonzo is more aggressive but not — quite — homicidal.  Gonzo RIP (do note the acronym) held my fancy for some time until I came across Old Rasputin, which at 9% ABV packs quite a punch and also holds the title as the only beer that’s ever inspired me to lick the glass clean.

And now there’s Stone’s Russian Imperial Stout, figureheaded by a gargoyle wearing a bestarred fur hat.  Oh, and it’s 10.5% ABV.

This is the best 10.5% beer I’ve ever tasted.  It’s sweet, of course, but not overpoweringly so.  In fact, it reminds me very much of the Okanagan Springs porter I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, though more so in just about every direction.  It is thick, rich, bittersweet, and utterly worthwhile beer.  It demands, and earns, every ounce of one’s respect.  It is not particularly nuanced or subtle: Stone’s RIS is a precise and fine-tuned but very direct beer.  It goes straight to the midbrain, and the first thing it destroys is the little chunk of sensible caution which says “perhaps only one pint of 10.5% beer in an evening is enough”.

It is, however, half a percentage point behind Old Rasputin.

That could easily be attributed to measurement error.  I’ll have to drink more of both and attempt to duplicate the result.

*sigh*

The trials and tribulations of a beer reviewer.

SCCA June Sprints at Road America

Holy shit, that was fun.

Got up to Elkhart Lake yesterday for the second day of the 2009 SCCA June Sprints at Road America along with my uncle.  We showed up just as the Formula Atlantics and Formula Mazdas were finishing their second qualifying session, filling the air with a beautiful song of high-revving engines.  The GT cars started their second qualifying as we found our way to the stands outside Canada Corner, just in time to watch a GT1 Corvette end the session prematurely by depositing itself in the gravel trap and a trail of fluid right across the racing line — the latter of which collected a 911 (which spun towards the inside of the corner exit but was otherwise unharmed) before the stewards black-flagged the session.

The first race of the day was the 69-strong field of Spec Racer Fords — which must’ve been exciting at T1 on the other corner of the track, but served us just fine at T12.  Here’s the front of the pack on the pace lap:

…and the tail, thirty-five rows later, heading up towards T14:

They weren’t shy about passing under green:

We didn’t see any incidents at T12 while we were there, but a multi-car wreck just over the crest of the hill into T6 stopped the SRF race about six laps in, and when it resumed they took only another three laps of racing.  We grabbed lunch during the stoppage, and spent the abbreviated lunch hour wandering around the paddock.

One gentleman let me drool over his D Sport Racer at awfully close range.  My only regret of the day is that I didn’t take more photos:

Yeah, I want one.  The tape over the front of the body might be for drag reduction: Road America is a fast course with a lot of long straights, and this DSR had a 1000cc powerplant.  Very clean car, aerodynamically; I wonder if they’re allowed to run dive planes at slower tracks.

Underbody tunnel exits, nearly right up to the lower plane of the rear wing.  I believe that’s a lower suspension arm cutting through the left-hand tunnel.  Other than the tunnel exits, the rear of the car is pretty open, which I’m sure helps draw air out of the rear wheelwells.  (A few of the CSRs had fully-enclosed rear wheels, like the Jaguar Group C cars.)  I’m a bit surprised that the underbody doesn’t run under the gearbox.

Between the louvers on the front fenders and the opening at the rear, I don’t think high pressure in the front wheelwells is going to be a problem.  I’m guessing that the ledge running around the outside of the sidepods is there to direct air towards the rear wing rather than let it flow over the sides.  You can see in the top image how it curves inboard of the rear wheelwells.

A bit later on, after watching the Formula Fords and Formula Continentals tear up the track, we found ourselves at a bar and concession stand called Perl’s with a great view of turns 6, 7, and 8.  It was a perfect place to watch the CSR/DSR/S2000 race: from that vantage point, one can watch a driver set up a pass exiting T6, carry momentum through T7, and execute the pass into T8.  (I also got a chance to watch the above DSR’s pilot make a pass for position around the outside of T7 — possibly the highlight of the afternoon.)

T6 exit:

We’ll follow these cars down into T8 as the black-and-green DSR completes his pass and the white car’s driver tries to follow him through.

T6-7:

The green and red car is, I believe, a Radical SR3.  The programme has them running in CSR, but they were well off the pace at Road America that afternoon.  In particular, it seemed like they had a hard time carrying as much speed through T7 as the rest of the CSR/DSR field.

The run up to T8:

That’s a kart track in the background.  I was tempted, but the racing was too good to miss.  You can see the braking markers for T8 on the wall to the drivers’ right.  Notice how much of a gap the black DSR has opened up on the Radical.

T8 apex:

The black DSR is behind that first tree; sorry ’bout that.

There was of course more racing: I got to watch the Formula Atlantic/Formula Mazda race from the outside of T5, which was spectacular but ill-suited to photography.  (All of my photos from there are full of chain-link safety fence.)  If I make it back to the June Sprints next year, I’ll definitely spend more time taking photos in the paddock and watch most of the races from Perl’s above T7.

All in all, a great way to spend a Sunday.

Sometimes it works, part II

A few months ago, I mentioned that the INS installation at Vancouver International Airport had dispensed with its traffic-control personnel, and by not directing travelers to what those officers felt were the most efficient lines had managed to drastically reduce waiting times.  Well, the security checkpoint which I bemoaned half a year ago has also rid itself of those earnestly helpful staff, and has (as a consequence, I suspect) also rid itself of obnoxiously long lines.

In respect for the tradition of obstructive Canadian bureaucratic influence, they have one agent at the head of the line whose sole purpose is to inspect travelers’ boarding passes, a job which is also performed by the first CATSA agent one encounters at the security checkpoints.  This is of course my tax dollars at work.

Hmm.

What kind of “kittens” are these?

(Those are Drosophila melanogaster — fruit flies)

Compound-eye kittens?

Hexapod kittens?

I mean, the “sea kittens” thing worked so damn well, didn’t it?  Surely they can use the same campaign to stem the rampant disregard for and violence against our little insect friends — violence that has spread to the highest office in the nation:

• PETA wishes Obama hadn’t swatted that fly (Huffington Post)

I suppose it’s comforting that, despite its present economic woes, we still live in a world in which an irritatingly ubiquitous congregation of whining nincompoops can dedicate their lives to shrill protestation against even the most trivial banalities.

Mid-week misanthropy, vol. 43

Sorry ’bout the sparse posting of late — yup, I’m writing another paper.  This week’s Misanthropy has a “bad ideas” theme.

——

The first one comes from Great Britain, and may be a brilliantly cynical piece of hysteria-prompted marketing rather than a truly bad idea:

• First ‘anti-stab’ knife to go on sale in Britain (Times Online)

(Even the Times have elided “Great” from “Britain”.)

To be clear, they’re talking about these things:

And what are they saying?

The first “anti-stab” knife is to go on sale in Britain, designed to work as normal in the kitchen but to be ineffective as a weapon.

(Emphasis added.)

So a tool designed to chop, carve, cut, slice, butterfly, and otherwise separate meat into many parts is expected to be “ineffective as a weapon”, hmm?  Yes, penetrating trauma is far more likely to kill you than surface-level cuts, but did anyone stop to read that before it saw publication?!

Wake me up when they invent a stab-proof screwdriver.

——

Our next bad idea comes from no less luminary a figure than Paul Krugman, whose interventionist economics are beloved by statists everywhere:

• Dubya’s Double Dip (New York Times)

(Hat tip: Megan McArdle)

The basic point is that the recession of 2001 wasn’t a typical postwar slump, brought on when an inflation-fighting Fed raises interest rates and easily ended by a snapback in housing and consumer spending when the Fed brings rates back down again. This was a prewar-style recession, a morning after brought on by irrational exuberance. To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble.

(Emphasis added.)

Wouldja look how well that turned out.  Aren’t Nobel Prize-winning economists stupposed to know what words like “bubble” mean?  Hey, Paulie:

Fucking Keynesians.

——

In British Columbian news, the provincial New Democrats have discovered — only a month after the election — that taking a giant crap on their core constituency was a bad idea:

• NDP backtracks on carbon tax, opposition to IPPs (CBC.ca)

Now, I’m somewhat skeptical of the notion that riding a bad idea into the ground like Slim Pickens on a thermonuke shows a party’s integrity and principle: it is instead symptomatic of a particularly stubborn strain of idiocy.  However, this particular reversal could have been handled with a bit more delicacy to prevent consequences like this:

Premier Gordon Campbell couldn’t be more pleased by the decision announced by NDP Leader Carole James on Thursday.

“I think Ms. James is now trying to repair a party that was badly damaged by the fact they were expedient instead of principled,” the premier said Friday. “But they have been the most anti-environmental political party in the country.”

Politics is tough, but it’s tougher when you’re stupid.