An hors d’oeuvre tray of topics to discuss.
* If I remember correctly, John McCain’s campaign started to circle the drain around this time four years ago. They had written their own fate by then on Sarah Palin’s idiot forehead, but the little behavioral tics that signaled desperation started some time after the convention. If anything Mitt has gone full Chernobyl well ahead of schedule. Am I the only one who thinks that one guy cannot simply luck out this way every single time he runs? I’d love to know how he keeps pulling this off. So, I imagine, would Reince Preibus.
* Great moments in science writing. I hope that EMBO Journal gives that headline writer a raise.
* Also about science: I just finished reading Thinking, Fash and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman. The book sums up in a readable way the conclusions of his Nobel-winning lifetime of work on cognitive illusions, which are like optical illusions except they cost you more money. Very much worth reading if you think, buy things or make decisions.
* Hops are drying in the basement and the starter culture of yeast has woken up and gotten down to the business of fermenting. The mash will boil Friday night, and then I’m off and brewing again. It feels great. If anyone has experience with fresh grown hops, please feel free to share it here. I will hedge my bets with a few ounces of Cascade pellets, but I’m counting on the homegrown stuff to do most of the work. If only I had some idea what kind of hops it is.
kindness
That’s because Obama is the One.
Bobby Thomson
So turns out my estranged wife is shtupping a sniper back from ‘stan.
It would be a good death.
dead existentialist
@Bobby Thomson: And a quick one, I’m thinking.
Mike Lamb
If they are wet hops, you need to use about 3-5 times as much as you would with dry hops. I guess the question is whether the hops will be completely dried out by the time you put them in the boil. If they are slightly wet, you’d probably want to bump your amounts a bit.
EDIT: you might do research on the net–you may be able to identify the type of hops by picture.
ranchandsyrup
@Bobby Thomson: Man, that’s rough.
Nellcote
@kindness:
Muad’Dib
butler
Never used fresh hops. My understanding is that they have to be air dried beforehand in order to best utilize the oils.
Seems you could get quite a range of IBU depending on what your hops actually are and how much you manage to extract from them. Just curious, what are you aiming to make?
Mike Lamb
Try here for a start: http://oregonhops.org/varieties.html
Wag
@butler:
I suspect beer of some sort or another
Mark S.
This is the end of Mitt.
Evolving Deep Southerner
I’m sure you’re not the only one, but I’m equally sure you’re not in the majority opinion if you believe BHO has won his re-election on the wings of pure luck.
He’s created his own luck. And he’s done it in the most powerful way imaginable.
Evolving Deep Southerner
@Mark S.: I hate to break it to you all, but this ain’t the end of Mitt or any other God damn thing. The low-info voters don’t understand this shit, nor will they expend the effort to, nor will they even give a shit what OTHER people who have expended the effort to do so think.
This is a big nothing in the grand scheme of things. It should not be a big nothing. It IS not a big nothing, for sure. But when it comes to the electoral math, this may as well not have ever happened at all.
Oh, even OTHER REPUBLICANS are condemning it? Oooh! *shiver* That changes EVERYTHING! It’s OVER for Romney now! Game-changer!
Shit. That’s the most foolish shit I’ve ever heard or read. This doesn’t change a God damn thing with regard to November.
Nellcote
Are you making WH honey beer?
KG
The same was often said of Ronald Reagan. Pat Brown melted down in 1966, Carter in 1980 was not in great shape (the legend goes that his chief f staff told him the Republicans nominated the only two people he could bet), and Mondale in 1984 lost when he laughed at the age joke n the second debate.
Hell, you could say the sad about Clinton and GWB, good politicians always seem to get lucky
MoeLarryAndJesus
It wasn’t luck this time. Who did the Repiglicans have who could have beaten Obama? I’m just not seeing it.
The people have rationally decided the last election and (presumably) the coming one. It’s not luck. It’s a rational assessment of the candidates and policies involved.
It’s a good sign for America. Why downplay it?
JK
For the hops try tasting them. Our homegrown hops were much less bitter than they should have been. They worked great as flavoring hops late in boil or in fermentation as a wet hop, but we needed to add a little extra buttering in the early boil. Also used about 3x what we would have used as pellets. The homegrown were cascade, which tend to me the most common rhizomes to get out here in the bay area.
On the EMBO Have you Seen article … Credit most likely goes to the authors and not a copy editor. Now whether it was the Grad student first author or the senior author who knows, but from the one time I met Shelley Berger it would not shock me if it were her. Very funny.
Rupert
I’ve always dried my hops before using them, the better to get an idea of what amount to use. I’ve only ever used them as aroma hops – the advice I got was that the aa% was too variable in home grown hops to use them for bittering.
gorram
@kindness: Aw @#!$, does this mean that we have to have some sort of Highlander tournament or something in 2011-2012?
I guess it’s better than the alternative.
BruceJ
You generally get to write your own journal article titles…that pun is the fault of one of the authors…
David Koch
What was Hillary, a potted plant?
How quickly people forget he had to overcome Netroots darling John Edwards, the only True Progressive™
Frankensteinbeck
This wasn’t luck, and hasn’t been through his whole administration. It may even be intentional. Obama is playing against bullies. There’s no question that they’ll go too far. If he plays it cool enough they’ll push and push until they throw themselves off a cliff. This is what that looks like.
Scamp Dog
If biology journals are like engineering journals, the article authors wrote that title themselves. I’m impressed that the editors let them do it, though!
JK
@BruceJ:
“fault” I think you mean awesomeness
psycholinguist
Dan Kahneman is a strait up BMF, and as a bonus, is a really nice guy to boot. It’s funny, I remember my first psychonomics conference walking around seeing all these uber famous people (in the field) standing around having a beer, and almost to a person, they turned out to be really gracious with their time and kind to us plebs. It turned out those early and mid career hacks who had one decent paper were the giant jerkoffs. I’ve always thought of Kahnaman’s work debunking the “rational’ decision model as him pointing a finger at economists and hollering “DUH!”
Joel
The EMBO article is a review title. So thank Jessica Bryant and Shelley Berger for that one.
P.S. Those histones look like testicles, too.
butler
@Wag: Which is about as informative as saying “I’m going to cook eggs”.
Shawn in ShowMe
Would Romney be panicking and committing all these unforced errors against President Hillary? Barack’s calm and blahness can be unnerving. Even Hillary had a breakdown and starting rambling about when RFK was killed, being ambushed by sniper fire, etc.
Donut
@David Koch:
Barack Obama not only overtook Edwards from the left flank in Iowa in 2008, he did it while beating back the Clintons, fergawdssakes. Dude has serious skills.
Against a John Kerry, an Al Gore, a Mike Dukakis, a Walter Mondale, opponents likeJohn McCain or Mitt Romney would have had chance; but against this guy, they all look small.
Pen
Useless you know ther aa% I’d stick to using your hops as late kettle editions or dry hopping with them. Stick to packaged hops with known acid levels for any additions before the 10m til end of boil mark. As for the type? You could always boil up a small batch of 45gu extract wort for a half hour or so and do a single hop test. That’ll give you an idea on the flavor composition and if you’re familiar with your brewing you should be able to “eyeball” the ibu load.
Pen
Also, spill. What’s your recipe?
SammyV
My experience with home-grown hops went like this: Get huge bag of unknown variety hops from a neighbor. Toss whole bag into kettle. Enjoy. No need to overthink it.
Steeplejack
@Nellcote:
Even his name is a weirding word.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Donut:
And then he CO-OPTED the Clintons, too. Hired Hillary and got Bill campaigning for him. Serious skills, indeed.
Ya don’t see Mitt doing that with the Bushies now, do ya?
Calouste
@Evolving Deep Southerner:
Obama has extraordinary skill in getting his opponents in situations they can’t handle.
1badbaba3
Grampy Mccain was toast after a really bad July that began with Graham’s ‘nation of whiners’ statement that presaged the economic meltdown. He had to issue a statement that said that his economic spokesperson did not speak for the campaign (oh really?) before quietly firing his good buddy. All that before not knowing how many houses he had, and the terrible optics of his super-lame response to Obama’s Berlin speech. After that it was all despairation and flailing around. But we had to have a horserace, right? So it became a “weekend at bernies” parody the rest of the way.
Obama has mad skills indeed.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
He does have mad skills, there’s no doubt. It’s not just luck. But…I’m more than half convinced that anyone who makes it through the wingnut party primary will inevitably wilt in the spotlight of a national election. The party is absolutely more crazy than they were a decade ago.
I’m brewing my first ever batch this weekend.
Danny
I may say that this is the greatest factor—the way in which the expedition is equipped—the way in which every difficulty is foreseen, and precautions taken for meeting or avoiding it. Victory awaits him who has everything in order — luck, people call it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time; this is called bad luck.
— from The South Pole, by Roald Amundsen
Chasseur
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, important book, September 10, 2012
This review is from: Thinking, Fast and Slow (Hardcover)
David Brooks of the New York Times has used this book as a reference point in speeches because Kahneman may change our very perception of who we are and why we do what we do.
uh, are you sure it’s good?
Joey Giraud
Am I the only one who read the science link?
And shouldn’t bromodomain be spelled Bro-modomain?
Mike Lamb
@Evolving Deep Southerner: It probably isn’t game over for Mitt, but I don’t think it takes a degree in rocket surgery to understand how badly Mitt fucked the pooch with his comments. This will hurt him.
Platonicspoof
For those who, like me, don’t have time to read this book that is probably relevant to politics as well as economics, etc., here is another review by Sabine Hossenfelder, with excerpts.
E.g.:
“A reliable way of making people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth.”
humbert dinglepencker
‘Thinking Fash and Slow’ – hoo-boy, Imma think you’ve been into the hops already…:)
Bill Arnold
@Frankensteinbeck:
This is BObama’s superpower.
Related, when I look at the polls for the last 6 months, they resemble graphs where a (single) feedback controller is doing a good job of managing a complex system to some simple objective function.
Need to compare with polls from previous election cycles.
JS
Am I the only one who thinks that one guy cannot simply luck out this way every single time he runs?
Rep. Bobby Rush and I beg to differ.
Otherwise, play on.