Water, Water Everywhere

Jakarta is sinking.

Some suburbs in the capital already go underwater when there is a big tide but the problem is expected to get even worse.

Jakarta is sinking by up to 10 centimetres a year and Indonesia's national disaster centre says with oceans rising, large parts of the city, including the airport, will be inundated by 2030.

As developers suck up the watertable it dries out and the city slumps into the empty cavity.

"From our observations, since the 1960s the ground water has declined around 30 metres," the head of water resources at Indonesia's energy and mineral resources ministry, Dodid Murdohardono, said.

"The decline of ground water causes pressure in the groundwater lining and that's why Jakarta is sinking."

Meanwhile here in America the fight is on for water. In the wake of last year's drought, the Mississippi River is very shallow.

“We estimate that $7 billion in cargo will stop moving on the Mississippi River if a nine-foot channel cannot be maintained through the winter months,” says Craig Philip, CEO of Ingram Barge Company.

Cutting the flow from dams in South Dakota will reduce water levels in St. Louis by 3 to 4 feet. Realizing that this might effectively kill shipping on the Mississippi over the near term, a group of Midwest politicians including Illinois Senator Dick Durbin are asking President Obama to declare an economic emergency and authorize the Army Corps to reopen the dams.

But upstream states are saying, “not so fast.” South Dakota, for example, is calling dibs on millions of gallons of water for use in the states oil-fracking boom.

Even Senator Durbin admits that asking the President to settle what amounts to a water-war between states is a dicey prospect.

Presumably, if South Dakota doesn't get enough water, then the demand for Wisconsin's fracking-grade sand will decline. If the Mississippi isn't deep enough to allow barge traffic, then goods will have to be moved via train and truck and this will likely increase prices. Uff da!

Karben4 Makes 3

Madison's city limits now contain three breweries (plus Capital being within spitting distance) and several brewpubs. The latest is Karben4 Brewing which moved into Ale Asylum's old digs and had its "soft" opening on Friday. The Dulcinea and I arrived around 6:15 and the place was stuffed to the gills with revelers.

Three beers were on tap: NightCall, a smoked porter; SamuRyePA, a rye APA; and Block Party, an amber ale. We tried the porter and the APA. Would my hesitation stemming from brewmaster Ryan Koga's lacklustre effort at Yellowstone Valley Brewing be proven misplaced? Indeed it would.



The imperial pint glasses were a nice touch.

SamuRyePA was very similar to one of my favorite beers, Founders Red's Rye PA, with an intense citrus/grapefruit hop flavor. An excellent brew and probably a good way to find a niche in the local pale ale scene.

NightCall was tasty as well. The smoke flavor didn't dominate like a Schlenkerla but rather accented the roasted malt flavor. The brew also had a moderate spicy bitterness.

Wisconsin Beer Geek chatted with Koga who revealed that, in addition, to these three beers, an Irish red and a session ale will join the fray as annuals. There will also be four seasonal IPA's, the first of which will be a black IPA/American dark ale. Karben4 seems to be doing its level best to give Ale Asylum a run for its money.

While a bevy of IPAs doesn't particularly interest me, that promised session ale does. Something to look forward to in 2013.

It's Not Just Downtown Film Culture That Ails

Last month James Kreul asked in the pages of Isthmus "Why is downtown Madison film culture disappearing?". I didn't know that Kreul had returned to Madison (has he eschewed the scholarly casual look of blazer & tie for his grey hoodies once again?) so I was delightfully surprised to see the article.

With the Orpheum, Majestic, and University Square 4 out of the cinematic picture, Kreul ponders "Outside of the [Wisconsin Film] festival, does a downtown film culture exist without commercial theaters? And do downtown audiences value alternative film programming like they value the Capitol area's music and arts scenes?" He lauds the UW Cinematheque, the UW's WUD Film, and the Spotlight Cinema series at MMoCA but laments the fact that most of the films they show are here in town for but a single night, with the much-ballyhooed Holy Motors and David Cronenberg's latest Cosmopolis being the highest profile examples.

Before concluding he notes:

I point out the successes and shortcomings of nontheatrical venues to emphasize the vital role they play in Madison's film culture, for the most part against the odds. Another way to read the tea leaves is to conclude that Madison needs subsidized nontheatrical venues to bring in films like Holy Motors because it's not as good of a film town as it thinks it is.

Considering the relative affluence and level of education of Madison's population, you wouldn't think that Kreul's tasseomantic conclusion would hold water but it's the one I subscribe to. If Madison were a good film town, so to speak, we'd have a commercial art house. Instead we have Sundance Cinemas.

Sundance is apparently the fulcrum upon which much of Madison's alternative film programming balances. As the article points out, the Spotlight Cinema programmers get to show films that Sundance doesn't. "Distributors are reluctant to do a one-off screening because they're waiting for a full run at Sundance, which doesn't always happen," says one of them. "It pains me sometimes when a film doesn't get a Sundance run but our calendar is already set, so we can't jump in and get it. I was shocked that we got Take This Waltz [starring Hollywood heavy hitters Michelle Williams and Seth Rogen] because Sundance didn't end up running it." It pains me to hear that so much rides on whether Sundance, a theatre that somehow failed to book Lincoln, shows a film or not.

77 Square's Rob Thomas threw in his two cents about Kreul's piece last week. Thomas seems to have missed much of what he was saying. Kreul talks about a film culture involving challenging cinema, 35mm prints, having filmmakers visit Madison, events such as Yid Vicious doing a live soundtrack for a screening of The Golem, and community. Thomas, on the other hand, ignores most of that and sticks to the idea of whether and individual will be able to see a given movie or not. He's "upbeat" about "non-traditional" trends such as movies never reaching the cinemas and going directly to DVD and watching them via Hulu Plus or iTunes. He and Kreul are ultimately writing about different things.

Another instance which differentiates their views.

Kreul: "Not having weeklong runs can also diminish local press coverage and word-of-mouth promotion."

Thomas: "And, if one of those [smaller, independent] films do [sic] make it to a theater, they don't have the marketing budget to compete with the big boys."

What disappointed me most about Thomas' article was this:

Would it be better for the films to get a weeklong run at Sundance or Point? Maybe better for the distributor.

But for the audience? If only 200 people are going to come out to see “Holy Motors” anyway, isn’t it a better moviegoing experience for all 200 to see it in the same theater on the same night, rather than in audiences of a dozen at a time over the course of a week?

How incredibly asinine. If a movie gets a single screening, not everyone who wants to see it can be there. People have other commitments in life. Things come up. As Kreul wrote, "Technically speaking, Take This Waltz played in Madison, but there are several reasons you probably didn't see it. It was only shown once, and it played the evening of President Obama's first visit to Madison this fall. And that's just one of many misfortunes one-off screenings can have. (I missed Bela Tarr's The Turin Horse at Cinematheque due to a blizzard.)" On what basis does he conclude that Holy Motors has a terminal Madison audience of only a mere 200 people? Going back to Kreul's comment, a week-long run would have generated word of mouth. More tweets, more Facebook posts – surely more than 200 people would have gone to see it.

I think it's fair to ask why Madison is a pretty lousy film town that needs the UW and MMoCA to subsidize alternative fare. Is it the audiences or the programmers? Probably both.

Madison is a small metro area and has an even smaller foreign-born population which means that movies that don't get a certain stamp of approval at a film festival probably won't make it here nor will most foreign pictures who find a base audience in larger cities with populations whose native tongue isn't English.

As I said above, Madison has no commercial art house cinema. Sundance dabbles in that area but it's really just a multiplex for the well-heeled. The promise of a theatre connected to Robert Redford, a major film festival, and a mission statement about bringing "the finest selection of art, independent, foreign and documentary film programming" to Madison was all for naught. It ghettoizes smaller, independent, and foreign films by consigning them to the Screening Room which comes and goes. (As of now the SR has been absent for about two months and, if memory serves, was absent the first quarter of this year.) Instead the majority of movies on offer can be had at any of the other multiplexes in town. Madison has been excluded two years running for the Sundance Film Festival U.S.A. Screens are often given over to broadcasts of opera instead of movies.

Perhaps worst of all, Sundance Madison, given its pedigree, just doesn't seem to be interested in film culture that much. The theatre seems to be more excited about patrons drinking on their rooftop than getting people excited about cinema. I am hoping to see one of my favorite movies of all-time there next week - 2001: A Space Odyssey. While I am glad that it's going to be shown, it's sort of a letdown to know that Sundance didn't do much in the way of curating for Madison audiences - Cinemark did all the work here. Contrast Sundance Madison's Twitter feed with that of Sundance Kabuki. Here in Madison, someone logs in once a week and notes what movies are opening on Friday. In San Francisco, however, there is much more. Sure, there are plenty retweets of gushing praise, but also things like links to trailers and behind the scenes looks at movies that are playing there.

They can tell you months in advance when they will be showing an opera from New York but can't tell you when the Screening Room is to return. Where's 3D and HFR? And how could they not have gotten Lincoln? Sundance specializes in Oscar bait yet couldn't even land a Steven Spielberg movie. Very odd.

As I was pondering all of this, I wondered why Tai Chi Zero, a Chinese martial arts steampunk extravaganza, was never shown in Madison. There was a time when wuxia films were shown here – think Hero and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. What happened? Are commercial theatres now more reluctant to show foreign language films? Madison is home to TeslaCon, a steampunk convention that is growing by leaps and bounds. While not huge by numbers alone, we have 1,600 or so Chinese students at the UW making them the largest group of international students. Why did no one take a chance on Tai Chi Zero? Did Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame fare poorly here?

At the end of the day, I can't say why a particular movie doesn't make it to Madison (where were Branded - it played in Eau Claire for fuck's sake!, Beyond the Black Rainbow, and My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?). The Wisconsin Film Festival does well but I have no idea if audiences stay away from more challenging films and foreign movies the rest of the year. Kreul implies this but I don't know the numbers.

As my rant about Sundance indicates, I think that Madison has a film culture problem, not just downtown. Remember when we got an IMAX and the owner of Star Cinemas said, "Our goal is to try to have a Hollywood picture on the screen as much as possible and also have available one of the traditional Imax films"? Where are the traditional IMAX films? While there are some bright spots, Madison's commercial cinemascape is, sadly, very homogenous with its Oscar bait and blockbusters. Documentaries and shorts virtually unknown. Madison screens are also lilywhite with films about and made by people of color being as rare as a nun in a bikini. The UW and Spotlight Cinema don't just subsidize the downtown film culture, they do it for the whole city.

Hopefully at some point Madison cinemas will offer more challenging films and viewers will pick up the gauntlet.

Wisconsin CIO Has a Long Row to Hoe

The state of Wisconsin got a new CIO last month when Gov. Walker appointed David Cagigal as CIO. (He was apparently known as "Diamond Dave" during his tenure at Alliant Energy.) Cagigal has eight "action items". Here's #8:


8. Recruit, Develop and Retain Talent

As the baby boomer generation eventually retires from the workforce, a younger generation will enter, and in turn, will need to understand what the state has learned over the years. Cagigal said that as this happens, it will be crucial to encourage younger workers to enter into government.


I'd love to know how the brain trust at 101 East Wilson plan on recruiting younger (and, hopefully, competent) workers to enter state government when their potential boss at the governor's mansion thinks so poorly of them. "Uncle Scott wants you! Come get paid less than your private sector counterpart and have a boss who thinks you're a 'have' that needs to be taken down a notch or four!"

No Good Will Towards Yemenis for Christmas

Christmas is supposed to be about gluttony and buying lots of stuff but we also like to make overtures about peace on earth and good will towards men. So much for that. Two drone strikes in Yemen killed at least five people on Christmas Eve. They were carried out by forces led by a Christian and Nobel Peace Prize winner named Barack Obama. The dead were "suspected militants".

Whether these people had links to al-Qaeda remains to be seen. But, as Sudarsan Raghavan noted in the Washington Post the same day as these strikes, "When U.S. drones kill civilians, Yemen’s government tries to conceal it".

A rickety Toyota truck packed with 14 people rumbled down a desert road from the town of Radda, which al-Qaeda militants once controlled. Suddenly a missile hurtled from the sky and flipped the vehicle over.

Chaos. Flames. Corpses. Then, a second missile struck.

Within seconds, 11 of the passengers were dead, including a woman and her 7-year-old daughter. A 12-year-old boy also perished that day, and another man later died from his wounds.

The Yemeni government initially said that those killed were al-Qaeda militants and that its Soviet-era jets had carried out the Sept. 2 attack. But tribal leaders and Yemeni officials would later say that it was an American assault and that all the victims were civilians who lived in a village near Radda, in central Yemen. U.S. officials last week acknowledged for the first time that it was an American strike.

“Their bodies were burning,” recalled Sultan Ahmed Mohammed, 27, who was riding on the hood of the truck and flew headfirst into a sandy expanse. “How could this happen? None of us were al-Qaeda.”

More than three months later, the incident offers a window into the Yemeni government’s efforts to conceal Washington’s mistakes and the unintended consequences of civilian deaths in American air assaults. In this case, the deaths have bolstered the popularity of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the terrorist network’s Yemen affiliate, which has tried to stage attacks on U.S. soil several times.

Read that again: "the deaths have bolstered the popularity of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula".

Here's a picture from the scene of the crime.



Fortunately I can't discern the four severed heads that rescuers found when they arrived at that hellish scene.

It comes from an article by Letta Tayler at Foreign Policy called "Anatomy of an Air Attack Gone Wrong". In it she describes the devastation wrought by the murders.

The deaths from the September attack have devastated Sabool, a cluster of 120 brick-and-mud homes that residents say has no electricity, no paved roads, no schools, no hospitals, and no jobs apart from khat farming.

"Seven of the victims were breadwinners. Now we have 50 people in our village with no one to care for them," said Awadh, the local sheikh. "Who will raise them? Who will educate them? Who will take care of their needs?"

Sabooli, the farmer whose parents and only sister were killed, said six of his 10 remaining siblings are still too young to fend for themselves. "When I enter our house, my younger brothers still ask, 'Where are my mother, my father, and my sister?'" he said.

About 100 years ago during World War I there was the Christmas truce where soldiers stopped fighting and instead sang carols and exchanged food. Today soldiers go into the office on Christmas Eve, kill some people using a joystick while watching video displays, and then head home to celebrate the holidays. Things have certainly changed.

New Beers, New Brewery, and a Letter to the Woodman Brewery

Some new labels:

First is the next entry in Capital's new bomber series, Jacked Maibock. I presume this is just going to be a doppelbock of some sort. Good to see a goat return to the label, although mega-maxi-hyper-masculine-testosterone-fueled beer labels are getting old.



Sprecher is moving into the flavored malt beverage arena. Their root beer is well-known so a hard root beer is probably a good way to capitalize on its popularity.



Leine's is going to milk the Kool-Aid beer cow for all it's worth. I had their Lemon Berry Shandy last year at the Potosi Brew Fest and it was disgusting. Stick with Stiegl's radlers. The grapefruit version is fantastic.



I hear that Green Flash Brewing is now distributing here in Wisconsin. I haven't seen it but, then again, I haven't been looking. Can anyone confirm if it's on store shelves here in Madison?

Karben4's soft opening is tomorrow. According to a Facebook post, they will have three brews on tap:

NightCall (smoked porter)
SamuRyePA (rye based american pale ale)
Block Party (amber ale)

I am keeping an open mind despite Ryan Koga's Huckle-Weizen being a pretty lousy brew.

I tried Sam Adams' Norse Legend sahti last weekend and it was really tasty. Get it while you can. And don't forget that Scott Manning's take on the style is now on tap at the Vintage.

And there's this King Crimson-inspired label. Progressive rock and beer – two of the best things in life.



Lastly, I want to ask the folks at the Woodman Brewery to investigate quality control. Last week I poured four of your beers down the drain - four different brews. They all smelled wonderful. I loved the aroma of the Popcorn Lager, for instance, but it was terrible. The Halloween Ale tasted like clove water while the Red Oak Ale was little more than tap water with a dash of oak flavoring. I prefer not to drink rafters, thank you. Your Octoberfest was watery as was the bock I had. I really liked your Red Porter when I had it but that's been one of the few beers of yours that wasn't watery or didn't have off flavors making it taste like sheet metal or plastic. Your ales are hit or miss but I haven't had a lager of yours that didn't get a sip and then discreetly deposited into the drain.

If your beer tastes like Minhas brewed it, then it's your fault. However, if it tastes like a building material, then perhaps it's not being refrigerated properly in the time it leaves your brewery and before it ends up in a cooler at the retail end. Either way, you have a brace of serious quality control issues.

A Concerned Drinker

Some Awe-Inspiring Astronomy Images

The Bad Astronomer, Phil Plait, posted his favorite astronomy images of 2012 and they are awesome. They're like a mini-Total Perspective Vortex that show just how puny we humans really are. Take, for instance, this burst of plasma which is big, really big.



On Aug. 31, 2012, the Sun had a major hissy fit: A vast arch of material was lifted up off the surface by the Sun’s powerful magnetic field. Sometimes these arches collapse back down, but this one erupted, blasting literally hundreds of millions of tons of superheated plasma into space at a speed of 1,400 kilometers per second (900 miles per second)—over a thousand times faster than a rifle bullet. The scale of this is crushing—the arch was 300,000 kilometers (200,000) miles) across, 25 times larger than the Earth. As we near the peak of the Sun’s magnetic cycle, we’ll be seeing even more activity like this in the coming months.

Cargo Trailer

I borrowed this DVD. Looks like some good Teutonic sci-fi.

Geese With Bombs in Their Butts?

Terry McDermott, co-author of The Hunt for KSM: Inside the Pursuit and Takedown of the Real 9/11 Mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed recently had a piece in the LA Times about the whole controversy surrounding the use of torture in Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty (I always heard the antelucan hours referred to as "zero dark early".) called "'Zero Dark Thirty': Why the fabrication?".

The argument about the role of torture in the film aside, I found the following to be well, horrifying. After we tortured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed:

The result? KSM, as he is known within the intelligence community, revealed nothing about the most valuable thing he knew — Bin Laden's whereabouts. He did not, for example, divulge the name of the Kuwaiti courier who served Bin Laden.

This is not coincidentally the piece of information that sets "Zero Dark Thirty" in motion. Mohammed had trained the courier and knew of his connection to Bin Laden. Instead, he sent agents on hundreds of futile chases, hindering the hunt for Bin Laden rather than aiding it.

The simple fact is you can't reliably separate the gold from the dross that torture yields. "He had us chasing the goddamn geese in Central Park because he said some of them had explosives stuffed up their ass," one FBI counter-terrorism agent said in frustration.

Is this serious? It's bad enough that my tax money was used to torture someone and it's even worse to think that we paid people to examine geese assholes because someone thought that such a claim borne out of torture was legitimate.

But wait - it gets worse. The article ends on a disturbingly Kafka-esque note.

We have so contorted ourselves that earlier this month a military judge ruled that the man whose real-life torture is described in the movie, Mohammed's nephew Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, will not be allowed to describe his torture at trial. The methods used to extract information from captives is a state secret, the judge said, as are the victim's recollections of it.

Apparently, those methods can be celebrated in a movie but not acknowledged in a court of law.

If this kind of stuff keeps up, it won't be long before these things start happening to Americans generally.

Preview of Remembering Chicago: The '70s & '80s

I have no recollection of the day Richard Daley died but I do remember Disco Demolition Night. This would make a nice New Year's gift for me.

Bahrain Activist Has Some Harsh Words for the U.S.

Zainab al-Khawaha is an activist for democracy in Bahrain. Yesterday the NYT published an op-ed from her pen in which she pointed out American hypocrisy - democracy is good for some people, just not for where we park the Fifth Fleet.

Bahrain, a small island nation off the coast of Saudi Arabia, has been ruled by the Khalifa family for more than 200 years. It is also home to the headquarters of the United States Navy’s Fifth Fleet, which patrols regional shipping lanes, assists with missions in Iraq and Afghanistan and monitors Iran as tensions in the region mount.

The oppressed people of Bahrain joined the Arab Spring soon after the fall of President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. With newfound hope, Bahrainis took to the streets on Feb. 14, 2011. Rich and poor, Shiite and Sunni, liberal and religious, they felt what it was like to speak freely for the first time in the capital, Manama, at a traffic circle with a pearl monument at its center. The Pearl Roundabout came to symbolize the Bahraini revolution.

But this newfound freedom didn’t last long. The government’s security forces attacked the peaceful protesters, then tore down the Pearl monument. And in March 2011, troops from neighboring Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates intervened to suppress our pro-democracy protests.

...

The United States speaks about supporting human rights and democracy, but while the Saudis send troops to aid the Khalifa government, America is sending arms. The United States is doing itself a huge disservice by displaying such an obvious double standard toward human rights violations in the Middle East. Washington condemns the violence of the Syrian government but turns a blind eye to blatant human rights abuses committed by its ally Bahrain.

This double standard is costing America its credibility across the region; and the message being understood is that if you are an ally of America, then you can get away with abusing human rights.

Limbaugh Makes a Good Point

Over the years Rush Limbaugh has proven himself to be a grade A douchebag. However, he did make a good point recently concerning calls for gun control in the wake of the Newtown massacre:

On his syndicated radio show this afternoon, Rush Limbaugh went after the “anti-gun media” for, in his belief, not caring about gun violence when it affects urban neighborhoods like Chicago and Oakland.

“You guys ever been to Chicago? Do you know what happens in Chicago every night?” Limbaugh rhetorically asked the pro-gun politicians like Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) who’ve now become pro-gun control in the wake of last week’s massacre. “What happens in Chicago in a week dwarfs what happened in Connecticut. Just nobody’s reporting it. There’s no cameras up there. You don’t see it. All you see is the mayor warning the gangbangers to kill each other instead of other people. That’s all you ever see.”

Limbaugh continued: “Have you ever heard any politician go on an anti-gun rant when you’ve heard about urban violence? Does it ever happen? I’m asking. Those stories out of Chicago were happening daily. Drudge was highlighting them. But take your pick. The Rodney King incident, whatever, the Watts riots, pick one. Post-Katrina looting in New Orleans, was the anti-gun control out in force there? They never are, are they? I wonder why that is? Why is it the anti-gun people never use violence in urban neighborhoods as an example of why we have to get rid of guns?” he asked.

Chicago has had 450+ deaths from gun violence this year and, while Chicagoans know all too well about the shootings in their city, seemingly very little is said about the epidemic outside of it. It doesn't generate national headlines and CNN doesn't report 24/7 on it like the Newtown massacre. The NRA doesn't fall silent when black youth are cut down on Chicago's south and west sides. "Pro-gun" politicians don't suddenly find themselves willing to enact gun control legislation.

Why is this?

Does skin color matter? Do people extend empathy for children in relatively well-off communities easier than those in poor communities? Perhaps it's simply the magnitude of the Newtown massacre and the rarity of such events in contrast to the frequency of shootings in Chicago where one or two children are killed at a time. Still, those numbers in the Windy city add up.

Obama Is and Has Been Intent on Cutting Social Security

Firedoglake makes the case.

Everywhere you look, the media narrative is that President Obama is “capitulating” to Republicans by agreeing to cuts in Social Security benefits.

And I have to ask, where is this collective political amnesia coming from?

Obama has made a deliberate and concerted effort to cut Social Security benefits since the time he took office. FDL reported on February 12, 2009 that the White House was meeting behind closed doors to consider ways to cut Social Security benefits, and that the framework they were using was the Diamond-Orszag plan, which was co-authored by OMB Director Peter Orszag when he was at the Brookings Institute.

...

The President has been very forthcoming about the fact that cutting Social Security benefits is something he wants to do. When he said during the debate that he didn’t differ from Mitt Romney on entitlement reform, he meant it. It’s time for people to remove the rose-colored glasses and stop projecting their own feelings on to the man. It’s time to take him at his word.

People who collect Social Security can at least take heart that Obama is better than Romney, right?

Pakistani Kids Express Sympathy for Newtown Tragedy

(Found here.)

Sorry kids. While we appreciate your sympathy, most of us are indifferent to your plight. Sadly, when you're killed by a missile, few Americans bat an eye.

Pope Blesses Disgusting, Homophobic Ugandan Politico

That's Pope Fritzy bestowing his blessings upon Rebecca Kadaga, the Speaker of Uganda's parliament. Kadaga is infamous for her push to pass the Anti-Homosexuality Bill which, among other things, allows the death penalty for those who commit "aggravated homosexuality", whatever the hell that means.

Passage of the bill would be "a Christmas gift" for some Christians:

Some Christian clerics at the meeting in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, asked the speaker to pass the law as "a Christmas gift."

"Kill the fags" - quite a stocking stuffer. So much for goodwill towards men.

"so where was your god today?"

Becher vs. Stange

What's the plural of becher? Becheren? I don't know but I do know that I now have couple of them.

Last month local beer scribe Robin Shepard reviewed Port Huron's altbier and wrote that the style is traditionally served in a stange. I noted that altbier traditionally comes in a becher. (Though that appears to be changing.) The becher is similar to a stange in that it's cylindrical but the venerable serving vessel from Düsseldorf is shorter and stouter than its cousin from Köln. To wit:



That's a becher on the left and a stange next to it. Yes, I know they both need a good wash.

Your Kölsch goes in a stange:





While your altbier goes in a becher:



Now I need to celebrate my new glassware with an altbier tasting. Who makes alts around here? Port Huron, Tyranena, Rush River (a sticke in the summer?!), and BluCreek. Scott at Vintage brews Rhine Heights Alt but I don't think it's on tap currently. Any others?

Need beer? There's an app for that.

Finally, an iPad put to good use.

Sundance Film Festival U.S.A. Bypasses Madison Again

Bummer. The Sundance Film Festival U.S.A. will once again avoid Madison. The festival is a Sundance Institute event in which various filmmakers ship their films fresh from the Sundance Festival in Utah to a theatre and then jump on a plane for a special screening.

At least we are not alone as Sundance Cinemas in Seattle was also left out of the loop.

This disappointment follows the theatre putting their Screening Room - a selection of smaller, often foreign, films - on hiatus.

With all these well educated and well heeled Epic employees moving to downtown Madison, perhaps the time is right for a commercial art house cinema.

Special Delivery from St. Louis

My friend Charles was recently in St. Louis and so he made a stop at what he considers to be the best BBQ in the known universe - Pappy's Smokehouse. Luckily he thought of your humble narrator and braved the snow to bring some pork goodness for me.

"We have socialism for the rich and the incompetent"

A video from Econ4, a group of reform-minded economists.

Buddhist Scholar Calls Grover Norquist Tax Pledge A "seditious oath, a treasonous oath"

Professor Robert Thurman has posted a video on YouTube in which he explicitly says that he's trying to start a meme. He wants to get people to reject the Grover Norquist pledge to not raise taxes and the politicians who take it. He says that politicos who sign the pledge are essentially pledging to pursue a goal that runs contrary to their oath of office.

His argument is that pledging to not raise taxes in a bid to shrink the government so it can be drowned in a bathtub contradicts the oath of office.

New Beer Labels & Capital Tries to Play Catch Up

The Wee on the Lam Sour Brown has an interesting tale. It was a bad batch of wee heavy that was redeemed with some brett. It'll be interesting to taste how this came out.

And from a bit further afield:



While Sam Adams is not a Wisconsin brewer, this beer just sounds blatantly interesting. I bet it would go well with a movie. I shall have to bust out my Rashomon DVD with a bottle in hand.


This curious and cunning brew, named for the eight-headed dragon of Japanese lore, use two unusual ingredients from the same origin for its distinctive and bold flavor. Yuzu juice creates a bright citrusy character with notes of grapefruit & mandarin orange while Japanese Sugi wood balances the sweetness with a fresh earthiness. The result is a bright & ethereal yet with lots of earthy power.


In Business Madison has a new beer blog.

Barry Adams of the Wisconsin State Journal recently interviewed Brian Destree from Capital.

In March, an imperial IPA will be released in 22-ounce bomber bottles and on draft, followed by a toned-down IPA in April available in bottles, cans and on tap.

"...we're trying to get back to the younger demographic and give them something that's hot right now. IPAs are just flying off the shelf right now."


Yay. Bandwagon jumping. This is disappointing although understandable from a business point of view - Capital wants to catch the IPA wave. But I have to wonder if jumping on the bandwagon is going to pay off. Why not differentiate yourself instead of following the pack? Hopheads have Moon Man, Ale Asylum, Two Hearted, Sierra Nevada, and, well, pretty much every craft brewery out there. Even Michelob brewed an IPA.

I don't doubt that Destree will brew a tasty IPA and IIPA; instead I simply have a natural knee-jerk aversion to following the pack. I'd much rather Capital did something different than try to play catch up. At the very least, brew an IPL. Coney Island does some interesting lagers. How about a Kölsch? A good Kölsch is hard to beat and it needn't be dull. Capital could differentiate theirs from most American Kölsch-style ales out there by simply lagering it as is proper. Or they could go further. Finch's brewed one with toasted hops and applewood while Flat 12 brewed a version with cucumber which I had at The Great Taste and enjoyed. A normal Kölsch as an annual and then a funky one for the Capital Square series.

Alternatively, why not play around with a weizen? Try adding fruit to one or get hopheads jizzing in their pants by using some kind of C-hop.

We'll just have to wait and see but I worry that all of this talk of IPAs, catering to young people, and bandwagon jumping means that the brewery will forget to dance with the one that brung ya.

MadTable has an article about Capital's bomber series which reveals more bandwagon jumper oning:

“We wanted to take advantage of a trend,” says Capital’s vice president of sales, Corey Wheling. “22-ounce bottles are the number one package for consumer beer trials for beers people have never had before.”

This makes a nice segue to a bit of confirmation bias. This is an episode of the Seacoast Beverage Lab Podcast featuring Chris Lohring of Notch Brewing, a brewery that brews only session beers, i.e. - brew of 4.5% ABV or less. He covers his love of sessions beers, his dislike of seasonal beers being released a full season before the one they're brewed for, he questions the need for another IPA, and notes how bombers are a rip-off for consumers. Good stuff.

Trailer for Breaking the Taboo, a Documentary About the Disaster That Is Our War on Drugs

I found this at Boing Boing. It's a trailer for a movie called Breaking the Taboo which looks at our War on Drugs. The poster at BB pointed out the line, "If you can’t control drug use in a maximum security prison how could you control drugs in a free society?" I'd also throw in that Bill Clinton chimes in against the war, at least a part of it. What gets in my craw is, what was he doing when he was president? I guess he changed his mind. We need someone who will stop the war when he or she is president, not after they leave office and have nothing to lose by speaking out.

NSA Whistleblower: Privacy is Dead

A disturbing interview with NSA whistleblower William Binney. He is the former head of the NSA's global digital data gathering program and tells a harrowing story of how the U.S. government monitors and copies vast amounts of electronic data. If you get on their enemies list, you're fucked. For anyone who had placed hope in Obama, Binney says that this kind of spying has gotten worse under our Dear Leader than it was under Bush II. You may think that you're safe because you're not doing anything wrong, but, as Binney notes, "The problem is, if they think they’re not doing anything that’s wrong, they don’t get to define that. The central government does."

When I was a kid, we Americans prided ourselves on not doing this kind of thing. This was what the Soviets did. Yet now no one really cares and we accept it that the government can and does make copies of all of our chats, e-mails, &c. Even a four star general and the Director of the CIA had their e-mail infiltrated.

First Use of OMG TLA?

It is being claimed that the first use of "OMG" has been discovered in a letter from one Lord Fisher to Winston Churchill that was written in 1917. The decline of English has been going on much longer than had previously been suspected.

Movember Yields to Decembeaver

A cause that I can get behind.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell To Be Adapted for Television

Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is being adapted for TV.

BBC One has announced it's to make a six-part adaptation of the magnificent Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, directed by Doctor Who & Sherlock alumni Toby Haynes.

Rumoured as a film adaptation for years, the sheer scale of the novel and number of effects needed may be somewhat daunting, but Toby Haynes has a strong track record at succeeding with ambitious material, having been responsible for Doctor Who's The Pandorica Opens/Big Bang two-parter, and the Sherlock series two finale The Reichenbach Fall. Adapting Clarke's book will be writer Peter Harness, who penned the third series of Wallander.

I shall have to read the book next year.

Now, where is that TV adaptation of The Man in the High Castle?

Wisconsin Manufacturing and Ag Open for Business*

* (If you mean that they are the recipients of hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks.)

The Wisconsin Rapids Tribune reports that $100 million in business tax credits will be realized soon thanks to the Republicans in the Wisconsin legislature.

Wisconsin manufacturers and farmers are poised to cash in on the biggest state tax break they’ve received in decades, a move hailed by business groups but questioned by others worried about the annual tax revenue loss of more than $100 million.

The Republican-controlled Legislature included the “domestic production tax credit” in the 2011-13 state budget. It applies to production in Wisconsin and on Wisconsin property that’s assessed for manufacturing or agricultural use. Over the next four years, income taxes on these sectors will be reduced to nearly nothing.

Todd Berry, president of the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, a nonpartisan research group, said Wisconsin is one of the top manufacturing states in the country and it makes sense to assist the sector economically, given its importance and the stress it has been under.

“The harder question is whether it makes sense for state government to essentially play favorites,” Berry said. “Is there some reason we should favor a widget manufacturer over a software developer?”

Berry also faulted the Legislature for failing to specify how the tax cut would be funded, either with more revenue or less spending.

Berry's comment about it making sense to assist the manufacturing sector in Wisconsin made me chuckle because, over the weekend, the NYT published an article about tax "incentives", i.e. – bribes, that local government dole out to businesses called "As Companies Seek Tax Deals, Governments Pay High Price". It is well worth reading but it was the article's interactive sidebar that really caught my attention. If you look at the Wisconsin data, you'll see that we spend "at least $1.53 billion per year on incentive programs". That's $0.10 per dollar of our entire state budget. When that figure is broken down by industry, the top recipients of bribes that involve taxpayer money are, you guessed it, agriculture with $302 million and manufacturing with $572 million worth of "incentives". And now these top 2 recipients of tax breaks are poised for another $100 million or so over the course of a few years.

Both articles note that it's not clear if these tax breaks have the desired effect that legislators intend when passing the laws.

Still, Jon Peacock, director of the Wisconsin Budget Project, a Madison-based tax and budget policy research organization, said one of the problems with the tax cut is it’s not directly tied to job creation.

“We have no assurance that any of the businesses that get this tax break aren’t just going to pocket the money or use it for higher dividends for their stockholders,” Peacock said.

And from the NYT's piece:

The cost of the awards is certainly far higher. A full accounting, The Times discovered, is not possible because the incentives are granted by thousands of government agencies and officials, and many do not know the value of all their awards. Nor do they know if the money was worth it because they rarely track how many jobs are created. Even where officials do track incentives, they acknowledge that it is impossible to know whether the jobs would have been created without the aid.

“How can you even talk about rationalizing what you’re doing when you don’t even know what you’re doing?” said Timothy J. Bartik, a senior economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in Kalamazoo, Mich.

All of this makes me shudder to think what these industries would be like in this state if they actually had to compete in a "free market".

The Doctor Shall Fight in Hills, He Shall Fight in France - He Will Never Surrender!: Players

Earlier this month I began reading Doctor Who books again in anticipation of Chicago TARDIS. I jumped in more or less where I left off by reading the 6th Doctor adventure Players. It being a Terrance Dicks story I wasn't expecting anything mind-bending or a tale which would tweak the tried and true Doctor Whovery much, if at all. Having finished the book, I can say that I got pretty much what I expected.

Our story begins with Sixie and Peri on Rigel Seven which is a very rainy, muddy place. The pair make a quick escape but Peri decides she wants a change. "I want elegance!" she tells The Doctor. He replies, "Elegance you shall have, Peri." But, as is usually the case, The Doctor is unable to deliver. Instead of a nice respite in Victorian London they end up in South Africa with the Boer War raging. They meet up with a young Winston Churchill as well as a seemingly out of place assassin with a dark complexion. The Doctor, Peri, and Churchill survive a skirmish but end up being captured. A brief interlude in a prisoner camp includes the mysterious Captain Reitz who comes bearing faked orders to have Churchill shot when he tries to escape. Reitz turns out to be the wily assassin whose plan The Doctor had foiled earlier.

At this point in the book things are going well. Dicks didn't reveal the identity of the war correspondent until absolutely necessary, which is fun even though Churchill is mentioned on the back cover. We have a little action and some mystery and I kept envisioning a younger, thinner Ian McNeice in the part. From here, however, the book runs into a big problem. Our heroes escape the prisoner camp with a dash of derring do. Back at the TARDIS, The Doctor explains to Peri that he'd met Churchill previously and thinks that their current adventures are somehow related to events which took place during The Doctor's second incarnation. Peri gets her friend's memories beamed directly into her brain.

The flashback here takes place in France during World War I after the events of The War Games, the Second Doctor's final TV story. The Doctor hitches a lift in an ambulance driven by Jennifer Buckingham and finds that Lieutenant Carstairs is also a passenger. They run into a British staff car which had been ambushed only to find that it belonged to Churchill who was a major by this time. The future prime minister is rescued and they drive through the fog and take shelter at a chateau inhabited by a mysterious (again) Count and Countess...

The problem here is that, as I was reading the flashback sequence, I kept envisioning Sixie instead of Patrick Troughton. After a couple pages I realized that I was reading it all wrong and inserted the short, mop-topped vagabond into my brain. Dicks doesn't capture any of Troughton's nuances here in the flashback and instead what we get is a generic Doctor-lite figure. Too bad.

With this story done, The Doctor takes Peri to 1930s London as he is convinced that running into Winston Churchill was no mere coincidence. The Time Lord and his companion get wrapped up in the prelude to World War II which involves Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German ambassador to the UK at the time, King Edward VIII along with his mistress Wallis Simpson, and a band of conspirators culled from the English aristocracy who want the English Empire to ally itself with Nazi Germany. Oh, and the count and countess make a return appearance as well.

The London storyline takes up most of the novel and, while not perfect by any stretch, it was rather fun. For instance, there's a scene where The Doctor and Peri go to a bank where The Doctor has an account to withdraw some funds. The thing is, he made his initial deposit 120 years previously and interest has been accumulating. It was disappointing, though not unexpected, that Peri would jump headlong into the lap of luxury and become a conspicuous consumer. Another stereotype rears its head in the form of the private dick, Tom Dekker. A close call with a bomb convinces The Doctor to hire a bodyguard ("'Not a bodyguard,' said the Doctor. 'A security consultant!'"). While The Doctor doesn't let on that they've met before, Dekker has indeed run into the Time Lord previously – he even mentions Ace – though I'm not sure which story this refers to. Like Peri, Dekker is an American ex-pat but from Chicago. And being from Chicago can mean only one thing – Al Capone and his gangsters.

On the other hand, Dekker's partner, referred to only as "The Op" was interesting. Not a major character by any means but I liked how he was described as suddenly coming into view as disappearing just as quickly. I was wondering if something was going to be made of this but Dicks did not. The Op was a funny little diversion in a sea of stereotypes and middle of the road characters.

The Players are a race of beings that see everyone and all of history as a game, a chess match for their amusement. Their credo is "Winning is everything – and nothing/Losing is nothing – and everything/All that matters is the Game." What might be a fun conflict between a group of chaotic neutral hedonists and our lawful good hero turns out to be rather uninteresting. The story is peppered with brief interludes that take place at Players HQ on Mount Olympus or wherever they reside but they consist merely of a couple paragraphs of the Players being profoundly irritated with The Doctor. Dicks may have been trying to set up a future story in which the Players feature more prominently and get more backstory but, here as a standalone affair, what could be an intriguing set of villains is rather one dimensional.

Players has its moments, such as a car chase, and is endowed with plenty of intrigue, but it's bogged down by stereotypes and greatly underused villains. Also, I am flummoxed as to how Dicks was unable to write a credible Second Doctor considering that he wrote for the show back in the Troughton era. While there is some fun reading to be had, for the most part, Players is a disposable entry in the Doctor Who canon.

Ms. Carey Goes to Washington and Fresh Kottbusser Available Soon

New Glarus' founder and president, Deb Carey, went to Washington recently and met President Obama.

New Glarus Brewing President Deb Carey was one of several small-business owners who met with President Barack Obama at the White House on Tuesday to discuss the federal budget's "fiscal cliff."

"I got beer!" Carey told reporters as she left. "I got beer from the White House!"

Kinky Kabin looks to start bottling soon. Their first is going to be Naughty Wheat, an apricot wheat ale which is already on tap in the La Crosse area.



Sprecher is to release an IIPA called Citra Bomb because there just aren't enough IPAs around.



They also has a Pumpkin Spice brown ale available only at the brewery.



Sprecher along with Lakefront, Central Waters, Bull Falls, and South Shore were recently featured in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in an article about their respective wet hopped brews featuring all Wisconsin hops. Sprecher's Hopfuzion sounds just like their Wisconsin Fresh Hop Amber Lager from last fall.

Elsewhere in Wisconsin, Ale Asylum has started bottling again.

Lastly, down in Chicago ex-employees of Goose Island and Two Brothers have banded together to open a new brewery called Off Color Brewing. It sounds incredibly interesting.

So what will Off Color beer taste like? Not much like the barrel-aged Goose products — think Juliet, Madame Rose, Bourbon County Stout and its variants — that Laffler has worked on. The difference is clear as soon as Bleitner explains the types of beer that inspired Off Color: "Very bizarre beer no one has heard of or knows about."

The trick is making such beers accessible, and based on the tastes I had of Off Color's two year-round beers, the early returns are encouraging.

The lighter was in the gose style, called (for now) Ampel Weiss ("ampel" is German word for traffic light). The hazy, golden wheat brew is easy drinking, but it is also refreshing, lightly tart, mildly funky and among the most interesting low-alcohol beers (4.2 percent) imaginable. It should appeal to both seasoned beer drinkers and those looking to move on from, say, Blue Moon.

The other is a kottbusser — a style even rarer than gose — that doesn't have a name yet. It's a brown wheat beer made with honey and molasses that finishes dry, with just a light, gentle sweetness. It's another deft easy drinker.

"We're releasing near-extinct German beers at a craft beer six-pack price," Bleitner said.

Can a Broyhan be far behind?

I look forward to drinking their near-extinct German beers and feel jealous of our neighbors to the south. Nicht nur will they have fresh local gose und kottbusser, sondern auch Metropolitan for non-extinct German styles, Pipeworks' Berliner Weisses, and I'll throw in 5 Rabbit because their cerveza kicks ass.

If Idris Elba is to be James Bond...

...can we have Richard Ayoade as Q please?

(Via the world is my oysterrr.)

New & Improved Baldur's Gate - Now With 50% More Adventure

I had no idea that the venerable Baldur's Gate was being overhauled. Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition is out today. It features the original adventure plus Tales From the Sword Coast and some new characters, a new adventure, and hundreds of tweaks/enhancements.

Some New Brews

I was recently in the Chicago area and picked up some interesting brews. It's not exactly Berliner Weisse season but a blueberry Berliner Weisse just sounds so tasty. How will Schlägl Roggen Gold compare to Scott Manning's roggenbier? I shall find out.

In Business Madison Profiles Ale Asylum

Robin Shepard Profiles Capital's Brian Destree

That's Brian Destree, the new production manager of Capital Brewery who took over after Kirby left last month. Robin Shepard has a profile of him (and that's where the photo came from as well) up at The Daily Page.

Look at the guy. He has the face of someone who lugs around sacks of grain and manhandles barrels all day. It was nice to read:

Destree describes his personal approach to brewing as old school with an appreciation for lagers. He doesn't plan to make any dramatic changes in the brewery's well-known lineup of beers, especially brews like its popular Supper Club. "I appreciate what it takes to make them, but we are also going to step outside those boundaries," he says.

I was relieved to hear that the emphasis on lagers isn't going to go away, although if Supper Club disappeared, you won't hear a complaint from me. It's also good news that he is looking to step outside Kirby's legacy as well as he has proven with Pumpkinataur Wrex*** as I thought it was an excellent beer.

The article notes that Eternal Flame 2.0 comes out next month and will be in bombers as the initial sortie in the Capital Square Bomber Series which will feature a new brew every 2-3 months. After Eternal Flame comes a beer called Jacked Maibock. What is that to be? Maibock aged in Jack Daniels barrels? Destree also says, "I'd like to make a beer that puts the hops forward, and that may shock the Capital faithful." It will be very interesting to see what he comes up with. An IPL like Coney Island's Sword Swallower?

Capital seems to be in good hands.

***Shepard reviews Pumpkinataur Wrex in the new Isthmus although the review is not online yet. He gives it 3 out of 4 bottle openers and says, "Pumpkinataur is best on its own as a dessert beer." I respectfully disagree. Personally I thought Pumpkinataur was much better than Lakefront's Pumpkin Lager which Shepard gave 4 bottle openers to. It doesn't attempt to be pumpkin pie in a bottle by de-emphasizing the spices and so would go well with a pork-apple combination or a cuisine that doesn't treat allspice, nutmeg, and cinnamon as the exclusive province of autumnal pies. Think curry.

Former U.S. Marshall and DEA Agent Notes Racism Inherent in Drug War

Listen to Matthew Fogg, a former U.S. Marshall discuss the racism behind the Drug War. If you go and bust poor colored people, that's OK. But if you mess with the white folks out in the suburbs, well, that's just going to cause trouble.

Oliver Stone Takes On American History

Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States debuted last week. From what I'd read about it, it wasn't going to be a conspiracy-laden look at The Great Satan or any such thing but rather a look at the history of the United States post-WWII that isn't widely known and that doesn't feed into the myths we tell ourselves about American exceptionalism. I have watched the first episode and can say that it was not a menagerie of conspiracies. It was apparently Stone's intention that the series start in the late 19th century and cover World War I but there just wasn't enough money to do more than ten episodes. That and he didn't want to overwhelm viewers with context, thusly the series starts with World War II.

Stone*** opens the show by stating his intentions and his disappointment that the history lessons his kids received in school consisted of the same schlock that he was taught. Hence this program which he hopes can contribute to a better understanding of history and provide direction and hope for change.

In a bit shy of an hour, Stone gives us an overview of World War II. The narration is his and there are no talking heads. Although quotes and the text of some speeches that were never recorded are heard here, there are also no recognizable celebrities doing the deed. Stone is avoiding the Ken Burns pathos trap here. (And I have to wonder if some of the maps that look like they were lifted from an old newsreel were, in fact, newly created.) After Stone's prologue we get a very brief look at the Manhattan Project, mainly Trinity. An interesting choice as it merely foreshadows later episodes in the series.



When the show finally does get moving with WWII, it starts in a way that is foreign to a lot of people. Stone says that it started in 1931 when Japan invaded Manchuria as opposed to Germany's invasion of Poland in 1939. It's really a semantic issue with Stone declaring an act that is generally considered to be prologue to be part of the war proper. But it does set up America's entrance into the war. It's also worth noting for conservative-minded Stone haters out there that the program didn't do much to cover the imperial ambitions of the United States. Thusly we are told about Japan's encroachment in the Pacific but the Spanish-American War is not covered so no explanation is ever given for why places thousands of miles away from North America such as the Philippines, Guam, Midway Atoll, Wake Island, and Hawaii were "ours".

Still, there's more of a sense of the war as being the product of geopolitical maneuvering than you often times get.

The second aspect of the program that caught my eye was the emphasis put on Roosevelt's anti-imperialism. He and Churchill are generally looked at as being good buddies but, at their meeting in August 1941 in Newfoundland which produced The Atlantic Charter, Roosevelt was rather antagonistic. He told his son before the meeting, "We've got to make clear to the British from the very outset that we don't intend to be simply a good-time Charlie who can be used to help the British Empire out of a tight spot, and then be forgotten forever." Churchill, presiding over the British Empire, couldn't have been too enthusiastic about the egalitarian tone of the Charter. But he needed the U.S. to enter the war.



The final element of the episode that I want to note is that Stone eschews delving into the Battle of Midway, D-Day, the Battle of Britain, et al and focuses on the eastern front. Russia's role in the war is front and center. There was certainly much enmity towards the USSR on the part of Western leaders and Stone asserts that they were happy to let the Soviets bear the brunt of the German war machine for a time. For his part, Stalin was quite paranoid. Russia and the UK had been enemies for some time and Stalin didn't forget that the U.S. support the whites during its civil war. After describing the horrors endured by the Soviets – the Siege of Leningrad and the Battle of Stalingrad, for example – Stone declares that it was really the Soviets that deserve credit for defeating the Nazis.

All in all, I thought this first episode was interesting. My father was a very big WWII buff so most of this was old hat for me but I get the impression that much of this history doesn't make it into schools. That the Allies were allied against the Axis powers but that there was infighting and distrust amongst them is not a common refrain. We seem more interested in simple opposites like Hitler bad and Allies good and overlook just how complicated things really were. Plus, no doubt in large part to Stephen Ambrose, we almost fetishize D-Day and ignore most of the rest of the conflict.

I was surprised at how little attention was paid to American imperial ambitions here. FDR is portrayed in the sequence at Newfoundland as being anti-imperialist with him noting that the Philippines were due to become independent in 1946 in addition to bargaining with Churchill. And, as I noted above, nothing is said about how all those islands in the Pacific came to be under American control.

I have read some criticism of the show by people who have watched the first few episodes and I don't doubt that some of it is warranted. But it amazes me that critics think they're scoring points against Stone by noting that nothing here is truly "untold". I agree that the title is hyperbole and, sure, historians and people well-read in the subject aren't going to be wowed by any revelations here, but the show really isn't aimed at them; it's for high school students and adults who know only the basics of the story. Having only seen the first episode I can only say that it serves to complement, not supplant, more "traditional" or more common histories.

Lastly, it should be noted that this program has stuffed 14 years of conflict into just less than an hour. A fair amount of ground is covered but it goes by quickly. Having it on your DVR will serve all viewers well but those for whom this is unknown territory will especially benefit from being able to rewind. We're back to familiar early-90s territory here with lots of quick cuts. Whomever was tasked with seeking out all those old newsreels and stock footage deserves a medal. Ditto for editor Alex Marquez.

***While the program bears his name, Stone wrote the program with historian Peter Kuznick and one Matt Graham who is, as near as I can tell, a TV/film writer.

This One's For Samara Kalk Derby

Required reading for Samara "choice white meat" Kalk Derby - "The Unbearable Whiteness of White Meat":

White meat turkey has no taste. Its slabs of dry, fibrous material are more like cardboard conveyances, useful only for transporting flavorsome food like stuffing and gravy from plate to mouth. It's less a foodstuff than a turkey app, simulated meat, a hyperlink to real food.

Where Are the Curses? - Toil & Trouble Gruit by Vintage and Sweet Mullets

Last week The Dulcinea and I went to the Vintage for dinner. We were seated by the host but, before our waiter made his way to our table, I looked up from the menu to discover that brewmaster Scott Manning was placing two sample glasses of this year's Tippy Toboggan roggenbier down. He knows I think the stuff is the nectar of the gods. A nice way to start my night.

I didn't know that TT had just been tapped and so I had a different goal in mind. Spin down the ages...

It's the year 700 C.E. and you live in a Bavarian village. Let's say you're the blacksmith. What do you with your buddies the baker, cobbler, and tanner when it's quittin' time? You reach for a cold one, of course. The thing is, hops are about 100 years off. Hopheads haven't been invented yet. Instead you're drinking gruit which is basically beer before the introduction of hops. Your brew might have had a combination of bog myrtle, rosemary, yarrow, woodruff, and other herbs and spices. Coriander found its way into beer occasionally. The ancestors of all those crazy Norwegians in Stoughton are using juniper in their gruit while sweet gale was popular in Denmark and areas of Scandinavia.

I had come to the Vintage for this:



That's Toil & Trouble, the gruit brewed by Scott and Mark Duchow of Sweet Mullets in Oconomowoc. It was a nice reddish brown and slightly cloudy. The aroma was slightly sweet with a fairly strong herbal component. The brew was made with heather tips and mugwort and, to my nose, it smelled like heather. I say this because I've had Fraoch Heather Ale and T&T smelled like it tasted.

T&T also tasted a lot like Fraoch in so far as the heather was very prominent. Think floral. I can't tell you what mugwort tastes like but I believe the floral aspect of the brew comes from the heather while the slight bitterness was from the mugwort. In an effort to make something akin to a period brew, Messrs. Duchow and Manning used some peat-smoked malt. All malt was smoky back then as you dried the stuff over a fire because the use of indirect heat and pale malts were still centuries away. They didn't use a lot of the smoked malt here as its flavor was subdued and instead blended well with the herbs and malt. Also in the mix are wild yeasts which yield a prominent sour flavor. In the end you get a drink that has a nice blend of malt sweetness and heather with some smokiness that yields to a pleasant tartness and a bit of bitter. There is a helluva lot going on here and everything is balanced really well. Considering the base is that of a Scotch ale, T&T does not have a heavy mouthfeel. Indeed, it is very quaffable and, weighing in at 7%+ ABV, it can be dangerous.

Other than Fraoch Heather Ale, the only other commercial gruit I know of is Professor Fritz Briem 13th Century Grut Bier and I just happen to have a bottle of the stuff in my cellar. Perhaps I can bust it out soon and do a gruit comparison.

Junk food pairing: Pair Toil & Trouble with Frytor of Erbes. A judicious selection of herbs and a drizzle of honey on the frytor will complement the gruit's own herbal flavor and sweetness.

P.S. – we got a mispour so, in addition to the very tasty sour barrel aged Pumpkin Disorderly, we also got a free Alpentraum, a rauch weizenbock. All four beers we tried last week were very tasty but think the roggenbier needs to mellow a bit.

Lakefront's 25th & WI Foodie Visits New Glarus

Lakefront will be turning 25 on 2 December and to celebrate their silver anniversary they are going to be releasing a series of four beers starting with an Imperial stout.



Next year we can expect a bourbon dopplebock, saison, and a brandy barrel-aged pumpkin ale.

The Wisconsin Foodie TV program recently profiled New Glarus Brewing. The hop garden is just waiting to be planted in the spring. They visit the House the Spotted Cow built - the Carey's home, where you can witness the very kitchen where Moon Man was developed. Oh, and don't believe Dan when he says people only drank beer during the Middle Ages. They drank water from wells and collected rain in barrels just like my hippie neighbors.

The Day The Earth Stopped Masturbating

Guy #1: "How many times would we have to jerk off to kill all the guys on Earth?"

Guy #2: "But that would make us monsters!"

Guy #1: "No. It would make us gods!"

What's the Sticke?

It's nice to see that Port Huron is brewing an altbier and that Robin Shepard reviewed it last week for Isthmus. I look forward to trying it. Three beer nerd observations:

1) Shepard writes: "Altbiers are ales conditioned at cooler temperatures for longer periods, in a way similar to how a lager is made."

German brewing tradition pegs it as a lagerbier, albeit one that is top-fermenting, and not an ale. Different brewing traditions. How did we Americans get in the habit of classifying beer as either an ale or a lager? I wonder if it's something we inherited from the British. Then again, they didn't think of stouts and porters as ales as late as the early 20th century. Perhaps it is a more recent distinction resulting from Charlie Papazian and the homebrewing revolution. And when we use the ale vs. lager distinction, are we really talking location of the yeast or the temperature at which the yeast works its magic?

Where does the California common fit in? I've read (probably at Ron Pattinson's blog) about the German practice of mixing top and bottom-fermenting beers in years where there's a shortage of ice. How do you classify these beers? If your weizen has more than 50% wheat or if you ferment only wheat as in a grätzer/grodziskie, is it even beer? Or a roggenbier with more than 50% rye? Is kvass beer? What about gluten-free brews like Lakefront's New Grist?

2) "The stronger, darker and richer version is called Sticke, which means secret, a reference to brewers' habit of providing few details as to the beer's recipe."

I always thought the secret wasn't the ingredients - it's an altbier, for starters, and, after 1870 or so*** (see Ron Pattinson's comment below), they would have been Reinheitsgebot-compliant - so I can't see why people would have shrouded the beer's recipe in mystery. Instead the secret was when the barrel would have been tapped. A brewer would mismeasure malt and have to add more hops to compensate so you got a bigger alt. From the German Beer Institute*** (see Ron's comment again):

The news of a brewmaster's mistake, of course, normally would get around quickly among the initiated, who would pass the secret by word of mouth, behind cupped hands, in a "stickum" or "sticke" sort of way... and to be in on the secret was quite a privilege. It is said that this "stickum" hot tip, shared among the aficionados, then became the origin of the beer's name. Nowadays, however, Sticke brewers have abandoned the secrecy sourrounding the unveiling of the Sticke.

This is what I've always heard. The secret is when the bier would be unveiled, not the recipe.

3) "Alt Bier is traditionally served in a narrow 200 ml (about 7 ounces) glass called a Stange..."

I thought you drank your Kölsch out of a stange but your altbier from a becher which is cylindrical like a stange but shorter and wider. See Wikipedia, for example. Or, better yet, look at photos taken by beer nerds in Düsseldorf. Those aren't stangen.

Not that it really matters to we Americans as tend to put everything shy of 10% ABV in a pint glass, although it may be a point of contention if you hail from Köln or Düsseldorf.

A Real Horror Show: The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

The Wasp Factory is Iain Banks' first published novel. Not having read anything by him previously, I can't really say how it compares to his later work. However, I am game for reading more by him now that I've completed this book.

The story concerns Frank Cauldhame, a 16 year-old who lives with his rather dour father, Angus, on an island that lies somewhere just off the coast of Scotland. Frank narrates and begins his tale rather enigmatically by saying, "I had been making the rounds of the Sacrifice Poles the day we heard my brother had escaped. I already knew something was going to happen; the Factory told me." The book had been recommended to me on the basis of it having an unreliable narrator but it's not completely true. It's not that Frank lies to the reader; it's more that he delays providing explanations for his cryptic story.

These first sentences get the reader asking what these Sacrifice Poles are, wanting to know about Frank's brother and from where he escaped, and just what the nature of the titular factory is. We immediately learn that the poles are sticks on a dune that hold the corpses of various animals and insects while the other questions are answered later. Frank spends his time amongst the dunes and roaming about the island that is his home being a menace to the fauna. When Frank is not out hunting rabbits with a wrist rocket, he can often be found in an old World War II bunker where there are more animal heads on spikes and he can perform sacrificial rites. Back at home, the attic serves a similar function and houses the Wasp Factory, a massive clock that once adorned the local branch of the Bank of Scotland but has been refitted for a more sinister purpose.

Frank is a lot like his father. Angus is either going into town or locked away in his study which Frank has never even peered into much less stepped inside of. While the son is sadistic, the father is very strange. He commits household measurements to memory and expects the same from Frank.

We eventually find out that Franks brother, Eric, has escaped from a mental institution. He was sent away after his behavior moved from stuffing the mouths of local kids with worms and maggots to setting dogs on fire. Eric's presence is felt mostly over the phone. He calls Frank frequently to say that he is making his way home and will be there soon. Frank describes his older brother as crazy but loves him anyway. The return of the reprobate revenant hangs over the proceedings. When will he pop up? Is he looking to exact revenge on his family?

Banks does a great job here of slowly revealing the story of Frank's life. Little details emerge that are only explained later. For example, Eric notes that he does not officially exist. No birth certificate and the usual panoply of government records are absent. How could that be? Banks also drops in bits of foreshadowing such as when Franks says, "I represent a crime, and if Eric was to come back stirring things up The Truth About Frank might come out." And the truth about Frank does come out eventually.

Banks seems to be saying something about how our environment shapes us, especially our parents. Frank is not a particularly sympathetic character. He strangles a rabbit with the elastic sling of his wrist rocket, is deeply misogynistic (“My greatest enemies are women and the sea. These things I hate. Women because they are weak and stupid and live in the shadows of men and are nothing compared to them."), and confesses to having murdered three children when he was a boy. But we learn that he was abandoned by his mother and Angus is not exactly the paragon of parenthood. When The Truth About Frank does get revealed, it's obvious that many adults in the boy's life failed him. And they failed Eric as well.

The problem is that both Frank and Eric are such repulsive characters that it's difficult to see them as victims of forces outside their control. You can add Angus to that list as well. Three monsters. The story gives a point at which these people snapped, essentially – the point at which they started to become monsters – and shows how external forces, i.e. – other people, helped make these individuals what they are. Unfortunately Banks doesn't dramatize the environmental factors enough. The act of killing the rabbit is elaborated upon as are the plans Frank hatched for killing the three kids but the incidents that drove Frank, Eric, and Angus to be what they are get short shrift. They're mentioned almost off-handedly so the causal connections aren't given enough emphasis and so the focus mostly remains on the atrocious protagonists.

The Wasp Factory has a lot of good ideas in it – the effects we have on one another, de-romanticizing childhood, and perhaps even mocking religion – but, in the end, I think A Clockwork Orange, while not covering the exact same ground, did this kind of thing better.

Polish Film Fest Starts Tonight With 80 Million

Madison's Polish Film Festival kicks off tonight with 80 Million.

A new film by Waldemar Krzystek. Poland, Lower Silesia, the beginning of a very cold winter 1981. After the series of entrapments by the Security Service a confrontation between the opposition and the communists seems to be inevitable. Just before the proclamation of martial law a group of young Solidarity activists decide to play va banque and organize a rash action to take out 80 million of the Union money from one of the Wroclaw's banks before the account would be blocked. Security Service officers follow their steps. It's the beginning of a gripping tournament in which also priests and curb dealers will play their parts. Each side has aces up their sleeve.

It looks like I'll be seeing it with a friend who grew up in Poland at this time so I should get some interesting bonus commentary.

Capital Looking to Brew an IPA?

The final nail in the coffin of the Kirby Nelson era at Capital Brewery looks as if it is being pounded in:



Kudos to Capital for moving forward (step one was brewing a pumpkin beer). But do we really need another IPA? (This assumes, of course, that this tweet is indicative of Capital intending to brew one.) I fear Dark and Pilsner will be gone soon.

The Old Fashioned to Become Demi-Brewpub

Apparently The Old Fashioned is no longer content with merely serving beer brewed by every brewery in the state and has decided to start brewing its own. The grapevine says that Ashley Kinart is to be the bierbrauer. She looks to be Madison's first female brewmaster, at least of the modern craft beer era.

Some new labels:


I haven't seen this around though you'd think it would have been available for Halloween. Perhaps a limited edition brew only available in the Milwaukee area.


Due in 10 days.


A new Kölsch. The style is catching on. Somebody get me a Kölsch-Kranz for Christmas.


Louie's Demise aged in bourbon barrels. They've even produced a video.



And from south of the border:



Pipeworks is out of Chicago but it's a raspberry Berliner Weisse and should be mentioned. It's the follow-up to Blue Lady, a blueberry Berliner Weisse. I am am going to be in the Chicago area over Thanksgiving weekend and am hoping the nearest Binny's has it in stock.

The latest entry into Wisconsin's craft beer scene is the Pigeon River Brewing Company. It's a brewpub located in Marion. The lone brew of their on tap right now is an oatmeal stout but more are to come and their selection otherwise is good. If you ever find yourself in Waupaca County, stop in.

Lastly I'll note that Vintage has their seasonal roggenbier, Tippy Toboggan, available. Brewmaster Scott Manning knows I think it's one of the best beers in the entire universe and so he brought us samples last night. The stuff is still a junge at only 2 weeks old so let it mellow a bit.

Oh, and there's a beer tasting at the Vintage this Sunday. Don't worry - the start time was moved to after the Packer game. And the adjuncts here aren't rice or corn but rather things of a botanical nature. Expect a pumpkin beer, Goose Island's Sofie, and more.

We're Ready for the Zombie Apocalypse

I never knew my employer had a disaster recovery plan until this morning when I saw this sitting next to our UPS:



Apparently we're supposed to cover our equipment if a pipe springs a leak or some such thing. If any electronic equipment is threatened with a large amount of water, I am out the door. Trying to grab some plastic sitting next to a UPS during an indoor flood is well above my pay grade. Where were the disaster recovery people when the tape backup system was down for weeks?

Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters Trailer

I'd never heard of Gregory Crewdson before seeing this trailer but have discovered that his work is really neat. The one with the baby lying on the bed reminds me of Nighthawks. Good stuff.

Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters will be screening here in Madison on 18 January courtesy of UW Cinematheque.

Vanishing Waves Trailer

This looks like a pretty hoopy flick from Lithuanian director Kristina Buožytė.

Lukas (Marius Jampolskis) is assisting a scientific research team by functioning as a patient in a series of heavily monitored (and medicated) sensory deprivation experiments wherein he is attempting to make some form of contact with the subject, Aurora (Jurga Jutaite), a young woman who has been locked in a comatose state for some time. Doctors initially hope for just a vague reaffirmation of consciousness, but the experiment takes an unexpected twist when Lukas and Aurora actually develop a strong psychic link in their mutually altered forms of consciousness…and their link quickly evolves into a romantic, sexually charged relationship.

George Takei's Biblical Exegesis

Hummingbirds Snore. Who Knew?

I found this at Boing Boing but the story is here.

Hummingbirds have incredibly high metabolic needs. To do all that buzzing around and to keep their tiny bodies warm, they eat the human equivalent of a refrigerator full of food every day, mostly in the form of high-energy nectar and fatty bugs. Because of their small size, they also lose a lot of body heat to the air. In order to preserve energy on cool nights, they have the ability to enter a daily, miniature hibernation called torpor.

Just before morning, their natural circadian rhythms kick in and they start to thaw out, like heating a car engine on a cold day. What we see in the video is probably a bird coming out of torpor (which is what the scientists in the video were studying), starting to breathe in more oxygen to raise its body temperature, and making that adorable snoring noise.

That's Entertainment?

The hostility of Madison's city government to hip-hop is well-known and has been an issue for several years. The music remains stigmatized and some venues refuse to host hip-hop shows. Taverns owned and heavily frequented by black Madisonians are rare. R' Place on South Park garnered a lot of mostly negative publicity for the violence that took place around the establishment and was shut down. A civil rights lawsuit filed against the city was dismissed. Such events generate much light but very little heat. The topic is raised, conferences are held to discuss the issues but, as near as I can tell, very little is ever done.

Today I read that the Madison Equal Opportunities Commission and the Alcohol License Review board "are working to expand access and opportunity in local entertainment" for people of color. Emily Genco of Madison Commons has the story.

In a city where 86 percent of the population is white, according to a 2011 estimate from the American Community Survey, bars and other entertainment venues can expect a fairly uniform clientele. But after notable closures of popular venues that attracted African American patrons and enforcement of restrictive entry policies at others, diversity – or lack thereof – in the city’s entertainment scene has drawn concerns. Both the Equal Opportunities Commission and Alcohol License Review Committee are working to expand access and opportunity in local entertainment.

Bars and clubs serve as community centers, where people come together. Without access, groups in the community are marginalized and their quality of life diminished, said Brian Benford, president of the Equal Opportunities Commission. “If you take that [access] away in entertainment, that’s a huge part of the fabric of the community, and that is missing. There’s no doubt about it.

Let me start by asking: where did this 86% white statistic come from? Wikipedia confusingly has two stats. One is that Madison is 75.66% white while the other, presumably from 2000, is 83.96%. The racial breakdown of our city according to the 2009-2011 American Community Survey 3-Year Estimates at census.gov is around 80%. There's no doubt that Madison is very white but we're talking a potential 10% difference here which translates to thousands of people.

Numbers aside, the article does a decent job of describing the problem. But it's too bad the problem is defined so narrowly here. It's about the decline of black-owned clubs and bars as well as the well-worn territory of hip-hop. While these issues contribute to a lack of diversity in entertainment options here in Madison, they are too often portrayed in the media as the only issues. More clubs like R' Place and more hip-hops shows around town would be good things but they wouldn't in and of themselves rid Madison of a lack of diversity.

The article doesn't mention a lack of venues for Madison's Latino community nor our Asian community. Or any other racial minority besides African-American. The president of the EOC, Brian Benford, is quoted as saying, "There’s a lot of things we need to talk about as a community, but in the beginning let’s talk about the lack of venues, the lack of diversity within venues." The emphasis is mine here. If you're interested in providing diversity of cultural and entertainment opportunities in Madison, you have to look beyond black vs. white, beyond bars & clubs, and beyond hip-hop as being the ultimate barometer of a Madison's diversity on this front. Being an alabaster bohunk, my first-hand knowledge about this issue is spectacularly limited but let me offer a few anecdotes.

My father-in-law, who is black, traveled to Milwaukee last year to see a production of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. Although it was staged here this past spring by the UW, there's no way he could have known that (and I think he had every right to be skeptical that it would ever be performed here) and so he traveled 90 miles one way to take in a play about the African-American experience. How often do Madison's theatre troupes perform plays with people of color as lead characters and their experiences given center stage?

Movies. Tonight at 9:15 there will be a screening of the Tamil language film Thuppaki at Eastgate. Movies aimed at Madison's Desi community are brought here monthly, if not more often, yet you'd probably never know it if you didn't look at the Mad Indians site. While I'm not expecting Rob Thomas or the rotating cast of movie reviewers at Isthmus to get a screener copy of Thuppaki, it deserves to be listed. It's even going to have English subtitles. Hell, even Marcus' website doesn't have it. (Oddly enough, 77 Square lists a Hindi language film, Jab Tak Hai Jaan as opening here tomorrow.)

At Mexican restaurants in Madison I've seen handbills for music events featuring Mexican and Mexican-American bands –at a club in McFarland. I can't seem to find anything online about this, unfortunately, but I'd swear to this. But I don't recall seeing these events publicized in the major arts & entertainment rags in town.

In the end, I think there's more – much more – to diversifying entertainment options in Madison than having hip-hop shows downtown. It will take efforts on the parts of performing artists, venue owners, patron, the media, the city - everyone - to create a truly diverse palate of entertainment here in Madison.