Glibertarians.com 2018 Archive

Category: Opinion

  • You Win Again, Kentucky!

    So this one time I went to Kentucky….

    Relax it wasn’t like that. I was in Lexington for work and I rather liked the town. The first thing about Lexington I noticed was–horses. I mean, hello! It’s called an automobile. It is faster than your horse. The other thing I noticed, once I got out of the class I was in, is the glut of whiskey, and whiskey related things.

    This is my review of beers aged in Bourbon Barrels.

    Why put it into a barrel? Why not?  Even if I already gave you a pretty good rundown on barrels, expanding beyond stouts may be prudent.  Besides, the chances are pretty good at least one of you has three fingers of whiskey and an open bottle of beer. More of you probably switched to whiskey once your college football team managed to knock itself out of contention–already. You were going to do both, and quite frankly the people that sell mind altering substances know their buyer.

    Supposedly, this craze began 1992, when…

    Greg Hall of Goose Island Beer Company in Chicago produced a bourbon barrel-aged beer by filling six barrels that had previously contained Jim Beam with his beer. He premiered it at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver that fall, effectively debuting an entirely new style.

    So if you hate it, blame that guy. Stouts aren’t the only thing you can throw into bourbon barrels, they simply bode well with the smooth vanilla notes the wood imbues into the beer.  They even put wine in them for reasons I cannot give an intelligent answer.

    What I can discuss, however:

    This one was pretty good. I would think a pale ale would be overpowered by the taste of whisky, and I don’t think I was wrong. Still if you happen to sip whiskey you will probably like it. Full Sail Kentucky Cream Bourbon Barrel Aged Pale Ale. 4.0/5

    I rather enjoyed this one. While I normally don’t go for an IPA, the red varieties I do find interesting. This one stands up better than the pale ale due to the robustness in ale to begin with. The whiskey mutes out a lot of the hoppiness. Founders Dank Wood Red India Pale Ale: 4.2/5

  • Philosophy of Food

    I’m an animal lover.  I have two very spoiled dogs and a long history of pet ownership ranging from reptiles, rodents, cats and farm animals.  In high school I was a member of Future Farmers of America and showed poultry at the state fairs.  My parents owned a hobby farm populated with cows, goats, pigs, geese, ducks, chickens and one very fat turkey hen named Tiger.  I was showing Tiger at a fair and stopped for dinner at a sub shop.  I got a turkey sandwich.  As I ate my turkey sandwich looking at the turkey I had raised from an egg and had trained to follow me around, I heard a little voice say, “Isn’t that a little cruel to eat in front of your pet?”  Being 17 or 18 at the time, I wasn’t exactly a deep thinker and excused the thought due to the fact that I had no relationship with the turkey on my sandwich.

    The animals my family raised were never eaten by us.  Sure, we sold them knowing they would be butchered, but our hands were clean.  But as I grew older and started reflecting more on life, often while eating, I thought of the cows that I’d named and sold to market.  I could never have killed one of them.  I don’t think I could enjoy eating them even if someone else had butchered them, but here I am eating a hamburger.  I’d outsourced my killing. Did that make me morally superior or inferior?  I would never pay someone to do something I wasn’t willing to do myself, so how could I outsource my dirty work.  I decided around 27 years old to stop eating beef because of the time I’d spent close to cows, learning how curious and gentle they can be, each with their own unique personality.  Later I questioned what made cows special, other than the fact that I like them.  We had a pot belly pig that liked a good scratch and treat.  It is widely acknowledged pigs are intelligent animals, so pork fell off the menu.

    The little voice said: “Why only beef and pork?  Isn’t that an arbitrary line drawn by nothing but your feelings?”

    My hypocrisy was glaring and I decided I would eat no mammals.  An arbitrary line to be sure, but we are mammals ourselves and that seemed fair at the time.  So another year goes by eating fish, poultry and the occasional reptile when I thought back to Tiger the turkey and remembered eating that sandwich and the little voice reminding me that I wouldn’t have killed any turkey.  Well, I enjoy fishing and have no shellfish allergies so pescatarianism here I come.  Finally I could honestly say that although I was hiring someone else to catch and provide my food, I would be willing to do it myself.  I remained on that diet for several years and continued enjoying animals through zoos, aquariums, nature walks and television programs.  I love nature shows.  I find any animal fascinating.  The way they live, breed and hunt. Watching lions hunt on tv as a child I always rooted for the gazelle to get away.  As I got older I realized that the lion needs to eat too.

    Little Voice: “Is the lion an immoral creature because it hunts?”

    Only the most rabid PETA person would say yes.  So if the lion is not immoral for hunting, why did I myself consider it immoral?  Because I have agency?  I can choose not to kill.  I have empathy.  I can image what other people and animals feel.

    Little Voice: “What about the bass you love to catch?”

    That, I told myself was different; they aren’t a higher animal.

    Little Voice: “They fight for their lives.  They want to live.”

    Fine, fish off the menu.

    Little Voice: “What about shellfish?  They didn’t evolve those hard defensive shells for no reason.”

    Fine, all animals off the menu.  Are you happy now voice in my head?!?  I’ll go vegetarian!

    Little Voice: “Cows are slaves to dairy farmers.”

    Fine, vegan!  Good enough for you conscience?!?

    Once again,  I was watching a nature program, this time about wild tobacco plants.  Tobacco plants produce natural pesticides to protect themselves from insects and when exposed to a new pest that is resistant to their chemical warfare, they evolve a new pesticides in a never ending evolution of defense.  Not only do tobacco plants fight to live, they send a message to other tobacco plants with the design for the new pesticide.  The plants have empathy, they shared their hard work so the species could survive.

    Little Voice: “Seems like plants want to live as much as bass.”

    Fruit?  How about that brain? You got anything against fruit?  I’ll go full Jainism!  Not to offend any Jainist reading, but if you look into evolutionary history, that fruit isn’t meant for humans.  The reason that ripe fruit changes color is to signal birds that it is ready for them, not some local primate.  Prior to color vision development in primates, only birds could see the color change and the plants were offering a tasty snack to the birds in exchange for spreading seeds far and wide.  If a monkey ate the fruit, the distribution would be limited, so plants, specifically peppers, developed capsaicin in an effort to discourage mammals from eating their precious seeds.  Birds, fish and reptiles don’t have capsaicin receptors.  This was a limited chemical attack aimed at mammals, including us.

    Little Voice: “So animals don’t want us to eat them and plants don’t want us to eat them, what are you going to eat smart guy?”

    I thought about it.  Single cell organisms that use photosynthesis and have no defensive mechanism?  They aren’t even harmless!  I’m sure, little voice in my head you are familiar with the great oxygen event.  You must, you know what I know! Those little light consuming bastards wiped all other life off the planet with poisonous oxygen!  As I gained control of my addled mind, I began to think about how a small organism changed an entire planet and took my attention from the very small to the very large; our universe.

    The universe is big place and the vast majority is empty and yet filled with danger; vacuums, extreme cold, radiation, black holes and burning balls of gas.  The universe is racing to reach it lowest form of energy through constant expansion and organisms are fighting the flow of energy seeking its lowest state as the heat death of the universe approaches. Microbes to man are engaged in a Sisyphean challenge of rolling a rock up an energy hill, forever.  In that context, living is fighting. It is the ultimate fight club with no holds barred.  Our ancestors came down from the trees and developed efficient locomotion to pursue game; a unique shoulder design that allows for projectile weapons such as slings and arrows.  We learned to use fire to make meat more digestible and with that calorie boost our brains grew to develop even more complex hunting schemes and weapons.

    Little Voice:  “Does that mean YOU can do whatever you please with no consideration for life?”

    No.  Humans are still cursed/gifted with sentience.  We are not bound strictly by evolution.  We can make choices about what and how we eat.

    Little Voice: “Are animals nothing more than property?”

    That is a debatable question for another post, but let us assume yes, animals are property AND in need of special consideration.  Just because animals are a food source doesn’t mean we can’t still show empathy.  With these revelations my diet expanded to include animals once again, but with a wider consciousness.  I thought, what is the most ethical way to procure food?  A shallow thinker may conclude a vegan diet hurts no animals.  I already posited that plants may not want to be food, but conceding that point, growing vegetables isn’t harmless.   The land where soybeans and kale are grown had to be cleared and the native animals displaced.  After the animals and non-commercial plants are eradicated, the land needs constant protections from animals trying to eat the crops and plants invading the inviting soil.  A clear battle line is marked at the edge of the farm and pesticides must be applied which kill not only pest but other harmless insects.

    The veggie farm is just another arena in the fight club of life.  Cattle ranches and poultry farms have the same issues but with added ethical considerations of living conditions for the animals.  Buying cage free and free range is an option but still the animals aren’t wild and the land still managed.  Commercial fishing has it own set of issues such as long net vessels catch the target fish for market, but also thousands of fish with no food value.

    Little Voice: “There ought to be a law!”

    There oughtn’t, I counter.  Everything comes with a price, including ethical farming, fishing and ranching.  I choose to pay extra for what I consider to be the more ethical methods, but not everyone has room in the budget to make those same choices or has the same set of values as I do.

    Little Voice: “Clearly hunting is the most cruel.  Everyone knows that.”

    Not so fast my imaginary friend.  Recreational hunting is limited to only certain times of the year and subject to bag limits for native animals; on private land you can target invasive species year round.  In both cases, the land is left in a natural state so all non-game animals and plants can live without molestation.  Only a few of the game species are harvested so the majority is left to thrive and the sacrificed few aren’t wasted by responsible hunters, since the meat is eaten and the hides turned into trophies. Sport fishing is the cousin of hunting, where limits are set and only a sustainable number of animals taken during certain seasons.  Hunting and fishing are the most honest ways to procure meat in my opinion.  The hunted have a chance for escape and ethical hunters give fair chase to the animal.  The cow has no chance for life beyond the ranch and may even see the rancher as a friend who provides food, until led to the abattoir.

    After years of self reflection and deep though, I have made peace with the little voice in my head.  I try to eat sustainable fish, free range/cruelty free animals and this year I plan to buy a lifetime hunting/fishing license for the state of Florida, so I can supplement my diet with what I consider the most ethical meat source.  I would grow my own vegetables too, but it turns out I don’t have much of a green thumb or patience for weeding.  How is any of this of interest to libertarians?  Libertarianism is a governing philosophy, not a moral code.  Where the debate comes into play is how government regulates use of public lands for hunting, seas for fishing, animal cruelty laws for ranching and regulation of herbicides/pesticides/GMO for farming.

    As libertarians, we can debate how heavy the regulatory hand should be.  No FDA?  I’m listening.  No FWC?  I think they provide a valuable service of ensuring native species aren’t over hunted on public lands.  A better solution would be selling public lands to private conservation groups and have private regulation.  Mandate cruelty free food?  This is where my standards for myself and the law come into conflict.  I chose a diet that I believe to be ethical, but as a libertarian I would never force others to make that same choice.  If enough people would choose to pay the price difference the market will provide cruelty free alternatives.  As the market grows, prices should come down.  In the end, it is up to each individual to make peace with that little voice in their head.

  • Milch ist Eine Schlechte Wahl!

    One of the problems I find with my preferences is that it is simply too damn hot for me to be drinking the type of beer that I normally go for. When it’s 110 degrees outside, the last thing I want to drink is milk. I hate the stuff. The way it coats your mouth, the full feeling, probably sourced from a few dozen Holsteins… On a hot day it’s a bad choice and let’s be real—I get a lot of hot days. A close second is an IPA but given my purchasing habits no longer revolve around what I want to drink and what serves a sufficient writing prompt, I have to choke that down from time to time. But imperial stout? I could but it’s just not refreshing, and quite frankly I am drinking copious amounts of beer because I am thirsty.

    This is my review of Colbitz Heide-Braurer Schwartzbier.  Cue the Space Balls-related puns.

    This beer reminds me of a friend of mine who got into Black Lager about ten years ago during college. We would take advantage of the $0.50 wings Tuesdays on Buffalo Wild Wings and get a bunch of wings. Until that one day it occurred to me I got a free T-Shirt if I did the Blazing Wing challenge. The challenge was only to eat 24 within their time constraint of an hour. Later they made it more difficult where you had to eat fewer of them, but had to do it in a few minutes.

    So…um…would ya?

    So I did it, and had a Sam Adams Black Lager or two along with it.

    Word to the wise–do not do this to yourself. You might think it’s a good idea to eat 24 ghost pepper wings, with the capsicum burning your lips the entire time. The pH balance in your stomach altering ever so slightly that you feel like your insides are digesting themselves. The mild acid reflux, the stench of fried chili grease oozing from your pores. Then there’s the morning after…. I was in ROTC at the time and had PT at 0600 the morning after. They accepted my stupidity as an excuse for missing it, because they were laughing too hard to stay serious enough to admonish me at the time.

    By the way, I didn’t get a free t-shirt.

    Eventually we made it a weekly thing. I didn’t do the challenge again, because as it turns out I am not that much a glutton for punishment, but the Black Lager thing continued.

    What is Schwartzbier anyways? You may not know it, but it is apparently one of the oldest styles around.

    Schwarzbier, literally “black beer,” is probably the longest continuously brewed beer style in the world, with its known ancestors close to three millennia in age and with definitive origins in the modern brewing cradle.

    Today’s schwarzbier combines Old World rusticity with the graceful smoothness of lagerbier, and a clean roasted edge with German malt complexity. It’s deep, ruby-black color and modest strength makes schwarzbier the lager equivalent of basic stout.

    The origin of schwarzbier lies in what perhaps the most significant historical brewing region in the world: southeastern Germany, including some of Bavaria, and portions of the former Bohemia, now the Czech Republic. The most famous, and arguably the most important, development from there was the invention of pilsner beer less than 200 years ago in Plzen, Bohemia. But the true gems from the region are the ancient, but modernly polished styles: schwarzbier and the smoky rauchbier.

    There is concrete evidence that crude schwarzbier was being brewed there as long ago as the ninth century B.C. (and undoubtedly, well before). This proof comes from an 1935 archaeological discovery seven miles west of Kulmbach in Northern Bavaria. The venture unearthed an Iron Age Celtic tomb that dated to about 800 B.C. That grave held an amphora with some residual brewing material and the charred crumbs of partially baked wheat bread, known to be the raw material for Celtic and Germanic brews of the time. Since this discovery places the oldest evidence of brewing in Central Europe in Kulmbach, and that beer was black, we can deduce that the world’s oldest, and still-produced, style of beer was schwarzbier.

    The result is something that has the dark roasted complexity of a stout (minus the lactose) combined with the refreshing nature of lager.

    Serve it cold, in tall mugs with a group of friends. This one in particular was actually pretty inexpensive for a six pack of pint cans and like all German beer is made in compliance with the Reinheitsgebot, assuming that means anything to you at all. Colbitz Heide-Braurer Schwartzbier 3.5/5

  • What Are We Reading – August 2018

    Riven

     

    mexican sharpshooter

    I decided to pick up a book from one of those “Intellectual Dark Web”…people.  Since pretty much everyone here is familiar with Jordan Peterson I picked something different.  Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker is what I picked, and ordered here.  I finished it while traveling home last weekend from Kansas City.  What interested me was his interview on Joe Rogan (leave me alone) where he came across as a soft-spoken, somewhat bumbling professor type which more or less is his persona.  The podcast left me thinking he was a left-wing professor that happens to stick his head out of his bubble every now and then and honestly reports what he sees.  He does have a lot of good musings over individual rights, free markets, and authoritarian governments.  His overall message is to look at the history, look at the data and be smart about how you form your opinions because where many fall short is their opinions are not backed up by objective fact.  Where he will probably fall short around here are his arguments against libertarianism, a good rundown of his arguments in his book are located at this link here.  One thing that I kept noticing is while he recognizes where the rights for the individual have led to positive impacts, he still advocates for actions on certain issues that some here will find antithetical to his message.

    Otherwise, his premises are explained clearly, cited thoroughly, and he shows them visually (there are 75 graphs and 40 pages of notes).  If there is any interest I can do a more thorough review.

    Brett L

    As part of our hate-reads, SF dared Jesse and I to read Happy Doomsday. This is the worst professionally written book I have ever read. Seriously. There is nothing good about it. Two too many of the characters survive the apocalypse. Do not read it. No, no. Don’t get curious about how bad it can be. DO NOT READ IT. SF did make it up to me by passing on to me Hardwired by Walter John Williams. This is 80s Mirrorshade Cyberpunk at its most fun. Aside from an irrational hatred of Texans common to many border-staters, it is great. Cyborgs jacked directly into hovercrafts, street samurai with cybernetic snakes implanted in their throats, a monomaniacal corporate titan who thinks he’s plugged into the heart of the silicon. I loved it. I also read Nathan Lowell’s latest two books in the Solar Clipper series. Suicide Run and Home Run. I really like the original story line. You just have to believe me when I say that he makes working the mess deck on merchant marine in space seem interesting. It gets more interesting from there, but somehow getting the coffee out on time seems like a worthy challenge.

    jesse.in.mb

    Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows by Balli Kaur Jaswal. Not gonna lie, I was grabbed by the name and the first third of the story felt interminably slow. The main character was a wee bit too SJW and the person we assume is her antagonist a little too self-satisfied and traditional. There were erotic short stories embedded throughout, which I suppose I should’ve expected, but was a little scandalized by. Once the story starts rolling it’s engaging and endearing and you’re satisfied with the ending even if it’s a bit fairy-tale perfect.

    The World of Null-A by A. E. van Vogt. I had to keep reminding myself that this was classic sci-fi…and that the copy I purchased on Amazon still managed to be a shittily transcribed/scanned version. It was a jaunty read and the [scifi jargon] + [household item] formula was charming in an old-timey way.

    All New Square Foot Gardening (2nd Edition) by Mel Batholomew. One of these days I’ll get my ass in gear and at least grow tomatoes again. This book is pure garden-project pornography. One disappointment is that the book seems better suited for people who have a winter, and while they make occasional mention of plants that’ll grow in more temperate climates, instructions about harvesting after the first light frost but before the first hard frost are…unhelpful in climate zone 10b.

    Happy Doomsday: A Novel by David Sosnowski. Someone’s mother (not mine, obviously) always used to say “if you can’t say anything nice about a book, don’t say anything at all.” I did not prefer the characters in this book, which made it difficult to finish. I blame SugarFree’s enthusiasm for “this will be so bad it’s good” which he then abandoned in favor of “it’s so bad I refuse to continue” leaving Brett and me to struggle through. SP wisely chose a different Kindle First Reads book and mocked Brett and me for our “suicide pact.” I notice Brett has recommended that you not read it, but he’s just being a little theatrical, I’ll point out that it’ll continue being free to Prime members until the end of the month.

    While engaging in some Happy Doomsday avoidance I listened to the first (and second) novel in the Whiskey Business series, which SP is also listening to. It’s a fun light mystery with a built-in explainer for making and drinking whiskey. I also listened to Andrea Vernon and the Corporation for UltraHuman Protection, which could’ve been written by one of you. I don’t know that it’d hit everyone’s funnybones the way it hit mine, but I would recommend it if you’re looking for a very light superhero caper in a world where superheroes are privatized and an uplifted lady-rhinoceros with an assault rifle discusses her masturbatory habits during a mandatory sexual harassment training.

    JW

    Chelsea Clinton – She Persisted

    SP

    I have nothing interesting to report as my reading time has been taken up by a pharmacology textbook. Not exactly a bedtime page-turner.

    Oh, I am also listening to this book’s Audible version this week while working out, cleaning, and folding laundry. (It’s a full life.) The story itself is OK, but the female narrator sometimes loses me between the heavily-Scots-and-English-accented male characters, making me have to hit the 10-second rewind button, which annoys me when I am wearing nitrile gloves.

    SugarFree

    Great Googly-Moogly, Happy Apocalypse was terrible. I made it 15% in and had to stop. Just bad. Bad, bad, bad. I could only read about 500 words at a time before I had to put it down. In-between the pain, I read James Tiptree Jr.‘s Her Smoke Rose Up Forever story collection. Tiptree is the most celebrated act of literary transvestitism in science fiction, being the nom de plume for Alice Sheldon. It was a fairly open secret that Tiptree was a woman, and I have a hard time believing that anyone of any sophistication who read more than a couple of stories by her couldn’t have figured it out.

    Still not able to shake trying to read Crappy Apocalypse, I turned to intellectual comfort food and re-read the first Uplift Trilogy, by David Brin. Despite Brin’s turn to loathsome politics,* my dozenth pass through his universe of plucky humans, adorable neo-Dolphins, and courageous artificially-evolved Chimpanzees is like a meaty, starchy, filling plate of Thanksgiving food. (The 2nd Trilogy sort of disappears up its own ass in striving for cosmic apotheosis, and I can’t recommend it.)

    *Brin has deleted his call for “climate justice” tribunals, so I’ve linked to an H&R thread where I posted some of his deranged screed. Brin used to write for Reason, by the way, before the madness settled in.

    Old Man With Candy

    There were two authors from my childhood who set me on my life-path to become a scientist. One was Roy Chapman Andrews (truly one of the most interesting humans to ever walk the Earth). The other was Arthur C. Clarke. When I was about 8 years old, my father handed me a copy of Profiles of the Future, which totally captivated me. It was an overview of common futuristic tropes of the sort that would fascinate an 8 year old science geek (invisibility, giants and Lilliputians, alien intelligence, matter replication, interstellar exploration) with some technical analysis of what was possible and what was sheer fantasy, and why. I read and re-read it so many times that it eventually fell apart. So I was determined to give this to my son as well, and found out that there was an updated edition from about 2000. I bought it for him and… well… let’s just say he’s more of a YouTube guy than a reader. It languished on our bookshelves for some years until I picked it up and dusted it off last week, then put it in the Room of Honor. Re-reading it, I can see why it grabbed my attention. Much of it hasn’t aged well, but much of it is frighteningly prescient. And of course, it’s Clarke, which means superbly clear and absorbing writing. I had the chance to meet Clarke once (as a college student) and was not disappointed, other than him avoiding the question about what the Ramans looked like. I cannot be the only one who has told him that he was the one who made them choose a career in science, but he acted as if I had said something special. What a great person.

  • The Hyperbole’s Homebuilding Hurly-burly Part Addendum.

    My hotel bathroom last weekend. You be you West Virginia.
    I may have to rethink my stance on vigorously enforced building codes.

  • Are you registered?

    With the primary season ongoing, I’ve noticed comments here and elsewhere about party affiliation and voter registration. It got me wondering: how many of the Glibertariat are registered with any party at all?


    [yop_poll id=”1″]



    Discuss!

  • ?Pour Some Coffee On Me!

     

    Hmm, sounds painful.  Friends, as promised a review of the pour over method and the quick guide extraordinaire, Pro/Con list.

    Chemex is one of the better known brands for pour overs but I went with LePrem mostly because I clicked the wrong button when shopping on Amazon.  LePrem sounds more pretentious, Chemex more nerdy, so that may be the deciding factor for you.  I’m getting ahead of myself.

    What is a pour over coffee, you may ask.  Pour over is exactly what it sounds like. You place ground coffee in a filter on top of an hour glass shaped device and pour hot water over the grounds and fresh coffee is collected in the bottom chamber.  The filter is removed and you pour the hot fresh coffee into your cup.  You can also purchase a single serving brewer which replaces the hour glass vessel for a filter that sits on top of your mug.

    Water temperature is the same as always, 175℉, grind should be medium, which is standard for drip coffee makers.  I recommend pre-wetting the filter with hot water, then tossing the used water.  This will reduce the influence of the filter on the final product.  The real adjustable variable is how quickly you pour the water over the grounds.  Some people wet the grounds and wait for the “bloom,” which is just the coffee expanding as it releases carbon dioxide.  Water is poured in separated phase until you reach your desired volume or pour the total volume in one go if you’re making a small batch.  Always pour in a spiral so as to wet the grounds evenly.  That is pretty much it.

    You can’t make espresso with this method and adjusting grinds doesn’t seem to change the end product much.  The carafes themselves are aesthetically pleasing and are appropriate to leave out in your coffee space.  Pour overs range from single serving sizes up to 1L.  If you sometimes entertain or have a family of coffee drinkers, I strongly recommend the larger size if you have the storage space, because you aren’t required to make the maximum amount each time.

    Filters are required for this device, but reusable metal filters are available, which I’m sure will produce a slightly less “clean” cup.  The paper filters took a youtube video to figure out as the box instructions read like an origami project, but once you watch a video it is simple.

    So how do I like the LePrem?  The product is well made and attractive.  Cleaning it can be difficult depending on what size you buy.  The smaller sizes are difficult to get a hand in the collection chamber.  The used filters lift straight out, but tend to drip, so I take the entire brewer to the trash to toss the wet grounds.  A nice feature is a glass stopper to help keep the coffee warm until ready for use.  Perpetration time depend on how much coffee you are making and how slow you want to pour.  Appropriately sized devices will serve a family well and single size take up less room in a studio apartment.

    Now, the really important question, does it make a good cup of coffee?  Yes, you can get a great cup of coffee out of the LePrem, but I wouldn’t say it is a superior extraction method to the French Press or AeroPress.  Of the devices I’ve used so far, this one is my least favorite.  It doesn’t make coffee as fast as the AeroPress and it doesn’t provide the subtle flavors of the French press.  It lacks the ability to make espresso (AeroPress) or cold brew (Fresh Press) and for those reasons, I can’t recommend the pour over as your sole coffee brewing method. However, if you are a hobbyist like myself, it is an attractive addition to the brewing collection.

    How to Use

    Step 1. Place filter (thick layer over spout).

    Step 2. Wet filter with hot water, discard water.


    Step 3. Place medium ground coffee in filter.

    Step 4. Pour hot water over grounds in a spiral pattern

    Step 5. Remove filter

    Step 6. Pour coffee into mug & enjoy.

    Pro

    • Cost – Small off brand brewers are as cheap as $7.  The 6 cup LePrem was $37.97
    • Ease of use – really simple and fairly quick
    • Cup – if you use paper filters you get a really clean cup
    • Aesthetics – I think they look pretty cool
    • Volume –  if you buy an appropriate size you can do without a tradition drip maker

    Con

    • Consumables – the paper filters aren’t cheap. $14 for 100
    • flexibility – just makes coffee.
    • Cost – can be spend. $108.07 for 13 cup Chemex
    • metal filter – save money, muddy cup

  • You’re Doing it Wrong – #2

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    Find out what you were doing wrong previously

    A while back there was a post where someone referenced the Digital Time that was proposed by the French Revolution. Well, arguments about our calendar are really useless.

    Or are they.

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    Your calendar: Year One is the Year of Our Lord and all years previous are Before the Year of Our Lord

    Status: WRONG

    This has bugged me since I can remember. BC? AD? BCE? WTF? Herod1 died before he was born?

    It was one thing that really interferred with my understanding of history. “Third Centruy BC”. Was that the 300’s? The 200’s?

    Then I stumbled upon the Holocene Calendar. And the whole thing started to make much more sense.

    The Holocene marks the latest inter-glacial after the Pleistocene and is dated at starting roughly 11,700 years ago. After the african migration of 60, 000 years ago it marks the dividing point of the Neo-Litic (New Stone Age) and the Paleo-Litic (Old Stone Age). Human agriculture which lead to permanent cities and “civilization” is usually dated to this period. Why not start the calendar at this time?

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    All of human civilization has occurred in the past 12,000 years, much of it in half that time. Outside of astronomical events, every single human historical event that can be traced to a specific date2 falls into that period. As a user of the Gregorian Calendar I am a bit prejudiced but it seems that we could eliminate all of this BC-negative year stuff by starting the date accounting of Mankind at the beginning of the Holocene, call it 12,018 years ago. Simply add 10,000 to the current year.

    Suddenly, there is no more BC/AD adjustment. There is theoretically a Year Zero but it doesn’t matter since nothing is dated before. According to modern research, no one dates the first birthday of Jesus to 1AD; consensus seems to be that He was born around 4BC or born before He was born. So, born in 9997 and died in 10030. Does that take away from the basic message?

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    The Copper Age begins around 4000HE. Things start to come into position. Four thousand years from cultivated crops to refined metals, marking the end of the Neo-Lithic, the end of the Stone Age.

    The Bronze Age begins around 6700HE

    The first pyramid was finished in 7390HE

    The Iron Age began about 9200HE

    The Roman Empire was from 9974 until 10476. I think my four year-old granddaughter could even subtract those numbers.

    All of history can be represented by a continous number line. Later events are represented by a larger number. Years between dates are a simple arithmetic operation. We’re living in the CXXIst Century (121st). How cool is that?

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    Other calendar systems could be adjusted because the date of the start of the Holocene is rather arbitrary. This year is 5778 in the Jewish calendar. Adding 10,000 years pushes the start date of the calendar back another 3760 years. Or the date in the Arabic calendar is 1439 so, again, adding 10k years pushes Year Zero up 579 years. Same for other calendars.

    The one monkey wrench in this is astronomical dates. There are known dates of some events such as eclipses that would have to me mapped to the new calendar but -5,000HE is not that much different from 15,000BC/BCE. The addition of a Year Zero helps in calculations.

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    I can’t help but to be an engineer whose job is to “fix things.” Here’s a fix for something that you never knew was broken.

    Now get off my lawn.

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    1. Nothing special about him. Pick any other person born BC died AD.
    2. Like April 2, 2842 BC or something.

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  • The Problem with Aggregation, Part 1 of an.. Aggregation

    “I am not a number!  I am a free man!” So begins one of the filler songs on one of the top 5 metal albums of all time.  But I come here today not to extol the virtues Bruce Dickinson or to ruminate on the fact that galloping bass-lines are best bass lines.

    No, today I’m here for something much more interesting – Math!

    Let’s take a look at second grade arithmetic.  Here’s a refresher on the equivalence properties of equality:

    • The Reflexive Property tells us that an A is (equal to) an A.  Oh, now I’m sad again.
    • The Symmetric Property tells us that if A is equal to B, then B is equal to A.
    • The Transitive Property tells us that if A equals B, and B equals C, then A equals C.

    Pretty straight forward, and if you want to do arithmetic or algebra, these are the rules that let you do it.  But there are a lot of assumptions built into. For example, you can expand the Transitive Property of Equality to generate the Transitive Property of Inequalities, such that if A is less than B and B is less than C, A is less than C.

    And that is useful and intuitive too.  You can do some nice arithmetic and algebra with that too.  But like both my graduate-level math classes and my collected works of HP Lovecraft reminded us, there is more to this universe than nice reasonable Euclidean space.

    Take football.  If Directional State beat Poly A&M last week, and Poly A&M beats Costal U this week, stands to reason Costal U has no hope against Directional State next week, right?  After all, if DS > P A&M and P A&M > CU, so we know DS > CU. Just stands to reason, Transitive Property and wot not. All us learned gentlemen can see this.

    And a any sports fan knows… That’s not the way it works.  CU beats DS in, what, 35% of the games under this scenario?

    It’s almost like you can’t apply the Transitive Property to a model when in reality it doesn’t apply. You can’t just apply theoretical rules, you have to look at the real universe and see if they apply before you can incorporate them into your model.

    So let’s move to another domain and see if all the rules of basic arithmetic apply.  A man, a woman, and their kid are going backpacking. Weight is the limiting factor, they can walk until any one of them is worn out.  In a universe that is perfectly fair, but stupid, they all would carry the same load. In the real world, the kid would carry a day of food, a day of water, and emergency supplies.  The woman would carry a bit more, and the man would carry the most. They then hike farther than in the stupid and fair world. Thus, the transitive property holds true in this model.

    Here’s my first assertion for this series of articles: Assuming arithmetical property where they don’t actually exist in humanity is the root of most evil these days.

    One place that it shows up* is in macroeconomics.  Specifically, I’m thinking of the study of optimal tax policy.  This is the study of how to structure taxes to maximize utility.  Assuming arguendo that taxes will be a thing, how do you structure them so that the most good / least bad is done by them.  There’s a lot of math, behavior economics, etc that goes into these analysis.  And there are some beautiful curves telling you how to structure a tax policy.

    And they are always wrong.

    No galloping bass-lines here. Move along.

    They all boil down to how much can I rob Peter to pay Paul.  If a tax structure results in Peter having -3 happy points and Paul getting +5 happy points, that’s a net of +2 happy points.  So that’s a winner right? (I’m going to call “happy points” by their common made up name, utils.)

    No.  There is no +2 utils floating around as the product of aggregation.  There isn’t Peter+0 and Paul+2.  There is only Peter-3 and Paul+5. This leaves a pissed off Peter and a Paul who is going to get trained in the fine art of rent seeking.  Take it too far, and the Peters revolt. Take it too far the other way, and Paul becomes a parasite on society. Keep it right in the middle, and you can divide and conquer Peter and Paul for their votes.

    Why does aggregation work for the backpackers and not for the taxpayers?  Distance. Emotional distance, to be precise.

    The backpackers are a family, but that was just an excuse to use a kid in the example.  They could be a group of friends out for vacation, or a firm out to find gold in them thar hills.  Human nature says that those we care about are those closest to us. Its

    Adam Smith was probably into galloping bass-lines too, but we’ll never know.

    normal for you to care about yourself.  Adam Smith has a great example about a man in Europe facing the loss of his finger and hearing about an earthquake in China.  Which one does he care about more?  The finger, even though he would know that that’s nothing compared to hundreds of deaths.  It sounds cruel and heartless, but that’s just utopian thinking. In the real world, we all can identify with this idea. The closer you are to someone else, the more you care about them.

    You might even care enough to take on their burden to make their life easier.  In the real world, a parent would pay -3 utils to see their kid get +5 utils. The transitive property works because there is an emotional bond there.

    But there are 300 million people in America.  Any random American can only have a personal relationship with maybe a few dozen of them.  Any system that assumes the aggregation utils among all Americans is going to be a cock up.

    So ok, there’s one mathematical model with this flaw.  Hardly the root of all evil. Well, step out of the math and into the real world.  Race. Class. Religion. Political Party. These are all aggregation techniques. On rare occasions they are useful mental shortcuts.  In most cases, they just erase the individual in your mind and replace them with a cardboard cutout called up from your own mental Hollywood. All cops are violent. All Southerners are racists.  All progressives are stupid. All intellectuals are out of touch and dangerous.

    These are common errors in thinking.  And they are the root of all major humanitarian disasters of the last century.  Except it was all blacks being violent, let’s roll out the drug war. All reactionaries are racists, let’s roll them off to the gulag.  All low-income female workers are stupid, let’s sterilize them. All intellectuals are a danger, let’s hunt them down.  The pattern repeats itself, and as we’ve seen, this pattern is dangerous.  Any pattern that could lead to genocide, mass sterilization, or the drug war should be cut off before it can get anywhere near this scale of disaster.

    So I hope here to have laid out a case that aggregation doesn’t apply on the large scale.  But for individuals, they can have it apply to themselves and their small circle.  This error is complex, but it reaches into some of the worst events in living memory. In the next article, I’ll discuss how a person could harness this insight to make themselves a better person.  And in a twist that I’m sure would make all of you Jordan Peterson fans with clean rooms interested, this technique doesn’t require any change from anyone but yourself.

  • Bottoms Up

    It was Friday and nothing seemed to be of interest.  I wasn’t sure what I wanted, so I did the sensible thing and found the one with the label with the most colorful, eye catching label possible.

    This is my review of Hop Valley Brewing Co Reveal Pale Ale:

    Seriously look at that rainbow, isn’t it fabulous?  I like what they were trying to tap into here.  The rainbow is a symbol known to brings positive feelings for centuries.  One of the oldest is the flood story.

    Here God tells Noah his rein of terror has ended, and the flood waters will recede, and the Earth shall flourish once more.  God promised that he will never again flood the world to destroy it and left a rainbow as the symbol of this promise.  Next time he will just use fire and throw everybody into a flaming pit.  Crazy stuff, really.  We are reminded of this promise every time it rains, after all we need the rain but not enough to flood the Earth and kill us all.  God remembers, that’s why there is a rainbow.

    The rainbow is also a symbol of fulfillment.  Think of what lies the end of the rainbow, the prize that awaits the person willing to seek out the source.  The pot of gold of course!

    Rainbow symbolism has such a powerful meaning to each of us and graciously bestows the energy of blessings. The symbolism of a Rainbow intuitively tells us to hold onto hope, to believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that sacred blessings open to us when we are following our hearts desire.  And the symbol of the Rainbow tells us that we are guided to our hearts desire when we open to spirit to let us guide us.

    The rainbow itself it composed of seven colors–all the same colors representing the seven Chakras.  To learn more about the colors and their spiritual meaning, click here.

    Do you cry out for magic? Do you feel it dancing in the light?  Is it cold?  And have you lost your hold to the shadows of the night?  I have good news for you.

    While you turn that last link up, let me tell you something, this beer is good.  It has a pleasant hop balance with, dare I say, a fruity finish.  If you like the Pale Ale, but not the India variety, you might fancy this one.  Hop Valley Brewing Co Reveal Pale Ale  3.8/5.

     

     

     

     

    PS:  Yes, I do know what else the rainbow means.