Gizmag reports on the explosion of "extreme beers" containing more than 20% alcohol.

Typical beer has around 4 to 6% ABV (alcohol by volume); particularly strong beers using special strains of yeast and careful brewing can get up around 12%, giving quite a surprise to the unwary drinker.

In the 1990s, Samuel Adams upped the ante with their 17.5% ABV Triple Bock (1994), 21% Millennium (1999), and 24-27% Utopia series (2002-2007): beers said to be more like brandy or port than traditional beers, but still made without distillation. (No, I haven't tried any of these yet. You buying?)

Then, just over a year ago, interest in the century-old technique of "ice distillation" heated up. Ice distillation takes advantage of the fact that water freezes more easily than alcohol: freeze beer just right, and you can remove much of the water (as ice) and get a stronger beer left behind. (Note that according to the wik, freeze distillation can also concentrate poisonous compounds like fusel alcohols; so don't try this at home.)

Breweries using this technique have been in an arms race recently, rapidly taking the record from 31% ABV to an astounding 43% -- 86 proof, the same alcohol content Jack Daniels whiskey used to have (before JD's wimp-out of a few years ago).

"I am confident we can get to 50% with all the right qualities,", says Georg Tscheuschner of Schorschbräu, the maker of the 43% "Schorschbräu Schorschbock".

I've previously reported on the bad science around flu vaccine recommendations, and how the flu in general and H1N1 specifically have apparently been overblown as health threats.

(Please note that my considerations here are limited to the flu. This is not an "anti-vaccine" rant; I got a Tdap shot a few months ago -- and felt like crap for a day or two, but given the seriousness of diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus and the effectiveness of those vaccines, it was worth it.)

Now, the BMJ reports on the conflicts of interest and lack of transparency around the World Health Organization's declaration of the H1N1 pandemic and its recommendations for responses.

Most shockingly, the WHO actually changed the definition of a pandemic in May 2009 so that H1N1 would qualify, removing the qualification that an outbreak must cause "enormous numbers of deaths and illness". And it estimated that 2 billion H1N1 cases were likely -- 1 out of 3 human beings on the whole planet -- even after the winter season in Australia and New Zealand showed that only about one to two out of 1000 people were infected.

It did this while taking advice from people with financial and research ties with Big Pharma companies that produced antivirals and vaccines; one researcher who wrote key guidelines had been paid by Roche and GlaxoSmithKline.

Some of the feedback I received on the first draft of the book suggested that a final chapter, a sort of capstone to tie it all together, might be useful. I've been banging that idea around for a bit, and I think this week I got the core of it down: nothing really new of course, but I do like the variety of sources I'm quoting, and thanks to Amy Wilde for the first Dale Carnegie quote.

The religions that have been inflicted upon us for centuries have declared that this life is nothing but a preparation or a test for some eternal, non-physical life to come. It's certainly a useful idea for maintaining hierarchical power structures: if you're getting the short end of the stick now, hey, relax, no need to work for equality or anything crazy like that. Keep quiet and you'll get your Eternal Reward in the Great Beyond.

But more than that: in putting forth the existence of some more important supernatural realm, these religions have denigrated the physical world, calling it "mere matter" -- as if there were anything "mere" about atoms forged in the heart of an exploding supernova, slowly organizing into complex forms, pulling on and being pulled by every other particle in the Universe through the mystery of gravity; as if the stuff that makes you and me and whales and diamonds and the rings of Saturn and the Orion nebula, is deficient, worthy of contempt.

Why? Largely because it changes: it cycles around, it is subject to birth and decay. And rather than accept that is is our desire for changelessness that is at fault, mainstream religions -- as well as Spiritualism and many "New Age" beliefs that derive from it -- have held the Universe guilty for not being what we think we want.

But in contrast, the naturalism out of which Paganism emerged tells us that this world and everything in it is a wonder; in Whitman's words, "a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars".

And a famous Zen koan tells us that the Buddha-nature is present even in the lowliest objects. The story goes that Master Yun-men was just coming out of the outhouse when a student asked him, "What is the Buddha?" As it happened, the master happened to see the paddle used to spread the outhouse manure into compost piles, and answered, "Dry shit on a stick!"

It's all about this world, here, now.

And I mean now! Here! Wherever you are, reading an electronic copy on your computer screen, or sitting with a dead trees version in the library, or outside under a tree, or inside on the crapper. The dust on your keyboard, the ant crawling on your foot, the annoying guy talking too loud, the shit stain in the toilet bowl, that funny smell, the ache in your knee, the ache in your heart, this is IT, the dance of atoms, the net of jewels. There's nothing to wait for. The universe has a billion billion billion tellers, no lines, no waiting, instant service. Enlightenment? "You're soaking in it", as an old TV commercial for dish soap said.

Portland's Red and Black Cafe is a worker-owned collective -- basically, the place sounds like an Oregonian version of Red Emma's, without the books but with beer and wine.

As part of their "Safer Space" policy, they recently starting refusing service to cops.

Note that Portland cops have already killed three people this year; one of these shootings, that of Aaron Campbell, was even criticized by the city's mayor, who said "...Aaron Campbell did not need to die that January night. The events and on-the-scene communication breakdown that occurred cost the Campbell family a son, a brother, a cousin. The Campbell family's pain, anger and outrage are real, they are justified and they deserve serious attention." Another fatal shooting was of a mentally ill man "armed" with an X-acto knife. And there have been several other questionable shootings over the past few years.

So concern that people displaying the "gang colors" of this organization may be a danger to others, are certainly justified.

Given the sort of people who make it on to the Baltimore City PD, if I owned a place in Baltimore I'd have to consider a similar policy.

When I was a kid, my exposure to superheroes came more from the Super Friends cartoons on Saturday morning than from comic books. And those cartoons didn't much feature the heroes' origin stories.

But once in a while I'd get my hands on some of that four-color newsprint. And one of those comics (probably an issue of Justice League of America) featured, in some flashback context or another, the origin of the Green Lantern, Hal Jordan.

GL's origin story was my favorite: unlike those who were born into their powers (like Superman) or got them by accident (like Spider Man), Jordan's were awarded to him because of his character.

The Green Lantern Corps is an interstellar force of crime-fighters and heroes, whose powers come from the rings they wear. Before Jordan, Abin Sur was the Green Lantern for this sector of the galaxy; he crashed on Earth, and Jordan, a test pilot, flew to the scene and risked his life to try to save the dying alien. Sur sees Jordan as a worthy replacement, and gives him the ring.

In some tellings, Jordan is summoned by the ring when Sur directs it to find someone honest and fearless. But the point is that Jordan wasn't selected at random: he earned it.

Which is why a lot of GL fans are feeling nervous about the tagline seen on promotional art just released for next summer's Green Lantern movie: "Anyone can be chosen."

Uh, no, guys, that's the point. It takes a very special person (or other sentient being, up to and including an intelligent planet) to wield a Green Lantern ring. Not just "anyone".

Hollywood, please don't mess this up.

Comic book geeks know that Master Splinter -- the rat who was the sensei of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles -- obtained his skills when he was the pet of a ninja master. He would observe and mimic his master.

Apparently, then, the bear seen in this video was once owned by a master of bojutsu, the art of the wooden staff.

While some have suggested that the footage is fake, the Telegraph has corroborating information about the "Kung Fu Bear": he's at the Asa Zoo in Hiroshima, where zookeepers encouraged his hobby by giving him sticks.

(A nice historical overview of bojutsu and jojutsu is at koryu.com.)

Today's Zelda's Inferno exercise: salute to the departed -- write a eulogy or elegy to someone or something

many things have come and gone
family friends ideas heroes gods dreams
this is the way of all things
a world constantly melting and reforming
shapes in the clouds
faces seen that drift apart

we try to grab the shifting shape
as if we hold it tightly enough it will not change

and of course this will not succeed

and to learn this is a loss
and a gain
a loss of innocence
a loss of illusion, a loss of ignorance
a gain of knowledge, a gain of freedom

Somewhere in my parents' house is an old elementary school photo of me in a Spock shirt. I don't mean a t-shirt with a picture of Mr. Spock on it (I've got one of those now), I mean a dark blue tunic with a black collar and a silver patch in the shape of the swooshy stylized rocketship of the Enterprise (later, Star Fleet) logo, with the Science department symbol (an oval inside a circle, that always looks like a basketball to me).

When I was in high school, my physics teacher dubbed me with the nickname "Spock".

Clearly, as you can tell by the beard, I grew up to be the Evil Spock; nevertheless, this article at io9, "How You Can Live Like A Vulcan Without Bleeding Green", is right up my alley.

Vulcans have something most made-up races can only dream of: a central contradiction that's ultra-compelling. They're overflowing cauldrons of passion, who have mastered their emotions to such a high degree they appear almost robotic. No matter how pissed off or freaked out you might ever get, you can't be as hot-blooded as a Vulcan. And you'll have to work pretty hard to be half as cool.

Vulcans have a philosophy, a way of life, and a spiritual discipline. And they get things done. Best of all, you don't really need alien physiology and fancy powers to embrace the Vulcan way of life.

...

So here are ten ways you can live like a Vulcan, starting today.

Their advice is pretty good, including items such as: wish other people long life and prosperity, celebrate diversity, become a vegetarian (Spock was, as best I can recall, my only example when I stopped eating meat in the early 80s -- vegetarians were not yet everywhere!), and learn to meditate.

As a genuine and authorized Discordian Pope, as well as an ordained minister of the Church of the SubGenius, and an early evangelist for Pastafarianism, I would be remiss if I did not share this thought-provoking paper by Laurel Narizny:

Satirical and parody religions developed in accord with what Agehananda Bharati calls the “pizza effect.” The original pizza was a hot baked bread exported to America, embellished, and returned to Italy, where it became a national dish; similarly, the first
joke religions cobbled together numerous aspects of popular culture, occulture, and counterculture; synthesized them with postmodern ideas about religion; and are now subtly transforming religion in the United States. Joke religions are, in effect, a synthesis of and a vernacular reaction to both institutional religions, such as Christianity, and the more loosely defined “institutional” occult and counterculture groups, such as neo-paganism.

David Chidester -— the only scholar so far, as noted above, to publish anything more than a passing mention of joke religions -— calls joke religions “authentic fakes.” They are authentic because they negotiate the politics of being human in relation to the divine, which is essentially how I have defined religion, but are also explicit parodies of religion—“simultaneously simulations and the real thing.”

...

Many people consider joke religions “fakes” because of their use of startling, even offensive, humor. As we have seen, however, religious humor is a form of “deep play” that works to renegotiate ideas about tradition, space, identity, community, and the body,
and uses paradox to further one’s progress toward enlightenment.