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Beer Science: Now With More Coffee!

Beer Science: Now With More Coffee!

Jan 26 2013 | comment(s)

Making a coffee beer has always been tough but not for obvious reasons - it isn't like people don't enjoy foam, cappuccino has been around forever. Lipids in coffee just don't seem to make a lot of sense, though.

But without coffee and beer, science would grind to a halt - a $140 billion a year industry would be paralyzed - so it was only a matter of time before someone figured out how to put them together.

Loowit Brewing and Torque Coffee Roasters in Vancouver have been working on just such a coffee stout that they introduced at the "Drink This!" artisan beverage festival. Torque co-owner Ryan Palmer also created a coffee pale ale beer with Mt. Tabor Brewing's owner Eric Surface. A stout is a natural fit to get going on coffee-beer hybrid.
UC Davis researcher David Snyder faces 10 charges after chemical blast

UC Davis researcher David Snyder faces 10 charges after chemical blast

Jan 25 2013 | comment(s)

UC Davis post-doc David Snyder, who was injured in an explosion at his campus apartment last week, was charged yesterday with 10 counts of possessing firearms and explosives.

Snyder was specifically charged with felony violations of California Penal Code 18715, possession of an explosive, and California Penal Code 18720, possession of any substance, material, or any combination of substances or materials, with the intent to make any destructive device or any explosive. He was also charged with two counts of possessing a firearm on campus, Penal Code 626.9(i).
Pork Products Recalled Due to Salmonella - Big Organic Relieved It Is Not Them

Pork Products Recalled Due to Salmonella - Big Organic Relieved It Is Not Them

Jan 25 2013 | comment(s)

If you are part of the $29 billion organic food masses, you can breathe a sigh of relief about the latest Salmonella recall - this one is not in your stores. I'm so relieved I am putting up a link about it.

Stallings Head Cheese Co., Inc., of Houston is recalling 4,700 pounds of hog head cheese that may be contaminated with Salmonella, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced today.

Hog head cheese? You betcha. Hog head cheese is a gelatinous mixture of meat from a hog's head. It's popular in Cajun cuisine. Hey, don't make fun.  People in California eat salad and I don't understand that either.
How Coke Beat Pepsi Once Again

How Coke Beat Pepsi Once Again

Jan 23 2013 | comment(s)

So Coca-Cola and Pepsi Cola both introduced new ad campaigns. Pepsi went the traditional route (i.e. boring) once again and signed another fit superstar to sing about how awesome their soda is.  

Thanks,  Beyoncé, it's all been done, but I am thrilled you got $50 million to endorse it. 


Credit and link: GQ Magazine

Coke did something really weird, for being supposedly an evil, mercenary, Big Corporation bent on exploiting children at all costs - they addressed the claims about soda and obesity in their ads.


Parasitic Worms To Treat Autism? A Psychiatrist Thinks So

Parasitic Worms To Treat Autism? A Psychiatrist Thinks So

Jan 22 2013 | comment(s)

Psychiatrist Dr. Eric Hollander says the hygiene hypothesis -  the idea that by eliminating some harmful organisms we are weakening our immune systems - may be a reason to study the use of ingesting the eggs of parasitic worms to treat autism.

He gets to jump on a few hot button cultural topics that way, autism and a medical idea that has caught on with the usual anti-science hippies and the more normal crowd who got sold the idea that anti-bacterial soaps were necessary if they care about kids.

The kicker is that the psychiatrist got the idea when he noticed one of his patients’ behavior improve while self-medicating with Trichuris suis ova (TSO), the eggs of a whipworm. That passes for a journal paper in the social sciences.
Scientific American: How politics distorts science on both ends of the political spectrum

Scientific American: How politics distorts science on both ends of the political spectrum

Jan 22 2013 | comment(s)

"Believe it or not—and I suspect most readers will not—there's a liberal war on science. Say what?"

So begins famed skeptic Michael Shermer's review of "Science Left Behind" in his Scientific American column this month.  Now, in the book, I make it pretty clear that liberals are not the problem, progressives are, but a baffling number of people on the left seek to use the terms interchangeably. Why, I don't know, there was never a need for two words if they are the same thing, but it explains why at San Francisco protests you can see people claiming to be Trotsky-ites palling around with people claiming to be Lenin-ites with people claiming to be Mao-ists selling Che Guevara t-shirts; they don't know what words mean.
Creating A Metric For The Autism Epidemic

Creating A Metric For The Autism Epidemic

Jan 18 2013 | comment(s)

Diagnosed rates of autism around the world have increased a lot over the last decade and a half but there is ongoing debate about whether there are actually more cases or if it is instead a cultural phenomenon, namely that we're getting better at detecting the disorder and more willing to label kids as having it. Some also contend that the increase in autism is due to whatever they happen not to like; vaccines, GMOs, etc.

How can you know? To prove that diagnoses have gotten better, rather than there being a true increase in autism, you'd have to know what would have happened to today's kids 20 years ago. Would they have been diagnosed with autism?  Or ADD? Nothing? 
TrackingPoint Rifle: Linux-Powered, And Can Make Anyone A Sharpshooter

TrackingPoint Rifle: Linux-Powered, And Can Make Anyone A Sharpshooter

Jan 11 2013 | comment(s)

TrackingPoint isn't just making a “smart gun”, they are making a “Precision Guided Firearm.”

It has a computerized scope that provides a hunter with metrics like wind speed, incline, temperature, distance to target and more.  You can even stream the scope to an iPhone, so more experienced hunters can help younger hunters with spotting, by being able to see exactly what they’re seeing...but through the shooter's scope, not a separate optic.

It's more like a HUD for missiles in a fighter jet than a gun. It's difficult to miss.
A Quiz About Zoology For Non-Zoologists

A Quiz About Zoology For Non-Zoologists

Jan 11 2013 | comment(s)

The Smithsonian  wants some help in making their citizen science efforts a little more relevant to the public. 

So if you are not a zoologist and can take their eMammal Survey it will help them get some 'baseline' values of what people know about critters.
Australian Science And Medicine Rejoices: Publisher Recalls Anti-Vaccine Book

Australian Science And Medicine Rejoices: Publisher Recalls Anti-Vaccine Book

Jan 11 2013 | comment(s)

"Melanie's Marvellous Measles", which says measles are good for kids, went up for sale at Bookworld, Australia's largest online bookstore, and the backlash for the science and medical community was immediate.

It falsely describes the deadly disease as something that will make children stronger. Cases of kids dying from measles in Australia are quite rare, because the country discovered science in the last hundred years.
James Watson's Radical Idea: Antioxidants May Be Causing Cancer

James Watson's Radical Idea: Antioxidants May Be Causing Cancer

Jan 09 2013 | comment(s)

James Watson, co-discoverer of the double helix structure of DNA, wrote in a paper "We now have no general of influence, much less power ... leading our country's War on Cancer."

On the $100 million U.S. project to determine the DNA changes that drive nine forms of cancer: It is "not likely to produce the truly breakthrough drugs that we now so desperately need," he said. And on the idea that antioxidants such as those in colorful berries fight cancer: "The time has come to seriously ask whether antioxidant use much more likely causes than prevents cancer."

What does he mean? 
GMO Science Has Greens On The Run

GMO Science Has Greens On The Run

Jan 08 2013 | comment(s)

When anti-science eco-terrorists threatened to destroy a plot of genetically modified wheat at the government-funded Rothamsted agricultural research station in their "Take The Flour Back" campaign last spring, the backlash against them was swift. Anti-science progressives who have counted on liberals quietly enduring them in common cause for decades suddenly found that was no longer the case. Liberals had  enough of being dragged into the anti-science mud on energy,  medicine and food, three of the most vital issues facing the world.
Unemployed guy with a metal detector leads to $5.4 million Anglo-Saxon treasure

Unemployed guy with a metal detector leads to $5.4 million Anglo-Saxon treasure

Jan 06 2013 | comment(s)

It’s official:  There's treasure in them South Staffordshire fields.

Some of the 90 pieces of gold and silver found in central England last year - after an unemployed man searching a farmer’s field with a metal detector discovered loot in 2009 - have formally been declared to be treasure.

That means it is at least 300 years old and at least 10% precious metal.  It also means you can't have any of it if you find it, is is property of The State. Anyone who finds an object believed to be treasure must report it.

Sorry, treasure hunters.
Pennsylvania is putting all restaurant inspections online

Pennsylvania is putting all restaurant inspections online

Jan 06 2013 | comment(s)

It's open access - for restaurant safety.

Restaurant inspections have always been somewhat arcane - a disclosure statement is stuck on a wall but, like those meaningless Proposition 65 statements we see here in California ('this dry cleaners won't give you cancer, but we have to show this sticker saying it might or we will get sued') no one reads them - plus, people are only going to see them after they are already at the restaurant.

If you care about food, more laws and more bans and more regulations are not helping you, but more transparency about the government already spending the money doing inspections will.
Japanese Dentist Uses Thermodynamics To Create Self-Stirring Pan

Japanese Dentist Uses Thermodynamics To Create Self-Stirring Pan

Jan 05 2013 | comment(s)

Do you like cooking but wish the stirring of food didn't force you to pause the DVR and leave the comfort of your living room chair every five minutes?

Japanese dentist Hideki Watanabe did also, so he created the Kuru-Kuru Nabe, which literally means round-round pot but in Japan real means a pot that stirs itself. Watanabe created the prototype using dental plaster from his practice to line the inside surface of a metal pot in a spiral design he created using good, old-fashioned trial and error.
Caperea Marginata Is 'Living Fossil' Of Family That Disappeared Two Million Years Ago

Caperea Marginata Is 'Living Fossil' Of Family That Disappeared Two Million Years Ago

Jan 02 2013 | comment(s)

Caperea marginata, pigmy right whales, are the last survivors of an aquatic family that evolved 15 million years ago but little else is known about how they behave, what they eat or how many there are in the world's oceans.

What scientists do know is that it is not a right whale at all but is instead a type of baleen whale, part of the Cetotheriidae family of whales and that it probably evolved nine million years ago. The six other species believed to make up the Cetotheriidae family have all died out.

It was recognized as having an unusual bone structure, including an arched snout, but only now has its position on the whale family tree been established.
Hatfields And McCoys - Site Of New Year's Day Battle Uncovered

Hatfields And McCoys - Site Of New Year's Day Battle Uncovered

Jan 02 2013 | comment(s)

On New Year's Day of 1888 in eastern Kentucky, the Hatfield clan set Randolph McCoy's cabin ablaze and gunned down two members of the rival family.

That property, which deeds have traced back to Randolph McCoy, is now owned by Bob Scott, a Hatfield descendant who suspected for years the land was the site of the attack and now excavators have found bullets believed to have been fired by the McCoys in self-defense, along with fragments of windows and ceramic from a cabin.
Project Seal: New Zealand And US Tested 'Tsunami Bomb' During World War II

Project Seal: New Zealand And US Tested 'Tsunami Bomb' During World War II

Jan 02 2013 | comment(s)

New Zealand author and film-maker Ray Waru has examined military files buried in the national archives and found that a top secret operation, code-named "Project Seal", set out to test  a 'tsunami bomb' doomsday device - one of many secret super weapons researched by the Allies and Axis powers during the war.

About 3,700 bombs were tested, first in New Caledonia and later at Whangaparaoa Peninsula, near Auckland. The testing concluded the weapon was feasible and that a series of 10 large offshore blasts could potentially create a 33-foot tsunami capable of inundating a small city.
Great News, America: Being Overweight Is Now Healthy

Great News, America: Being Overweight Is Now Healthy

Jan 01 2013 | comment(s)

Americans, Italians and Brits can rejoice - health science has finally caught up to their waistlines. 

An analysis of 100 studies including three million people found that those whose B.M.I. ranked them as overweight had less risk of dying than people of normal weight. And while obese people had a greater mortality risk over all, those at the lowest obesity level (B.M.I. of 30 to 34.9) were not more likely to die than normal-weight people. 

 People not selling diet books or otherwise engaged in feel-good fallacies and scare journalism (like us) have said all along that weight and BMI are fake metrics - there are a lot of knobs to turn in good health and being a certain weight is vital if you have other risk factors.
2012: The Year Food Freedom Became A Topic

2012: The Year Food Freedom Became A Topic

Jan 01 2013 | comment(s)

Progressive social authoritarian Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been engaged in what progressive social authoritarians love to engage in - controlling choice and thinking and freedom to shape it into their personal world view.

The rationalizations that social authoritarians engage in to force their world view on others is how Bloomberg could say society needed to 'keep perspective' with a straight face when yet another mentally ill person committed murder in December by pushing someone in front of a subway train, though when a mentally ill person shot up a school in Connecticut, he said guns should be banned.