It has recently come to my attention...

In as much as Rep. Bill Posney has found scattered support for HR 1503, a bill to require presidential candidates to submit their birth certificate before running, and I have held presidential ambitions myself, I thought I'd dig through my files and double-check the old B.C. from Albuquerque Presbyterian.

As I blew the dust from the parchment, I noticed something odd -- a slight bit of off-white discoloration around my name. A rasp with my penknife easily chipped away the artfully-applied White Out. It turns out the true holder of my SS# is one Ephraim Schmelman, son of Lazarus and Sandy Schmelman, of the four-points region.

Of course, I immediately confronted my parents, who explained that I was not, as I've been told, conceived on a honeymoon trip to Mexico, but in fact, purchased from a Mexican orphanage for abandoned black Irish babies (a connection, I'm told, cultivated during the Troubles, when Irish Catholic fear of the Protestant conversion of orphan children ran high). When my folks returned to Albuquerque, their good friends the Schmelmans, who had recently lost their young Ephraim (a freak Etch-A-Sketch accident), suggested the DIY naturalization.

It goes without saying that I am stunned by this news -- it raises a whole battery of questions and concerns. Who were my real parents? How can I find them? And most importantly, what can I do to prevent HR 1503 from passing and dashing my hopes of Oval Office employment?

(And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for Bill Posney and his meddling Birthers...)

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Any chance Palin could write for National Lampoon?

Via Yglesias, here's William Shatner reading an excerpt from Sarah Palin's farewell speech:

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Brewing Update: The Lineup and True Blue

I asked The Talented Videographer to take a photo of the lineup as it currently stands (I'm setting these bottles aside for posterity's sake). Here they are in all of their homebrewed glory:



They're not in order of production. The second from the left is True Blue, a classic American pilsner (CAP) brewed with blue corn and the New Ulm yeast strain. I just bottled it a couple of weeks ago and it's already proving to be a rich, friendly example of an historic and unique American style that has few honest mainstream practitioners.

I also submitted Megaberry, Yellow Rose, and Slacker to a local GABF-sanctioned competition, the Lunar Rendezbrew. Can't wait to see what happens.

Here's a better shot of the True Blue label. I'm rather proud.

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Emotional IQ

Yesterday, over dinner and some awesome wine at Max's Wine Dive (thank you, Seth!), The Talented Videographer (TTV) described part of her interview yesterday with former NASA flight director Glynn Lunney, who directed part of the Apollo 11 and 13 missions. Lunney was talking about the achievement of the Apollo program, and how remarkable was.

He pointed out that it took a huge monetary investment by the United States in something that many thought was impossible. When Kennedy proposed they make the moon by the end of the decade, it was so far beyond current technology that it was a staggering, and seemingly impossible goal. And investment in the project reached 5.5% of the federal budget. By contrast, all of NASA's budget is around 0.5% today. And because virtually all of the expertise still had to be developed, what you had was huge number of young men and women (including Kennedy) trying to do something most thought impossible, and which did not promise to provide a substantial return on investment. But they decided to roll up their sleeves and give it a shot.

Lunney compared this to the exploration of the New World -- Europe spent a huge amount of money equipping expeditions and charting the new continents. But within a century, sometimes, far less, most of those countries lost their holdings in the New World to revolutions. Many never recouped those initial costs. At the same time, from the perspective of hindsight, it was an endeavor whose value could not be measured by the amount of gold or sugar which they New Continent could provide.

Lunney's point: sometimes huge investments are necessary without the promise of gain. Cost-benefit analyses cannot capture the non-monetary value of an investment.

What I loved was that TTV re-framed this in terms of relationships -- there's lots of work and sacrifice that has to go into a relationship, especially a marriage, upfront. And when you're talking about things like career tracks, there are some sacrifices which don't promise equivalent rewards. But the real value, the long-term reward, can't be measured in that way. It's the kind of connection between public and private, historical and personal, that I wouldn't have been able to make. It was beautiful.

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Just when I think I've had it with R&B...

Autotune The News has a new video out that features the R&B stylings of Michelle Bachmann and John Boehner. Praise!

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Buvez Montreal: Le Cheval Blanc

Took a conference trip to Montreal last week and people keep asking, how'd it go? Well, I'm not sure about the paper I gave (at least two folks were dozing off), but I had one hell of a time after two visits to Le Cheval Blanc -- a Montreal pub on Rue Ontario that's been around for half a century and makes damn fine beer. In addition to a selection of eight housebrews (described in terms of degrees Plato of gravity, beer style, and finish), they also have an eclectic selection of bottled beer, much of which I didn't recognize. I was too busy sampling their house offerings, from a hazy, intentionally unfiltered pilsner (soft-bodied AND crisp), to the Piment -- a blond beer smacked up with jalapeno.

In addition, Wednesday nights are pickled vodka night, with 2 dollar (cdn) shots of their house cornichon-infused vodka. The first night I went in, a Sunday, they had a woman DJing and playing a mix ranging from sets of James Brown to The Shins. And the staff was very, very friendly, despite my only roughly serviceable French. The second night, I hung out with a competitive bagpiper who'd flown in from Beijing for a checkup(!).

All in all, it was the best brewpub I've visited, hitting the right mix of ambiance, fun, and quality beer. Can't wait to go back. Je serai retourné!

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Jade Gimlet

I'm sure this is a recipe somewhere else on the internets, but over the weekend (alongside sailing, shopping for wedding bands, and barbecuing a brood of chickens), The Talented Videographer and I came up with a refreshing summer drink. Make a vodka or gin gimlet per usual (1.5 oz. liquor, .5 oz. lime juice, .5 oz. simple syrup) and add some crushed fresh basil to the shaker with ice. Shake it all up; use a spoon to fish out some of the basil and add it to the glass, then strain the mix on top. VY yummy.

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PALIN RESIGNS

Amazing. Two things hit me in her speech, pasted below. What disclosure is coming? And it's pretty clear that she wrote this speech herself. Rambling, incoherent, alternatively folksy and padded with Roget's -- just the dish we've come to expect. E.g.: "Only dead fish go with the flow."

Alaska -- one of the few states whose public education system lags behind Texas.

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