Another lesson from Garrett Oliver: rice in beer

Rice is not the first thing that comes to mind when you are drinking a nice, cold beer. And if you’re a beer connoisseur, even less so. For many years, it has been considered to be an affront to the institution of craft beer making to use rice. However, some beer makers are toying with the use of rice in beer again as homage to the practices that occurred before the Prohibition. This counterculture attitude reflects how beer brewers are looking to the past to evolve current drinkers’ palates. The following excerpt from the The Oxford Companion to Beer goes into detail on exactly how rice is used. Enjoy!

Barnard performs first heart transplant

This Day in World History
For five hours, the thirty-person surgical team worked in an operating room in Cape Town, South Africa. The head surgeon, Dr. Christiaan Barnard, was leading the team into uncharted territory, transplanting the heart of a young woman killed in a car accident into the chest of 55-year-old Louis Washkansky.

Hosting a holiday party with special guest Christmas ale

Now that the calendar has turned the page to December, holiday season is in full swing. Aside from the lights and decorations flooding streets and buildings everywhere, this is the season of holiday parties! We will be celebrating The Oxford Companion to Beer through the month of December, and to kick off the month, we are turning our attention to hosting a holiday beer tasting.

Ian Fleming and American intelligence (Part 3)

By Nicholas Rankin
On 27^th June 1941, in Washington D.C., Lt-Commander Ian Fleming RNVR drafted a short ‘Memorandum to Colonel Donovan’ on how to structure and staff the headquarters of his new American intelligence agency, COI, to be set up by Christmas 1941. Fleming suggested taking over a section of the FBI building and liaising closely with the Attorney-General and J. Edgar Hoover; Donovan would need to make friends with both the State Department and the FBI and enlist their full help ‘by cajolery and other means’.

Rosa Parks refuses to change her seat

This Day in World History
On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to move—and became the mother of the civil rights movement.

World AIDS Day: Q&A

On World AIDS Day 2011, we speak with Dr Martin S. Hirsch, MD, FIDSA to find out the latest news on the global fight against AIDS. Dr. Hirsch is editor-in-chief of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, professor of infectious diseases and immunology at the Harvard School of Public Health, and a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital. -Nicola Burton, Blog Editor

Ian Fleming and American intelligence (Part 2)

By Nicholas Rankin
In May 1941, Ian Fleming and his boss, the Director of Naval Intelligence, Admiral John Godfrey, were touching base in New York City with William Stephenson, the British Secret Service’s representative in North America as head of British Security Co-Ordination, whose headquarters occupied the 34^th and 35^th floors of the Rockefeller Center. The place later went into Fleming’s fiction. In chapter 20 of the very first Bond book, Casino Royale, James Bond confesses to the assassination of a Japanese cipher expert cracking British codes

Monthly Gleanings: November 2011

By Anatoly Liberman
It was good to hear from Masha Bell, an ally in the losing battle for reformed spelling.  Her remarks can be found at the end of the previous post (it was about su– in sure and sugar), and here I’ll comment briefly only on her questions. 

The periodic table: matter matters

By Eric Scerri
As far back as I can remember I have always liked sorting and classifying things. As a boy I was an avid stamp collector. I would sort my stamps into countries, particular sets, then arrange them in order of increasing monetary value shown on the face of the stamp. I would go to great lengths to select the best possible copy of any stamp that I had several versions of. It’s not altogether surprising that I have therefore ended up doing research and writing books on what is perhaps the finest example of a scientific system of classification – the periodic table of the elements.

Ian Fleming and American intelligence (Part 1)

By Nicholas Rankin
On 15 May 1941, two Englishmen flew from London to Lisbon, at the start of a ten-day wartime journey to New York City. Though they wore civilian clothes they were, in fact, the Director of Naval Intelligence, Admiral John Godfrey, and his personal assistant, Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming RNVR, the future author of the James Bond novels. What followed was to change American intelligence forever.

The disconnect between democracy and Republicanism

By Elvin Lim It should now be clear to all that the highly polarized environment that is Washington is dysfunctional, and the disillusionment it is causing portends yet more headlocks and cynicism to come. Here is the all-too-familiar cycle of American electoral politics in the last few decades. Campaign gurus draw sharp distinctions to get […]

Haitian leaders declare independence

This Day in World History
On November 29, 1803, Haitian leaders Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Henri Christophe, and a General Clerveaux joined together to sign a preliminary proclamation of independence for St. Domingo, the former French colony that soon after took the name Haiti. The proclamation came just ten days after French forces under the Vicomte de Rochambeau had surrendered to the Haitian rebels.

Should we use the PSA test to screen for prostate cancer?

By Halley S. Faust, MD, MPH, MA and Paul T. Menzel, PhD
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommends against prostate-specific antigen (PSA)-based screening for prostate cancer (a grade D recommendation).

Occupy Wall Street: Can the revolution be trademarked?

By Dennis Baron
Psst, wanna buy a hot slogan?

“Occupy Wall Street,” the protest that put “occupy” on track to become the 2011 word of the year, could be derailed by a Long Island couple seeking to trademark the movement’s name. The rapidly-spreading Occupy Wall Street protests target the huge gap between rich and poor in America and elsewhere, so on Oct. 18, Robert and Diane Maresca tried to erase their own personal income gap by filing trademark application 85449710 with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office so they could start selling Occupy Wall St.™

SciWhys: Why are plants green?

By Jonathan Crowe
After the greyness of winter, the arrival of spring is heralded by a splash of colour as plants emerge from the soil, and trees seemingly erupt with leaves. Soon, much of the countryside has moved from being something of a grey, barren wasteland to a sea of verdant green. But why is it that so much vegetation is green? Why not a sea of red, or blue? To answer this question let me take you on a colourful journey from the sun to within the cells of plant leaves.

Trendspotting: the future of the computer

By Darrel Ince
I’m typing this blog entry on a desktop computer. It’s two years old, but I’m already looking at it and my laptop wondering how long they will be around in their current form. There are three fast-moving trends that may change computing over the next five years, affect the way that we use computers, and perhaps make desktop and laptop computers the computing equivalent of the now almost defunct record player.