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.
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.
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.
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.
(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:
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.
Sorry ’bout the sparse posting of late — yup, I’m writing another paper. This week’s Misanthropy has a “bad ideas” theme.
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The first one comes from Great Britain, and may be a brilliantly cynical piece of hysteria-prompted marketing rather than a truly bad idea:
(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.
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Our next bad idea comes from no less luminary a figure than Paul Krugman, whose interventionist economics are beloved by statists everywhere:
(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.
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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:
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.
There are damn few things that’ll get me out of bed at 0530h on a Saturday morning. One of them is a fire alarm; another is an early flight home for the holidays. Next week it may be a charity clothing drive at my father’s church. Today it was the start of the 77th 24 Heures du Mans.
What I find particularly compelling about Le Mans-style sports car racing isn’t just the technological sophistication of the cars — particularly the prototypes, of course, but every car in the 24H strikes a fascinating balance between outright speed, maximal traction, and easily-serviced robustness. (I doubt you’ll see any other class of car that can hit 210mph in a straight line, corner well above 3.5G, and undergo a full engine swap in under 7 minutes all in the same configuration.) It’s not just the variety of competitive cars — while the front rank of the LMP1 class is turning into all-diesels all-the-time, it beats the hell out of spec series like NASCAR’s Sprint Cup and, well, damn near everything else besides Formula One. It’s also the fact that, as Dave Despain noted around 10 hours into the race in the SpeedTV colour commentary, the Le Mans series are particularly relevant to motorsports as a whole — and to motor vehicles as a whole.
I’ve already mentioned that the dominance of big diesel engines in the premier class of LM racing stems from the series’ focus on fuel economy as well as outright performance — this year one the big stories is the degree to which the Audi and Peugeot LMP1 diesels continue to outclass the gasoline-powered LMP1s despite being gimped by the regulations. I’ve also noted that Audi’s LMS-motivated engine development has directly resulted in roughly a 10% improvement in the efficiency of all of its production-car engines. This year’s take-away comment from Le Mans comes from Jake Corvette Racing’s Steve Wesoloski (I think), who took a good five minutes — that’s a lap and a half around the Circuit de la Sarthe, by the way — simply to list the technologies being developed by the C6.R programme which are on the way to production ‘vettes. (He was also careful to mention that Corvette Racing has a cost:benefit ratio less than one, although I doubt that any of his new benevolent overlords in government were watching.) Do you want ceramic wheel bearings that offer an essentially free decrease in rolling resistance? I sure do.
Gordon Kirby has been complaining about spec cars of late, particularly of their tendency to make the spectacle of racing far less entertaining. I submit that relevance is another casualty of spec car encroachment: if your “Impala SS” Sprint Cup car is nothing more than a homologated Car of Tomorrow with a carefully-regulated spec engine within, the nameplate becomes a joke. Maybe the jaded fans of NASCAR will join the Formula One exponents who, like yours truly, are sick of the bickering between Max, The Bernie, and the FOTA — and we can all enjoy a good season of multiclass sports car racing next year.
(Particularly if the rumours SpeedTV reported are true and both Ferrari and Porsche are looking for a way back into LMP1!)
WHARRGARBL, the universe, and everything.
——
We begin with the news that PETA doesn’t like the idea of Seattle’s fishmongers tossing around the corpses of murdered sea-kit…
Oh, wait, no, hang on. Let me quote Lindsay Rajt, a PETA spokeswoman in Norfolk, Va:
“Fish feel pain and fear just like dogs and cats do and I don’t think the AVMA would dare take part in the dead kitten toss. Really, morally, there is no difference between throwing around dead kittens and throwing around dead fish.”
Now wait just a fucking minute. I thought we’d stopped saying the eff-word, and started calling them “sea kittens“.
(And if you’re going to make wild claims about vertebrate physiology, cite your fucking sources, will you?)
But wait: I have a special image for making fun of PETArds:
Go cry in a house fire, you bedwetting dipshits
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While I’m on the subject of those irretrievably divorced from reality, I can’t fail to mention these dipshits: the New York Times!
Sorry, I got confused there. I guess it’s not the NYT I’m mocking here (at least not primarily), but the trust-fund hipsters:
Luis Illades, an owner of the Urban Rustic Market and Cafe on North 12th Street, said he had seen a steady number of applicants, in their late 20s, who had never held paid jobs: They were interns at a modeling agency, for example, or worked at a college radio station. In some cases, applicants have stormed out of the market after hearing the job requirements.
“They say, ‘You want me to work eight hours?’ ” Mr. Illades said. “There is a bubble bursting.”
Wait, I have a mocking image for that too:
Oh, I guess it was the same one. Dang.
Seriously, though, I can feel these people’s pain — like Bill Clinton, only without a secretary to suck my cock. (Damn the luck!) I was once a recent high-school grad supported by my parents. Only, well, I got a fucking job.
But surely we shouldn’t be feeling smug schadenfreude at the suffering of people whose independent existence teeters so precariously on the line between bare solvency and utter ruin, right? Like fuck we shouldn’t!
In the boom years, Mr. Weinstein said, 40 percent of the mortgage applications he reviewed for buyers in Williamsburg included down-payment money, from $50,000 to $300,000, from parents. About 20 percent of the applications listed investments that gave the young buyers $3,000 to $10,000 of monthly income.
[...]
The culture of the area often mocks residents who depend on their families. Misha Calvert, 26, a writer who relied on her parents during her first year in the city, now has three roommates, works in freelance jobs and organizes parties to help keep her afloat while she writes plays and acts in films. There is a “giant stigma,” she said, for Williamsburg residents who are not financially independent.
“It takes the wind out of you if you’re not the independent, self-reliant artist you claim to be,” she said, “if you’re just daddy’s little girl.”
Just a minute; I have a mocking image for that, too:
For full disclosure, I’m a grad student at a university that gets part of its funding from the provincial government — so I’m being decidedly hypocritical here, as I’m deriving my livelihood from funds stolen from taxpayers. I can’t realistically repay everyone who’s contributed to my education (willingly or otherwise), but I’m gonna try. (Totalrecoil, send me an email and I’ll send you a cheque.)
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On to more pressing matters of finance. Y’all might recall the Troubled Asset Relief Program[me] imposed by the Bush 43 administration which sought to prevent banks which had proven that they deserved to fail from doing so, and made its attempt with taxpayers’ dollars. Well, it turns out that those banks aren’t so keen on sheltering under the big government TARP:
Now, we’ve already discussed the notion of prepayment as an investment risk. But surely the whole point of government, rather than private sector, investment is that it isn’t subject to such fickle market forces but will do what’s right… isn’t it? Why did Citibank et al. have to fight so fucking hard to start repaying their debt to the taxpayers?
Well, national crises are useful to governments:
President Barack Obama cautioned against attaching too much significance to the TARP repayments, and said the country still faces a struggle to overcome the worst economic downturn in generations.“This is not a sign that our troubles are over; far from it,” he said. “The financial crisis this administration inherited is still creating painful challenges for businesses and families alike. But it is a positive sign.”
(See also “omgonoz.gif”, above.)
While I’m on the subject of government models, here’s a curious conclusion:
“We have not actually broken through the worst-case scenario, but let’s face it, the numbers are bad and they’re heading in the wrong direction,” Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard professor who heads the five-member panel, told a congressional committee.
(You may recognize the name “Elizabeth Warren” from a pair of damning analyses coming from Megan McArdle’s blog. Ms. Warren? Meet statistics. DIAF, kthxbye!)
But alas (again!) for Ms. Warren, the numbers appear to have broken through the worst-case scenario:
Whoops. Good thing we spent all that money bailing out banks that were desperate to fail, isn’t it?
So the banks can’t find useful ways to spend the money tossed at them by oblivious feds, and unemployment’s rising as a consequence of the fact that simply throwing money at an economy like a “Keynesian” who’s never bothered to read Keynes doesn’t work. I’m shocked. Shocked is what I am.
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Finally, we examine this curious piece of the facepalmingly obvious as reported by Coyote Blog:
- New ownership buys San Diego Union-Tribune, apparently the city’s largest newspaper
- The new ownership group is funded in part by investments from public pension funds
- Public officials argue that since the paper is owned in part with some of their money, the newspaper should no longer be allowed to criticize public officials
That’s the sort of thing that would make Captain Louis Renault sputter in mute indignation, then reach for his sidearm. Even in California police Captains are permitted to carry sidearms, right?
Commenter “GW” notes that:
[W]hen the taxpayers pay your salary, you are not the “owner” of a subsidized newspaper.
Just so.
