oenophile

Thanks Doojable. Much more than the strains of patriotic music or the symbols that too easily become idols, the simple ideals that to be born human is to be accorded dignity and to choose one's own way as one's conscience should direct are the true expressions of what it means to be an American.

Beer comes from Germany.

Anything else is a cheap imitation.

...and the best German beer is M. Plank.

http://www.brauerei-plank.de/index-Dateien/Page301.htm

Like most, I already knew about Lincoln's Birthday but I didn't know about Darwin's nor did I know that they were born on the very same day. I found the information while doing an internet search of Darwin.

Congratulations to the Olmeda family.

Raf,

I lived in Ft. Lauderdale when my son was born. On those middle of the night crying sessions when nothing else seemed to work, a slow drive along A-1-A never failed. I think it has something to do with the white noise from the waves.

Both were born on February 12, 1809. Thank you gentleman for your contributions.

ex70,

My son and I both struggle with depression. At times the feelings of sadness, worthlessness and hopelessness can be crushing but there always comes a better moment, hour or day. I would encourage you as his parent to do whatever you can to get him help. You said that he is at a University. If he is a student he very may have insurance through the school. Student healthcare is usually a part of the tuition.

There is no stigma attached to depression. Lots of people who struggle with it get up everyday, take their meds if they need them, go to school / work and pursue their dreams.

Praying that rays of hope and joy flood his life and yours,

Robin

What a pretty kitty she was.

Happy birthday Shell.

I wonder about and am amazed about the endless variations of pretzel logic that biblical literalists employ to support their positions.

I want to try, Sam Adam's "utopia" brew, Modern Marvels has done a piece on it. The Adam's people say they use a "Ninja" yeast that is able to work in an environment of alcohol above 12 per cent. They say its like a taste of the beer the Mesopotamians would have drunk......yow...I am in on that...!!!!

Yeast can usually withstand a.b.v. up to 15%.

Remember the show that Dinner Parties that Steve Allen used to host?

My dinner party #1

Jesus

Buddha

Mohammed

Moses

Bertrand Russell

My dinner party # 2

Adam Smith

John Maynard Keynes

Milton Friedman

John Kenneth Galbraith

Karl Marx

My dinner party #3

Winston Churchill

Ghandi

Martin Luther King

Abraham Lincoln

Jimmy Carter

My work and play are the same. I actually sell some of the micro craft brews and premium imports to bars, liquor stores and restaurants. A few of my brands have been mentioned by others on this thread; i.e. Ommegang, Summit, "Blackened Voodoo" from Dixie Brewing, St. Peters, etc. Thanks for the plugs guys. Some other of my brands are Rogue (Oregon), Great Lakes (Cleveland, their Edmund Fitzgerald porter rules), Victory (Pennsylvania, their Prima Pils is Men's Journal perennial pick as best pilsner), Lagunitas (California, their IPA has been named best India Pale Ale by Maxim Magazine although my favorite from this brewery is one of their seasonal brews, Imperial Red Ale.) North Coast (California, their Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout was rated by Beer Advocate with the score of 100 when they were giving number grades.) Great Divide (Colorado), Breckenridge (Colorado) and Southern Tier (New York).

Perhaps the favorite beer I sell is the Bavarian Hefeweizen from Braueri M. Plank from Germany. This is a small family owned brewery located about two hours from Munich. Established in 1617 the recipe and art of making bavarian wheat beers has been handed down from father to son. For seventeen generations, the eldest son in the Plank family has been named Michael and with the name comes the designation as the next brewmaster. At the 2006 World Beer Cup, the brewery was named "Best small brewery in the World" and two of their beers were awarded Gold Medals in their categories another was awarded silver.

Did you know...?

Hops, used as a bittering agent in beer, is a member of the cannabinacea family and as such is a relative of marijuana.

The difference between a lager and an ale is that the former is bottom fermented and the latter is top fermented.

In Europe people with colds often visit a brewery to breathe the air in order to relieve symptoms.

My earliest career ambition was to be a garbageman. When I stayed with my grandma, I would jump out of bed when I heard them coming just to watch them. I loved the way they got to bang garbage cans together, throw garbage in the back of the truck, pull a lever and watch the truck "eat" the garbage.

Sadly, my family didn't give me a lot of encouragement to pursue this career choice. When they told me that they only hire black people to be garbage men, I think I recall responding, "Ok, I will paint myself black."

Coach Kay Yow passed away this morning (January 24) at WakeMed in Cary, North Carolina. She stubbornly lost to what she said was her most "formidable foe", breast cancer. She coached the Lady Wolfpack from 1975 until just a few weeks ago. She is one of only six NCAA Division I womens basketball coaches to have won more than 700 games. Her record of 737 - 344, 20 of 27 NCAA Tournament appearances including a Final Four appearance in 1998, coaching the U.S. Women to a Gold Medal at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul (after being diagnosed with breast cancer a year before) four ACC titles and an inductee into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame only begin to highlight her story.

She was much loved by her players past and present. She once said that it is more important to coach people than basketball. Her players were family to her as she became family to her players. She prepared her players to win both on the court as well as in life.

"She was a gracious and kind to everyone ...treating everyone the same whether the person was a concession seller at the Coliseum or the Chancellor of the University.", said Tom Suiter, sports anchor and friend.

Coach Yow was an early pioneer in promoting recognition and respect for college womens athletic programs. The prestige that womens sports is now finally receiving owes a debt to her.

Since becoming diagnosed with cancer she has championed the fight against it.

Thats how they get away with it. and any money you give to them is like a "donation".

Hmm, similar to "We do not charge for the class but there is a required level of donation."

It seems every day we are bombarded with bad economic news. Some economy watchers say that things will start to improve late in 2009 and national unemployment numbers will not exceed 10% as it did in the early 1980's.

Others say that we could be in for a deep ten year slide.

So, how do you feel about your own personal "economy"? What are you doing, if anything, to prepare for the possibility of a long, painful downturn in the business cycle?

Merry Christmas, Linda. I hope you have a wonderful holiday season with him.

Geisha,

I must say that I agree with you that people who cloak themselves with the name of God (or Allah for that matter) in order to realize their lusts, i.e. power, wealth or sexual proclivities, are a separate category apart from the human condition. The same goes for those who engage in genocide or seek to hold on to political power by any means necessary regardless of the cost in terms of suffering it causes their people, i.e. Robert Mugabe.

Forgiveness is something with which I continue to wrestle. Yet, I have learned that it is simply letting go of the hurt so I can get on with my life today instead of clinging to yesterday's pain.

Geisha...you said that habitual sin is another matter. Perhaps you could clarify what you mean. When asked if seven times would be a sufficient number for one forgive to his brother, Jesus said 70 x 7. Would He do less or would He do much more? I only bring this up because we humans have our weaknesses, things with which we continue to struggle with and often come up short in dealing with them. To pass judgment on someone who is caught up in an addiction or continues to respond to others unkindly because of the abuse or abandonment that the person suffered as a child, perhaps is more revealing of the heart.

Back in 1991, Time published a cover story on Scientology, Scientology: the Cult of Greed. You may read it here. By all the accounts that I have read or heard discussed Scientology makes TWI look like sunday school in the small Methodist church that I grew up in.

The cult was founded by L. Ron Hubbard who had previously acheived some fame as a pulp science fiction writer. Born in Nebraska in 1911, Hubbard served in the Navy during WWII. After the war, he complained to the Veterans Administration about his "seriously affected mind" and "suicidal inclinations."

Years later , church brochures described him falsely as an "extensively decorated" World War II hero who was crippled and blinded in action, twice pronounced dead and miraculously cured through Scientology. Hubbard's "doctorate" from "Sequoia University" was a fake mall-order degree. In a I984 case in which the church sued a Hubbard biographical researcher, a California judge concluded that its founder was "a pathological liar."

Time article

Sound familiar?

In 1950, Hubbard wrote Dianetics: The Science of Mental Health which is the sacred text of Scientology. He introduced his pseudo-psychological technique called "auditing." Hubbard claimed that all human unhappiness had its root cause in mental aberrations, which he called "engrams."

In it [Dianetics] he introduced a crude psychotherapeutic technique he called "auditing." He also created a simplified lie detector (called an "E-meter") that was designed to measure electrical changes In the skin while subjects discussed intimate details of their past. Hubbard argued that unhappiness sprang from mental aberrations (or "engrams") caused by early traumas. Counseling sessions with the E-meter, he claimed, could knock out the engrams, cure blindness and even improve a person's intelligence and appearance.

Hubbard kept adding steps, each more costly, for his followers to climb. In the 1960s the guru decreed that humans are made of clusters of spirits (or "thetans") who were banished to earth some 75 million years ago by a cruel galactic ruler named Xenu. Naturally, those thetans had to be audited.

Time article

I find it interesting that Scientology, like TWI, encourages its adherents to progress through its curriculum while recruiting new members, or "raw meat" as L. Ron Hubbard referred to them.

Today the church invents costly new services with all the zeal of its founder. Scientology doctrine warns that even adherents who are "cleared" of engrams face grave spiritual dangers unless they are pushed to higher and more expensive levels. According to the church's latest price list, recruits -- "raw meat," as Hubbard called them -- take auditing sessions that cost as much as $1,000 an hour, or $12,500 for a 12 1/2-hour "intensive."

Psychiatrists say these sessions can produce a drugged-like, mind-controlled euphoria that keeps customers coming back for more. To pay their fees, newcomers can earn commissions by recruiting new mem- bers, become auditors themselves (Miscavige did so at age 12), or join the church staff and receive free counseling in exchange for what their written contracts describe as a "billion years" of labor. "Make sure that lots of bodies move through the shop," implored Hubbard in one of his bulletins to officials. "Make money. Make more money. Make others produce so as to make money . . . However you get them in or why, just do it."

Time article

Mstar...those are some very inspiring churches from an architectural pov.

I would like to mention my favorite church in that regard, the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Spain designed by Antonio Gaudi.

imgres.htm

imgres.htm

sagrada_familia_1.htm

sagrada_familia_interior.htm

sagrada_familia_interior.htm

Scumbag!

American cars have made some gains recently in both customer satisfaction and reliability. The problem is that there are recent gains. Honda and Toyota have firmly established themselves in these areas over the course of the last three decades. It will take some time for Detroit to catch up in the public perception of it's products - that is, ofcourse, if it continues to sustain and improve on those recent gains.

I love my 2003 Honda Civic Si. Can you say i-VTEC?

That's truly sad news. :(

Were you one of the friends with her at that time?

Sadly, no.