Geologist Love Beer

At Michigan State all of the geology grad students go to the same bar every Friday. And at Miami's Geology Field Station there's a bar less than a mile away. That bar is in the middle of nowhere so it must be the Geologists and oil field workers who keep it going.

Dr. Maltman from the University of Wales at Aberystwyth discussed the role of Beer and Geology at the GSA conference in Denver. It appears this discussion was taken from his article in Geology Today titled ‘Wine, beer and whisky: the role of geology’ . Most newspaper articles about the presentation at the GSA conference discussed the strong connection between beer and the rocks the groundwater flows through and discounted the concept of terroir in wine.

However, this may be because the effects of terroir have not been fully investigated. But there is no doubt that groundwater and hence geology has a tremendous impact on beer. And the difference can be as subtle as noticing a difference of taste between Guinness brewed in London and Guinness brewed in Dublin. Along these lines some brewers are reviving "geologic brewing methods".

Hail Dolphins

And so it begins... It appears dolphins have begun their subterfuge to control the human race. First they show up where you least expect them, and now they are acting like our "friends". Be afraid...

Slow Cooker Jambalaya

Colleen's Slow Cooker Jambalaya

If there were a Santa Claus I'd ask for this.

Subaru developing diesel boxer engine.

Sweet mother of God what is the holdup? - I hope this comes to the U.S. soon.

2004 Music

Rolling Stone's top albums of 2004

December Witch

November Witches now seem to be happening in December:

DEEP LOW PRESSURE WILL PRODUCE STRONG ONSHORE WINDS ALONG THE LAKE
MICHIGAN SHORELINE TODAY. THESE STRONG WINDS WILL PRODUCE WAVES OF
15 TO 20 FEET...LEADING TO SIGNIFICANT BEACH EROSION...DAMAGE TO
UNPROTECTED VESSELS AND STRUCTURES...AND HAZARDOUS CONDITIONS ON
DOCKS...PIERS AND BREAKWATERS.

The climate is changing. Grand Traverse Bay has not frozen over more often than not in the last 10 years, and in fact, there have been more unfrozen winters in the last 10 than in all of 1850-1993. But it could be worse. We're still in an Ice Age and if the climate were not warming then it would be cooling. In fact, the climate was much warmer 1000 years ago when wine was grown in England. The thing to remember is that the Earth and the climate are never static.

Surviving Rabies

I heard a story on All Things Considered this afternoon about a Wisconsin girl who survived a rabies infection. In 1970 Dr. Stechschulte, who would later be my pediatrician, helped six year old Matthew Winkler survive rabies, and this even though the rabies vaccine failed. Until this Wisconsin girl this incident in 1970 had been the only known instance of a person surviving rabies.

Edmund Fitzgerald November 10, 1975

Edmund Fitzgerald November 10, 1975

The Land of the Free...

The Senate has taken up in committee a real lovely piece of work. If you don't want to become a criminal because you skipped a television commercial or shared music on your iPod then let your Senator know what you think.

Biodiesel is hitting the Mainstream

MSNBC - Jeep's biodiesel potentialis shown off

Just say No to Paperless Voting

Wired News: Researchers: Florida Vote Fishy

Takeaway quote:

"The researchers examined numerous variables that might have affected the vote outcome. These included the number of voters, their median income, racial and age makeup and the change in voter turnout between the 2000 and 2004 elections. Using this information, they examined election results for the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates in the state in 1996, 2000 and 2004 to see how support for those candidates and parties measured over eight years in Florida's 67 counties.

They discovered that in the 15 counties using touch-screen voting systems, the number of votes granted to Bush exceeded the number of votes Bush should have received -- given all of the other variables -- while the number of votes that Bush received in counties using other types of voting equipment lined up perfectly with what the variables would have predicted for those counties.

The total number of excessive votes ranged between 130,000 and 260,000, depending on what kind of problem caused the excess votes. The counties most affected by the anomaly were heavily Democratic.

Sociology professor Michael Hout, who chairs the university's graduate Sociology and Demography group, said the chance for such a discrepancy to occur was less than 1 in 1,000."

[Via Slashdot]

Pop or Soda

I love linguistic and human migration studies such as this. On The Pop vs. Soda Page you can see what areas of the country say "Soda", "Pop", or just call every soft drink "Coke". An even better map with county-by-county statistics.

Clay's Simpson's Songs Wav Page

This page has most, if not all, of The Simpson's songs including Homer's ode to Max Power ("He has a name that you'd love to touch / but you musn't touch")

2005 Subaru Outback only vehicle to gets 5 star NHTSA crash rating in every category

But why doesn't Subaru have a diesel model? Until Fuji Heavy Industries releases a diesel Suby they won't be getting any more of my money.

[Via: AutoBlog]

Tree-destroying beetle discovered in Petoskey

[Via: the Record-Eagle]

Northern Snakehead found in Lake Michigan

The Chicago Sun Times reprots that a northern snakehead was caught in downtown Chicago at Burnham Harbor.

[Via GLIN Daily News]

Mount St. Helens VolcanoCam - Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument

Relate movies and actors to each other

I came across Cinema FreeNet today. From it I was able to relate Kate Winslet to John Cusack (winslet, kate appeared in hamlet, which starred hopkins, anthony who appeared in road to wellville, and it starred cusack, john).

Michigan Farm Market, U-Pick, and Ag-Tourism Directory

[via ResearchBuzz]

To boost US security, an energy diet

What you learn from the article is that it is better to call it "energy efficiency" rather than "energy conservation".

Takeaway quote:

Just by "consolidating and accelerating" existing trends toward greater efficiency - at an estimated cost of $180 billion over a decade - the US could eliminate oil imports by 2040, according to an RMI [Rocky Mountain Institute] report released Monday

Source:CS Monitor

This article comes on the heels of a link seen on BoingBoing for a self-published free e-book called Saving Energy Without Derision by Dr. Allan P. Zelicoff. The link is completely boinged and has been all week but Google has an
HTML cache currently and you can find the file savingenergy.pdf on gnutella and bittorrent.

Who are Sportsmen to vote for?

In an article for High Country News Tom Reed has written a nice piece titled "Hunting: It's Not About the Gun"

This article basically asks the questioin of how can hunting enthusiast still support Bush even though the adminstration's policies are taking away hunting opportunities on public land?

As an outdoorsman living in the West, it's hard for me to ignore the damage that has been done to our wildlife heritage in the last four years. Places where I used to hunt pronghorn and sage grouse on the Upper Green River outside Pinedale, Wyo., are now oil and gas fields.

A ranch where I once killed a dandy mule deer buck in Wyoming's Powder River Basin was roaded and tapped for coalbed methane two years ago. It will not recover in my lifetime.

This article reinforces my belief that you cannot be a single issue or single party voter. Even though the NRA tries to scare Republicans into not voting for Democrats and the NOW wants warns people of the dangers of a Republican in office, like in most other things you must take a systems approach.

For this election that means if you are an outdoor enthusiast do you vote for the candidate who is an avid duck hunter and a member of a party that at least professes to care about the environment or do you vote for the candidate and administration who's energy policy means drilling for more of it (and the 200+ days of supply that will bring) and writes orders to the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers to not enforce the filling of wetlands in the Great Lakes and elsewhere?

Since hunting rights and the health of the Great Lakes are important to me I will vote for Senator Kerry. While Senator Kerry may vote one way on an issue and then many months or years later vote another way; at least he does not flat-out lie and call it the truth. The election should be about the long-term policies, never about the Party.

Then there are the hunters who realize that it's about the hunt, never about the tool. They have walked the land and have mourned for the places they used to stalk mule deer or antelope. They read the papers and know that George W. Bush has taken away protections on 20 million acres of wetlands, given back 3 million and called this a net gain. They know that our president has signed away water rights on Blue Ribbon trout streams and that his administration is trying to open roadless areas -- regions crucial to wildlife -- to development.

Angler Access Guide

The above link is for a Lake Michigan shoreline fishing guide provided by the Great Lakes Fishery Trust.

The entire guide is available as a PDF.

Patent pending: Wyoming residents join ranks of inventors

The Billings Gazette carried an AP article about all the interesting things Wyoming natives have invented, including the Pinedale inventor of the suturing staple used in surgery. However, a search of the Wyoming Inventor's Database doesn't show anyone from Pinedale who has invented suturing staples. But as expected you find people from Pinedale have invented things like a kinfe and a fishing lure. And the not expected, such as the Internet Wide Distributed Data Control System.

Furthermore, a search of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office web site shows that since 1976 no one from Wyoming has patented anything with the words suture and staple in the abstract.

Wyoming Game and Fish approve wildlife, oil/gas strategy

Takeaway quote:

Wyoming Game and Fish Department directors want to achieve a no-net loss of wildlife habitat in the oil and gas fields around Pinedale.

Source: Casper Star Tribune

George Lucas talks about changes in the original Trilogy

When you want to know what Nerds think about Star Wars you look on Slashdot.

Most stories get 200+ comments. This George Lucas interview at Yahoo got over 700. There are some very funny reactions.

In response to an answer in the interview where Lucas says It's like this is the movie I wanted it to be, and I'm sorry you saw half a completed film and fell in love with it. One slashdotter wrote in response:

So basically what he says is, he got lucky with Star Wars. Because what he wanted to make was garbage. Look at the prequels - he had much more control over these, and comparatively they sucked. They are tripe on their own, without using the original three as a crutch.

So the movies that people loved, and built his "empire" (so to speak) were not his true vision. We have seen his vision, and it isn't that great. So I think it is time to stop giving Lucas any credit for the first three movies. He doesn't want it, and he apparently doesn't deserve it. Actually, the more control he had, the worse the movies got. It was kind of obvious to me that he had more control with ROTJ, because of the Ewoks and some of the direction the story took. I am almost looking forward to EPIII - not to see it, but just to see how bad it is.

And another posted the following as Lucas to his fans:

"'F' you all, I never wanted to make star wars in the first place. The special additions [sic] are as close as I can now get to what I realy wanted. I wont release the originals because the millions of fans that want to buy them wouldn't (or so the force tells me). Just buy my crap and shut the hell up.'"

A site where Big Ideas can be presented

The site is called Change This and here is what the creators say about it:

That's our goal at ChangeThis. To respect your intelligence. To make it easy to spread ideas that respect individuals and their communities. To respect the ability everyone has to make a difference.

Idealism is fine, but it won't buy you a cup of coffee at Starbucks (neither will $2, it seems). What we're going for here is a practical, fast and free way to spread the very best ideas to people who can actually do something with them.

Business, health, politics... if it spreads, if it's respectful, we're for it.

There's always too much interesting stuff to read and never enough time...

Golden Gate vs. Mighty Mac

From The Soo Evening News

Gas wells and oil rigs are changing the landscape of the mountain west

Seen at the Christian Science Monitor

The takeaway quote:

"Drilling for gas is already on the upswing in the region. Five Rocky Mountain states saw drilling activity in August rise to their highest levels in a decade. Wyoming had 84 rigs operating versus an annual average of 38 over the past decade - 121 percent higher. For Utah, the 22 rigs operating are 76 percent higher than the average over a decade. For New Mexico, it's 30 percent; Montana, 166 percent; and Colorado, 171 percent.

Yet the energy produced from public lands is minuscule. Interior Department records show that only enough oil was produced between 1989 and 2003 to supply the nation for 53 days and enough natural gas for 221 days at current rates of consumption..."

Source: On the range, gas trumps wildlife

Sexual Harassment Panda

Wavs and MP3s from the Sexual Harassment Panda South Park

The following are posts I had put up on tblog.com. I started using this blog hosting site not realizing 'The Seiche'was still active on blogger.com. Blogger is superior in every way.

Michigan WiFi

[Found at ResearchBuzz]

The State of Michigan, in partnership with SBC, is making available WiFi Hotspots at Rest Areas and State Parks. Sounds great but I'm not too excited, it isn't free unless you only want to browse michigan.gov.

A Proposed hypothesis to explain the anemic job growth

[Seen at Slate.com]

Did the 2003 Tax Cuts reduce employment?

The gist of it is the current administration predicted that "...the number of payroll jobs would rise by at least 300,000 each month in this election year."

But Barry Ritholtz hypothesizes that companies are spending money buying things to take advantage of the accelerated depreciation schedule which expires January 1, 2005. This new depreciation schedule lets a company write off 50% and is part of the same tax cut package that gave us that $300-600 taxable tax-advance from the U.S. Treasury. And by spending money on new property companies are putting off new hires.

Sounds plausible. If true then there'll be an uptick in new hires during the first quarter of 2005.

Chocolate Egg Cream

[I first heard about Chocolate Egg Cream while watching an episode of The West Wing] Here's what appears to be the most authentic Brooklyn-style recipe and directions for Chocolate Egg Cream boyee.

Milk + Seltzer + Chocolate Syrup

Double Grain Pancakes

From AllRecipes.com

recipe for Double Grain Pancakes:

* 1 cup all-purpose flour
* 1 1/3 cups dry milk powder
* 1 teaspoon baking powder
* 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 2 cups whole wheat flour
* 3/4 cup white sugar
* 4 eggs, lightly beaten
* 3 cups water
* 1/4 cup butter, melted
* 3 tablespoons vinegar

I'll try it without the white sugar and use honey instead, but the vinegar aspect is promising.

the best All Purpose Vehicle?

I'd really like someone to manufacture an AWD station wagon with a diesel or diesel-hybrid engine. In Europe you can buy an AWD Volvo V50 with a diesel engine or VW Passat wagon with a V6 TDI and 4MOTION. The U.S. versions of the TDI Passat and Jetta are not recommended for towing and only come in fwd. In fact, if you want a diesel the best way to go may be to convert your vehicle to diesel via an expensive engine swap. The you can get your own "BIODIESEL No War Required" bumper sticker.

Until Subaru builds a go-anywhere bio-diesel friendly Outback with room for four adults and two large dogs the mini-van remains the best choice for a multi-purpose vehicle. If you need to do any serious offroading get a mountain bike, motorcycle, a horse, or hike it. Those-in-the-know know that real offroading involves roads and trails that are too narrow for a large Hummer-like SUV. Plus there is always the active vs passive safety thing...

Anyway, the minivan options are Honda and Toyota and from what I've read each one is superb. The new Odyssey is now just as good if not better than the Sienna. It comes down to what you want - the Sienna has AWD available; the Odyssey can shut off cylinders when not needed in the high end models for better fuel efficiency.

CNN/Money review of the 2005 Odyssey
Honda Odyssey review at USAToday
2004 Sienna review at Canadian Driver

Conservatioin Easement on Drummond Island

From the Soo Evening News

"DRUMMOND ISLAND -- With the signing of the first of two conservation easements on a portion of privately owned James Island, Nature Conservancy officials struck on a way to preserve undeveloped land while it remains in private hands."

"...small island off the mouth of the Potagannissing River..."

"...The Nature Conservancy's stewardship over the unique 1,185-acre Maxton Plains formation on Drummond Island was reportedly the clincher leading the Bardsleys to an arrangement with the conservancy. Called an "alvar grassland" the rocky Maxton Plains formation was called "one of the rarest habitats in the world" by the Nature Conservancy."

If you have land that you like to put under easement for more information contact The Nature Conservancy or the Little Traverse Conservancy in Petoskey.

God Bless Daimler-Chrysler

Jeep Liberty Diesels will come factory equipped with a tank of biodiesel

[Seen on autoblog]

Picture from Atlas' Photo Shoot

For Christmas the family had a portrait made. Atlas is such a
beautiful puppy he got his own photo shoot.

This is also a test E-mail to blog post from the free, and so far
amazing, site flickr.com

Bush Now Backs Budget Powers in New Spy Post

Just like President Bush said the war on terror could not be won but the next day it could.

Or how initially the Bush Administration didn't want a September 11th Commission but then it did.

Yet somehow Kerry is made out to be the flip-flopper. What is it that the marketing people say? - repeat something seven times and people will believe it?

Like the parody put together by the Daily Show demonstrates, for President Bush, words speak more powerfully than actions