Bold new design or brazen attempt to inject fresh fizz into an old product, the Samuel Adams Boston Lager Pint Glass was rolled out in February . According to Koch and others who worked on the project, it’s the first beer glass created not by marketing experts or glass designers but by a brewer interested in one thing only: how beer tastes when poured into it.
Boston Beer’s new brew glass – Boston.com
Do You Want Nucleation with your Brew?
A dog has become a local celebrity in a Chinese village after she reportedly gave birth to a kitten.
Hua Chengpeng, of Huayang village, Jiangyan city, told People’s Daily that the unlikely animal was the third ‘puppy’ in his pet’s litter.
“The first two puppies the dog produced were both normal, but when the third baby came, the whole family was very surprised to see a cat-like creature. It is a cat, not a dog at all,” he said.
Local residents have been flocking to his house to see the ‘kitten’ which local vets say is really a puppy which looks like a cat because of a gene mutation. It apparently yaps like a puppy.
Hua says his son brought the dog home from Liaoning city, where he had been working, a year ago.
from Ananova
Devil Cat with 26 Toes
The owner of a cat with 26 toes is trying to find out if her pet is a record breaker.
Most cats have just 18 toes, five on each front paw and four on each hind paw, Des has a total of 26, reports the Daily Telegraph.
Alison Thomas, of Felindre, near Swansea, said her pet has seven toes on each front paw and six on each back paw.
“We’ve had him for about 10 years, he just turned up on the doorstep and my husband made the fatal error of giving him a bowl of milk so he stayed,” she said.
“He was only about six months old at the time and was quite small, so his paws looked enormous.
“I originally wondered if he needed them chopped off, but the vet said he was fine.”
also from Ananova
The Dowbrigade has lived with cats our entire life, and we never knew they were supposed to have 18 toes!
In today’s stuffy world of pampered millionaire athletes and padded resumes, Red Sox starting pitcher Julian Tavarez is definitely a breath of fresh air. With a record that defines “journeyman” (8 teams in 14 years and a career ERA of 4.38), Tavarez was the butt of jokes and the target of boos last year as the Sox took their customary swan dive and sank silently in August and September.
The only time we noted Julian Tavarez in the Dowbrigade News before this season was one time last year, when we referred to him and Randy Johnson as “the two ugliest men in baseball.”
But this year, in a story that reeks of redemption and resuscitation, Tavatrez has become the stuff of legend. In a sport which has traditionally attracted immigrants and minorities, his story stands out like a fairy tale. It has a Lincolnesque log cabin quality, but without the chalkmarks on the shovel. Tavarez grew up in a dirt-floored shack in Santiago, Domincan Republic, shining shoes and selling newspapers.
He claims, not exactly with pride, but certainly not with shame, that he has never spent a single day in school. His entry in Wikipedia supports this, but the ever-politically correct Red Sox have on their official site that he attended public school in the Dominican Republic.
Guess they can’t handle having a popular player who is as unschooled as the wild boy raised by the wolves. What kind of role model would that be for the kids of America? “I’m not going to school today! Julian Tavarez never went to school.”
No, kids, growing up, he was too busy supporting his family and staying alive on the streets to go to school. That, and play baseball whenever he could take time off from surviving. Even young, Julian knew that baseball was his ticket out.
Of course, he had plan B. If baseball didn’t work out, he was planning a career in adult films. He had all the prerequisites.
You gotta love this guy. He got suspended for the first ten games of his Red Sox career for a fight in spring training.
This year, he has become Manny Ramirez’s binky. In the dugout, Manny will impulsively grab the 6’2″ Tavarez like a rag doll, and rub his kinky hair for luck, or as some sort of Dominican nuggie.
Tavarez, ever humble, doesn’t protest. He just wants to help out the team, in whatever way he can. Pain is nothing to him. Here he is after taking a no-decision on Saturday, as quoted in the Globe.
“Anything to help this team win. People look at you as a clown, dumb and stupid. People, fans, players, teammates look at you as a clown, as stupid, as a dummy who always does something to make people laugh. They don’t admit the truth and say, ‘You know what, that guy who is stupid and a dummy, he’s going to make something happen to win. Pain is nothing to him. He’ll do something to find a way to win.’ And that’s me. Dumb like a fox.”
Apparently, Paris Hilton can’t be kept in the county jail because it a threat to her and the other inmates, and a temptation to the jail employees. The sheriff was reduced to strip searching all guards, maintenance people, delivery guys, lawyers and visitors, looking for cell phones, given the six-figure bounty on authentic pictures of Paris in jail being offered by several celebrity web sites.
In addition, it was getting tense with the jail and courthouse under siege and surrounded by dozens of video vans, satellite uplink antennas, and hundreds of intrepid reporters, accosting anyone coming or going who may have had a hint of a sniff of a clue as to how the poor girl is doing.
The solution is simple, according to son Gabriel. Move her to Guantanamo! Let the Paparatzi try to get to her there!
Certainly Paris herself can’t complain about three weeks in the sunny Caribbean, at an exclusive government retreat, 3-squares a day and plenty of exercise (see aerobics class photo above). No distractions, do photo ops, and no danger to her or the other inmates. Plus, from what we hear the other prisoners down there could use some cheering up. She could even join an Islamic study circle or a hunger strike, if she is so inclined. Seems like a no-brainer.
For readers who just can’t get enough of Paris in Jail, we present “The Prision Life: Paris” from the GSN game site, in which you help Paris keep up with the demands of prision life. Click on the speaker icon to nix the annoying music.
WASHINGTON –Fred Thompson’s expected entry into the tight Republican presidential race is drawing crucial strength from conservatives and older men, vaulting him into the thick of the nomination fight, an Associated Press-Ipsos poll says.
Thompson, who has sandwiched an acting career around a largely anonymous eight years as Tennessee senator, has not formally entered the race. But he already has impressed many people. One in four of his supporters cites his strong character, more than any other GOP candidate.
“He can be kind of Reaganesque in his engaging with people,” said Ronald Coppinger, 47, a carpenter from Indianapolis, describing a plainspoken style like the late President Reagan’s. “I think that’s important.”
from the Boston Globe
The instant first-tier status awarded to ex-Sen., ex-D.A. Fred Thompson, vaulting him over most of the pack of Republican hounds baying at the heels of Sen.’s Clinton, McCain and Obama, is further evidence, if such is needed, that Americans have lost the ability to differentiate between objective reality and television reality.
For millions of Americans, especially those under 40, there is little cognitive difference between things they have seen on a screen and things that they have seen with their naked eyeballs. And a sociolically devastating corallary of this fact is that they feel that they know people personally who they have only seen on TV.
How many know more about the people who live in Jerrry Seinfeld’s apartment building than they do about the people in their own apartment building? How many spend more time wondering and worrying about the problems of the characters in their favorite soap operas than the problems of the members of their own families?
We have gotten to the point that just about any actor who is known for portraying beloved or iconic characters and can put together a half-way coherent political philosophy has a decent chance to first, be taken seriously as a candidate, and second, actually win an election.
The only requirements seem to be that they are men, and manly men at that, and that they are famous for playing trustworthy, take-charge guys.
Reagan was the prototype. Nigglers can say that Reagan was a movie actors rather than a TV star, but by the time he actually ran for President his movies were only available on TV, and most of the voters knew him from there, or Wagon Train, a 1950’s television show sponsored by 20 Mule Team Borax. As a politician, he played the same role he did in the movies; tall, taciturn, morally unbending. The public ate it up.
Schwarzenegger reprised the role in the 90’s. Despite his improbable accent, be sold himself as a Real American Hero. His indestructible and incorruptible larger-than-life persona was just what California voters were looking for.
Now Thompson is following in their footsteps. All three of these guys got famous for playing law officers; sheriffs, marshals, DA’s, street cops, FBI agents, CIA agents and kindergarten cops. This is an easy sell when the bad guys are shooting up the town and the current squad of Pinkerton men are more worried about feathering their nests and staying out of the hoosgow themselves than making the streets safe for ordinary folks.
What about Warren Beatty, you may ask? Well, we guess he didn’t play enough cops. His most convincing roles always involved an assumption of smug superiority that doesn’t play well in the hinterland.
On the other hand, if someone could convince Jeb Bartlet, er, Martin Sheen, to run for something, and fixed him up with some decent political handlers, we wouldn’t bet against him…..
ADDENDUM: Check out Paul Krugman in today’s Times on the topic:
On the other hand, consider the case of Fred Thompson. He spent 18 years working as a highly paid lobbyist, wore well-tailored suits and drove a black Lincoln Continental. When he ran for the Senate, however, his campaign reinvented him as a good old boy: it leased a used red pickup truck for him to drive, dressed up in jeans and a work shirt, with a can of Red Man chewing tobacco on the front seat.
But Mr. Thompson’s strength, says Lanny Davis in The Hill, is that he’s “authentic.”
Boston’s plan to blanket the city with wireless Internet connections is set to pick up speed this month as companies jockey to play a role and a pilot WiFi project gets underway in a square-mile area of the Grove Hall neighborhood.
But the ambitious plan to create an “open access” wireless Internet environment citywide has hit some speed bumps, including the absence of major donors, delays in launching the pilot project, and blogger protests about Web filtering at WiFi hot spots.
Reeve would not say how much has been raised already, but she conceded that Boston has yet to line up the “key bucks” funders, such as companies, universities, or hospitals, it is hoping for.
The city has signed up about 20 families to give feedback about their ability to access city services, such as paying parking tickets or applying for food stamps, online . Some area residents have been loaned computers through a “taking technology home” program so they can take part in the program. “We do have a strong desire to address the issue of the digital divide,” Reeve said.
from the Boston Globe
The Free Wi-Fi contingent in Beantown is to be congratulated for their vision and humanitarian spirit. The Grove Hall area, where they are running their pilot project, is one of the most benighted of Boston, featuring endemic poverty, high unemployment and widespread gang activity. Just the sort of place that could really use a boost in legitimate economic activity and educational opportunity.
But is it any surprise business and academic sponsors are not lining up to throw money into this pot?
What we have here is a sort of “anti-redlining”, just as destructive, in its way, since it dooms to failure a project with the potential to improve millions of lives on both sides of the “digital divide.”
What is missing from this “Worst First” approach to technological bootstapping is that it fails to provide a Fair and Balanced access to the new technology.
In this kind of development, the haves and the have-nots need to be brought along together, hand in hand. Instead of launching in Grove Hall alone, they should have started in two spots, one from each side of the divide. Say, Grove Hall and the MIT/Kendall Sq. area. Then, maybe Chelsea (largely Latino) and Wellesley (Hillaryville). Then Mattapan and Harvard Square. You get the idea.
Furthermore, if this is a public system it would be in the public interest to encourage partnerships between the neighborhoods matched up from opposite sides of the digital divide. Make bandwidth and access speed in the high-tech areas dependent on the penetration and usage in their cyber “Sister Cities” or perhaps “Sista’ ‘Hoods”. Partnerships could expand to include workshops, joint projects, job training, and cyber-swaps of all sorts.
This way the business pull and corporate clout in the high-tech neighborhoods could find the funding the pro bono approach is missing, and at the same time pull their pre-cyber partners into the 21st century.
Two by two, like animals entering the Ark, the neighborhoods of this multi-faceted city could march into the digital age together.
What will millions of poor children do with cheap laptop computers? Play games, of course. But not just any games.
The vaunted “$100 laptop” already being distributed in some countries by MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child program lacks the horsepower to run flashy 3-D games like Grand Theft Auto or World of Warcraft. Besides, the idea of the nonprofit is to educate as well as entertain.
Game jam coordinator Mel Chua said it’s just the first of several such gatherings to produce useful software and content for the XO laptop. “We’re hoping to have music jams, movie jams, curriculum jams,” Chua said.
The software jams won’t be confined to the United States. SJ Klein One Laptop Per Child’s director of content, hopes the Needham game jam will serve as a model for software developers around the world. “We’re trying to formalize this as an idea that anybody else can easily run,” said Klein.
from the Boston Globe
If we know SJ, he’s going to make sure that these babies come loaded with the capacity to allow a group of 12-year-olds, transported to a virgin planet with nothing but natural resources, to completely recreate modern civilization, only better, and to have a blast doing it.
We are particularly encouraged by the fleeting mention of “Curriculum Jams”. All over the world, every day, creative tech-savvy teachers are creating content, on line and off, which they would be more than willing to share, given a channel and a chance to contribute.
We will be on the lookout for further updates.
(AP) A 21-year-old man got the ride of a lifetime when his electric wheelchair became lodged in the grille of a semitrailer and was pushed down a highway for several miles at about 50 mph.
Ben Carpenter was unharmed but was taken to a hospital as a precaution. He had been secured to his wheelchair by a seat belt. Carpenter, who has muscular dystrophy, told a television station that he thought he might not make it through the ride.
“I was probably thinking that this is going to keep going and not stop anywhere, 50 or 60 miles somewhere,” he told WOOD-TV of Grand Rapids.
Ben Carpenter’s father, Donald, told The Associated Press that his son had started to cross at an intersection Wednesday afternoon in Paw Paw, about 140 miles west of Detroit. The light changed to green while his son was in front of a semi, which started moving.
The wheelchair’s handles became lodged in the grille, the father said, and the wild ride started.
Motorists called police on their cell phones, and a pair of undercover police officers who happened to be nearby saw what was happening. They pulled the truck over and told the disbelieving driver, Donald Carpenter said.
The chair was undamaged except for losing most of the rubber on its wheels, he said.
“It’s a very bad story that ended very well,” he said. “We’re just thrilled that he’s still around.”
from CBS News
In another example of the ubiquity of cellphones producing red-hot eyewitness reporting, the photo appears to have been taken before paramedics were able to surgically detach poor Ben’s frozen fingers from his testicles.
BEIJING (Reuters) – A man in southeast China says 40 years of swallowing tree frogs and rats live has helped him avoid intestinal complaints and made him strong.
Jiang Musheng, a 66-year-old resident of Jiangxi province, suffered from frequent abdominal pains and coughing from the age of 26, until an old man called Yang Dingcai suggested tree frogs as a remedy, the Beijing News said on Tuesday.
“At first, Jiang Musheng did not dare to eat a live, wriggling frog, but after seeing Yang Dingcai swallow one, he ate … two without a thought,” the paper said.
“After a month of eating live frogs, his stomach pains and coughing were completely gone.”
Over the years Jiang had added live mice, baby rats and green frogs to his diet, and had once eaten 20 mice in a single day, the paper said.
Like millions of other Americans, the Dowbrigade suffers from digestive problems. Since our ignominious Med-evac from South America last year, we have been afflicted with a veritable plague of stomach and intestinal problems. Bloating, farting, belching, cramps, diareahea, stabbing pains, aching pains, nausea, acid reflux, difficulty swallowing, gas and a nasty scar are our constant companions. This may be our answer.
Our attorney is currently trying to track down Mr. Mush, as we are anxious to bring “Musheng’s Mush” to the suffering masses of American bellyachers. Me already have the formula down, a gourmet puree of frogs, rats and mice, mixed with a few unpronouncable Chinese herbs, and packaged in an Imperial dragon bottle in deep red and gold. As you can see, we have put a lot of thought and effort into this project.
While our lawyer looks for Mr. Mush, we are searching for a grant which could fund the project. Something to do with traditional medicine and ethnobotany, or a humanitarian award for alleviating the suffering of millions.
U.S. President George W. Bush holds the hand of four year-old Baron Mosima Loyiso Tantoh after presenting the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington May 30, 2007. REUTERS/Larry Downing (UNITED STATES)
Ah, the blindness of privilege. Even when he tries to show the compassionate side of his Compasionist Fascist persona, he pick a member of Africa’s colonial-relic royalty – and a Baron no less, to show off his “common” touch!
Meanwhile, as our President hobnobs with Princes and Barons and Queens, us authentically common folk have to figure out what to do about gas, both kinds.
As Ivy League-educated pediatrician Robert P. Lindeman sat on the stand in Suffolk Superior Court this month, defending himself in a malpractice suit involving the death of a 12-year-old patient, the opposing counsel startled him with a question.
Was Lindeman Flea?
Flea, jurors in the case didn’t know, was the screen name for a blogger who had written often and at length about a trial remarkably similar to the one that was going on in the courtroom that day.
In his blog, Flea had ridiculed the plaintiff’s case and the plaintiff’s lawyer. He had revealed the defense strategy. He had accused members of the jury of dozing.
Shortly before the end of his second day on the witness stand, while focusing on Lindeman’s views of a pediatric textbook, Mulvey asked him whether he had a medical blog, she recalled. He said he did. Then she asked him if he was Flea. He said he was.
The exchange may have been lost on jurors, but Meyer said Mulvey had telegraphed that she was ready to share Lindeman’s blog — containing his unvarnished views of lawyers, jurors, and the legal process — with the jury.
The next day, the case was settled.
from the Boston Globe
Is there any such thing as anonymous blogging anymore? Is a blogger with a track record as extensive and injudicious as that of the Dowbrigade permanently disqualified from seeking legitimate employment, a fair shake in the judicial system, public office or jury duty?
Budding bloggers beware – it may be too late for the Dowbrigade, but you still have time to save yourselves……
Three of the top Berkman denizens were rewarded for their brilliant ideas, but more than that, for their ability to transform their ideas into concrete programs that actually improve people’s lives in the real world…
The future of journalism is in your hands.
That was the message yesterday as the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation handed out more than $11 million in prize money to various bloggers and computer programmers, and organizations ranging from MIT to MTV, for proposals that will empower ordinary people to participate in digital media.
Lisa Williams , founder of Placeblogger, [and H2otown-db note] won $222,000 towards further developing the website — basically “the blogosphere’s answer to the AP.” Placeblogger runs a streaming digest from blogs across the world, and ultimately Watertown resident Williams would like to be able to create feeds of local information for cellphones, blogs, and e-mail.
Ethan Zuckerman, a research fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School created a website in 2004 that aggregates blogs from across the world. Yesterday, he won $244,000 to help train bloggers in developing countries and rural areas.
David Ardia , also of the Berkman Center, won $250,000 to support the Citizen Media Law Project , an online legal resource for citizen journalists.
from the Boston Globe
Congratulations, to the three of them. Lisa and Ethan are two of the smartest and nicest people we know, and are sure to use the money to make a positive impact on-line and off in other people’s lives. David we don’t know, but his project sounds like something we should check out, especially as we have been working more and more in the field of legal English, now a must for lawyers all over the world.
Meanwhile, our online staff feel that the Dowbrigade News deserves a piece of that action. We have to get back on the magic mailing list for grant and prize money. With an award like that, we wouldn’t have to teach so many hours we’re too tired to blog when we get home! Of course, we would have to come up with some grant-worthy project. Something to empower a downtrodden and neglected constituency. The best we’ve come up with so far is a clearinghouse for information related to the mysterious mass disappearance of America’s bees. Bees seem downtrodden and neglected, and the big cell phone companies constitute a suitable corporate culprit.
But any other suggestions from the constituency would be appreciated.
