Archive for June, 2008

Motivational posters for your monday morning. Just a little something to get you through the week. (Should you find yourself wasting some time checking your friendly neighborhood cooperative blog this morning.)

Word.
http://www.geneticanomaly.com/RPG-Motivational/

Can Mycologist Paul Stamets save the world with mycelium fungus? He thinks so. Pretty interesting stuff, but you have to make it past the first 9 minutes to get to the goods.

This is so cool. The Eye-Fi photo card looks like an ordinary memory card for your digi camera, but it stamps your pictures when you take them and wirelessly uploads the time stamp, geotag, and picture to your computer when you get home via wi-fi.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-y5eBRWQerY

That dapper band in the background is “Pulp.” Shatner covered this song (Common Peoples) on his 2004 album “Has Been.”

This has been your VH1 popup video moment of the blog.

For those that use Firefox, version 3 is out today and the makers of the browser are trying to set a world record. Please download and install it today. I’ve have been using the release candidates for a couple of months now and can attest to its stability and its speed. It is so much faster at responding to web applications. Plus it has many great improvements. Get it today and help a web developer out.

For those who use Internet Explorer, please for the love of God, switch to Firefox. It is superior in nearly every way to IE.

Hello. I’m collecting ideas for Lawrence-specific charities. Suggestions?

That’s what St. Louisians (those from St. Louis) call Anheuser-Busch.

I spent last weekend in St. Louis watching DMB play in the beautiful new Busch Stadium.

The stage was in right-center and they had porta-potties set up in the bullpen, that’s right, I have peed in the visitors bullpen in Busch Stadium.

The point however is that international brewery mega-whatnot InBev is trying to buy AB and those from St. Louis are freaking out a bit. If there is one thing that those strangely named people love more than the Cards is AB. And no matter how you feel about their beer, AB is a great corporate partner for the city. If you’ve ever touristed StL you know that many things are free and most of that is due to the Brewer.

In the past decade AB has slipped from 1st to 3rd in global sales and their attempts to jump on the craft-beer surge have mostly failed. InBev, a Belgium-Brazilian conglomerate (which is fascinating that a Belgium-Brazilian company would have the power to buy-out the once undisputed king, globalization yada yada yada) owns the Beck’s, Stella and Brazilian Brahma brands.

link, if you want more the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has a lot of interesting articles and reactions from various actors in the city. It really is quite fascinating to see how people are reacting to the possible cooptation of what is vital to their city identity. Articles from today.

1

2

Wall Street Journal Piece about the rise of InBev.

This is a further consolidation of the great American Breweries, AB, Miller and Coors.

Miller Brewing was bought out by London based South African Brewery (SAB) in 2002, from Phillip-Morris, and Coors is owned by Molson Coors Brewing Co based in Denver.

And SABMiller and Molson Coors actually coordinate US operations:

“On October 9, 2007, SABMiller and Molson Coors Brewing Company announced that they had agreed to combine the U.S. and Puerto Rico operations of their respective subsidiaries, Miller and Coors, in a joint venture.

SABMiller and Molson Coors expect the transaction to generate approximately $500 million in annual cost synergies to be delivered in full by the third full financial year of combined operations. The transaction is expected to be earnings accretive to both companies in the second full financial year of combined operations.

SABMiller and Molson Coors will each have a 50% voting interest in the joint venture and have five representatives each on its Board of Directors. Based on the economic value of the contributed assets, SABMiller will have a 58% economic interest in the joint venture and Molson Coors will have a 42% economic interest.”

Finally, another St. Louis brewery, Schlafley, is a somewhat aggressive micro-brew. Like other micros they have a very environmentally sound mission. I couldn’t get tomatoes b/c they use them from their own garden out back and they weren’t in season yet, and generally they have a goofy menu.

The real point is to read the ramblings of their owner. If you read nothing else read this,

the non sequiturs are quite impressive.

How to charge your ipod with an onion and gatorade.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfPJeDssBOM

How to make your own ‘zine
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Xh1W15BWCUk

How to make your own vertical wind turbine
http://youtube.com/watch?v=9UPe6A_UVPc - Part 1
http://youtube.com/watch?v=24LSnATIZhw - Part 2

How to embalm someone at home
http://youtube.com/watch?v=TYUiZxDFi1c

>компютри://www.apple.com/trailers/magnolia/gonzo/trailer/

I really think Obama is going to win this and it comes down to one thing. McCain is old. Dude is 72 years old.

You’ll see more before/after presidential montages than you can handle.

Great article by David Brooks. (Brooks is great when he drops the hammer indiscriminately)

“We haven’t had two presidential candidates as far removed from the mainstream suburban lifestyle. McCain’s family has been military for generations. But Obama’s path through the university towns is particularly elusive.”

Generation addressed here.

“The real significance of the age difference is not about health and mortality but about worldview, about ideology, about how the candidates understand the threats we face and the world we’re in. A candidate like McCain, born in the final years of the Depression and shortly before the outbreak of World War II, will simply have a different frame of reference from a candidate born, as Obama was, in 1961, the year President Kennedy took office and Bob Dylan arrived in New York. And that should be discussed openly.”

Finally, a great, “what the hell happened to Clinton piece” here.