A Moment To Say Thank You

As Herr Direktor Funranium, I have a great deal of  fun being a semi-inebriated raconteur expounding upon things scientific and being a general ass online.

But as Phil Broughton, I  have had far more pleasure with all the questions and conversation that have come my way in the last year since the Steins of Science and Black Blood of the Earth really came into being.  A bizarre stein in my hand has opened so many conversations in bars around the country, and in Australia and New Zealand, that I never would have otherwise had and led to new friends.  Deep down, I’m a teacher and it’s hard not to share and teach what I know with everyone.  I’ve talked to people around the world about their experiences with Coffee Gone Wrong and the most horrific/wonderful cocktails they’ve ever had.  In one case, I helped a man design an ideal chilled cocktail storage apparatus for hiking 5 days deep into the Sierras.  People have moved beyond mere morning caffeination rituals, to cocktails and gourmet meals using BBotE (like BBotE glazed roast suckling pig which I desperately want to taste) and then ask if I approve of their work.  Standing answer for approval of your experiments: as long as you’re all consenting adults, enjoy, but don’t be offended if I laugh sometimes.

But it might never have happened.  Both the steins and BBotE grew out of misfortune.  While I’d started messing with the initial work on BBotE in August of 2008, I didn’t have a burning need to DO SOMETHING until I got diagnosed with Type II diabetes in June 2009.  You’ll have to take my word for it that for this epicure, that diagnosis was just short of the end of the world.  The original Stein of Science, der Wissenschaftenstein #1, happened because I had my first day of unpaid leave from UC Berkeley, courtesy of the furlough program, and boredom got the better of me.

In short, I turned squeezed something good out of the two most unpleasant events that happened to me last year.  I never could have guessed how good and how much joy sharing them with the world would come back to me.

So, keep hitting me with your questions, comments and emails.   I never know what will inspire the next experiment or adventure.  Thank you for indulging my foolishness.

Now…where did I put that drink?

A Fireside Chat, With Herr Direktor Funranium

Hello Citizens, let’s chat.  This Herr Direktor Funranium and you’ve had some questions for me.  Rather than answer you one at a time, though I have done a few, let’s take this from the intimate to the public.  To the next level, as it were.  I’m ready to progress to this stage in our relationship.  A variety of questions from the last couple of weeks:

“What is your favorite flavor of BBotE?” – many people, most recently Mark of Troy, NY

Truly, this is like asking a parent which of their hyperactive children, running around the house setting the place on fire, they love the most.  Each has its own place in my heart and cocktails.  In terms of difficulty and thus pride in the result, I’d have to say that I am most proud of the Panama.  Light roasts are rather difficult to work with but so rewarding when you get it right.  Some, like Brasilia, have been disappointments and others, like Malabar, have not proven consistently reproducible in flavor.

“Can I be a pimpstress too?” – several people, most notably Rojir in Baltimore, MD

First off, you’re an hombre, Rojir.  Gender conversions for pimpstress duties are not included in the benefits package.  Ow, I think I just hurt myself with the pun there.

Maybe, perhaps.  Drop me a line and we’ll chat.  The duties aren’t rigorous, they pay is negligible, and it make you feel like the Avon Lady of Caffeine.  The main benefit is complimentary BBotE to keep you alert with your efforts.

“Seriously?  That much for shipping?  Can’t you just parcel post it for much cheaper?” – The Entire World Beyond America It Seems

Yes, I could parcel post BBotE, but I certainly wouldn’t want to drink it when it arrives.  I have to send it ridiculously expensive global express to make sure that the BBotE, a perishable good, arrives in foreign lands in a timely manner.

Steins of Science can go by slower shipping modes, but even that it isn’t all that much of a savings I’ve discovered.  Blame the high shipping costs on the rising cost of fuel, the decline of advertising mailers crashing the western postal systems, and quantum butterflies.  No one ever suspects butterflies.

This, inevitably, leads to the next question…

“Why don’t you ship BBotE in dry ice or chilled shippers?  You could ship more cheaply if you did.” – The Next Paragraph In Emails From The Entire Rest of The World Beyond America

I might saving on postage, which is questionable as chilled shippers are fairly heavy, but I certainly wouldn’t save on packaging and thus neither would you.  I mean, wow, are those expensive.  If you are selling a $400k bluefin tuna, I can see how they make economic sense.  For BBotE, I am content to use the nice insulated shipping boxes and, for The Case of Caffeination, throwing freezer gel blocks to add a little extra cold time.

Using dry ice actually turns your normal fragile, perishable goods shipment into a hazardous materials shipment. And if you are shipping it by air, which I certainly would be doing to foreign lands, you have to have FAA/IATA shipper certification or you have committed a serious federal pound-you-in-the-ass-prison offense for a private indivdual (you’re probably a terrorist in their eyes).  I don’t have this certification…yet.  Eventually I will, because shipping radioactive materials is necessary from time to time in the day job, but not right now.

“I’m getting married.  Can I get any kind of bulk discount on Steins of Science for my groomsmen?” – Nick in Sacramento, CA

Yup.  I live to bring the joy of Scientific Drinking to the world.  Drop me a line for discussion.

“I was reading about your BBotE and was wondering how you actually make this stuff, or is that a secret?”  -Dirk in ***UNKNOWN LOCATION***

Yes, it is a secret. Not going to go into great detail about the two years of process trial and error, as that’s where the Coca Cola-esque original formula trade secret action lies, but suffice it to say I started with the Toddy method and immediately ran face first into a wall of “This makes no sense. I think I can improve this.”

BBotE Experimentation: Southern Colombia (Huila) PLUS Firelit MkII

This week’s coffee experiment was Huila Province in southern Colombia.  Adventures in the land of dark roasts are always a safer proposition than light roasts as the long roasting process tends to make them all taste uniform in flavor to me, regardless of origin.  Which is to say: earthy, vaguely caramelized, and burnt toast-ish.  If you are uncertain of your beans, it is always a safer proposition to make a dark roast with them but some honestly need that high heat to get the oils to actually liberate in the bean, also known as “the first and second crack” (yes, I’m looking at you, Sumatra).

The Colombian, dark roast though it was, had a very nice Mexcian hot chocolate like aroma as a grind that gave me high hopes that it might persist in the BBotE.  I was not disappointed.  While decanting, there was an roasted almond aroma as I stood before The Apparatus, an aroma the persisted on the nose when drinking it later with my favorite Test Subjects at the St. George Distillery in Alameda, CA.

Tasted straight, the Colombian had a chocolate flavor, though much sharper than the Kona or Kenya.  As Test Subject Freshmaker  identified, it was a “nibby” chocoalte.  Luckily, they had some Tcho Chocolate nibs in the fridge in back for a compare and contrast.  Yup, the uppity whippersnapper was right.  The aftertaste had an interesting cool sensation, like menthol.

Vodka Test: after adding the small modicum of straight vodka, the “cool” volatilized and could be detected on the nose.  On tasting however, the nibby chocolate flavor had found an extra crushed red pepper spiciness to go with it, very reminiscent of Mexican hot chocolate.

In conclusion, I’d be willing to do this again.  I’m not going to make it product option yet, but if you’d like to give it a go, drop me a line and we’ll see about making it happen.  After all, I’m now out of Colombia (experimental batches are normally small) and will happily take an excuse to make more.

In other news, remember a while back when I gushed with love for the Firelit coffee liqueur?  Well, it’s back again but this time it’s been made with Ethiopian Yirgacheffe.  The flavor is different then the previous Yemen Saani, as you might expect.  In my opinion it has a more buttery, milk chocolate flavor with hints of apricot.  The Yemen supply went away remarkably fast, so I recommend not dawdling if you’d like some.

As the gem guys on QVC, Steve & Steve, used to say long ago, “You gotta swoop on this like a duck on june bug!”

Oktoberfest Coupon

You’ve tasted Blood and now you want more.  Well, I’m not surprised.

(That’s right, I just combined Rocky Horror and Flight of the Conchords there with consummate skill.)

Whether you are after another hit of Black Blood of the Earth (perhaps your first) or need proper Scientific Drinking gear for the upcoming beery festivities, I’m here to help.  Using the coupon code “Oktoberfest”  at checkout will get you 10% off your purchase.

But the coupon ends the same time proper Oktoberfest does on the 4th of October, so act now while the stars are right!  Cthulhu lies sleeping but you should not!

People Playing With Their Steins Of Science

Once a stein leaves my hands into the cruel, uncaring world of the United States Postal Service, I occasionally spare a thought to wonder what is happening to them out in the big wide world.  Sometimes people will send me a picture of themselves with their Stein of Science in action for addition to the Gallery of the Steinwielders.

(I have high hopes of reconstituting the Gallery of Steinwielders from website Iteration 1 again, as time permits.  If you send me an action shot and it doesn’t promptly appear, it doesn’t mean that I don’t love you.  It just means that the world is a busy place, especially for Herr Direktor Funranium and his vaguely mild-mannered radiation wrangling alter ego.)

And then sometimes people do things like this.  I apologize if you get a crick in your neck watching this, but Steinwielder Jessica in Portland was a little bit excited while filming.

Steinwielder Jessica, Her Mice and Her Stein

It is worth noting, that’s a 2/3 of a degree per hour by her process equipment.  She also noted to me that the lid was off and she was taking sips off her soda while doing this or, as she put it, “Adding her dirty monkey heat to the drink.”  Thank you for sharing, Jessica!

Secondly, this was shared by Steinwielder Tommy in West Virgina who wanted the old bare glass style I used to make with the silvered glass look but saw the wisdom of the full shield (bare glass is pretty, but no protection for the dewar vessel…or you).  This did not change his desire for shininess, however.  While sitting in front of the TV, he spent a half hour episode of ***INSERT BRAIN CANDY HERE*** idly polishing the brushed aluminum full metal jacket with a Cape Cod Cloth.  The results, as you can see below, are remarkable.  Check out all that majesty!

Funranium Labs, Iteration 4

The slow and steady march of progress drag this website forward and away from the almost Geocities, nay, Angelfire-like quality it was when I first began construction on Iteration 1 back in January. My utmost thanks go to Steinwielders Brad and Jason for their efforts in making my foolish actions and words appear in a professional manner. Allow me to give a shout out to them thusly at somebodyfix.me (Jason) and Point to Point (Brad). Continue reading “Funranium Labs, Iteration 4”

Not To Cause Alarm Or Anything…

But it is now August 1st.  This means …*hastily checks the calendar, while carefully not spilling the cocktail*…Oktoberfest starts in roughly 7 weeks.  The event that caused the original “der Wissenschaftenstein” to come into being a year ago is once again upon us.

If you want a Stein of Science in time for Oktoberfest, don’t dawdle and run down the clock.  I normally quote a three week lead time, so tempt not the fates particularly if you want one of the larger ones.

Oh, and if you want one and you’re actually heading to Munich with it (or you’re already in Munich)…drop me a line.  It will be worth your while.

I don’t even want to think about Christmastime.  Unless we’re discussing eggnog.  Mmmm…delicious nog.

Some Thoughts On Australian Beers And “Pubs”

Now that I am once more awash in BBotE to share with the world, I have the time to collect some travel related thoughts before they fall out of my brain completely.  It is a bit early in the morning to maintain my usual standards of insobriety, so you’ll have to excuse that and be content with the amount of rum consumed last night to make the bad touch of performance appraisal season go away.

First off, I find the lack of proper pints, even American half-assed standard pints, in Australia disturbing.  I understand that the scorching summer heat and what it does to beer is why all the bottles are stubbies and the bars pour at the same diminished volume.  What it tells me is that Australia is in desperate, perhaps medical, need for Steins of Science to keep beer properly cold.  It also makes some of the tales of Australian drinking excess I’ve heard over the years a little less impressive when you realize a beer is only 285ml (10 fl.oz.) and how someone could go through a case with ease.

Let us discuss the Australian, specifically Sydney, “pub”.  I use the quotation marks because having visited a good chunk of the anglophone world, I can say with some confidence that the term pub is generally a smallish, dark, but welcoming place where delicious beer and a limited menu is available (foods primarily of the “can you fry this?” nature).  It is inhabited by the locals because it is stumbling distance from home.  In short, it is a home away from home when you want beer and other people just to remind you the human race is still on and not lost.  This could be why Warren Ellis spends so much time haunting his pub to get writing done.

In America, well…the West and South at least, we did not come by pubs naturally until relatively recently as Prohibition caused a drinking/eating culture discontinuity.  Many of our modern pubs are calculated marketing replicas of England and Ireland’s rather than coming by that character naturally with time.  When you find a place that has accreted the necessary detritus dictated by the tastes of the owner and the clientele, truly wonderful things happen.  See also: The Warehouse Cafe in Port Costa, CA.  We are a poor and benighted people, easily distracted by McDonalds french fries, but we’re trying.

On the two occasions that someone in Australia suggested going to a “pub” and specifically used that word (the Pennant Hills Inn and a place in Mona Vale that has already faded from memory), I was quite surprised by the sprawling size of the places.  This was not a pub, it was the mutant hybrid of a beirgarden and an Ikea cafeteria.  This is not to say the food or beer were bad (actually quite good) but it was some expectation mismatch.  The Kirribilli Hotel, The Local Taphouse and most definitely the Lord Nelson Brewery Hotel fit the normal mold.  I think it would be quite easy to lose entire days into the Lord Nelson and it’s beers.

LORD NELSON HOTEL ASIDE: When I was at the bar ordering drinks, one of the people at a table next to where we were sitting leaned over to my girlfriend and asked “Excuse me, are you American?” Since we were waiting to meet a lucky test subject and give her 2L of Ethiopian BBotE, she thought we’d finally found our contact.  She responded in the affirmative.  When I got back to the table, I was asked how I got my Mythbusters t-shirt because the one I was wearing is only given to crew & staff.  I told him that got it for volunteering to do redhead ice bath torture on their “No Pain, No Gain” episode.  He thew himself back in his chair and said “I knew I recognized that hair!  Spent an awful lot of time staring at it during editing.  Hi, we work for Mythbusters.”  Small world…

Anyway, a Steinwielder Mark in Canberra gave me a list of beers to try while I was in Australia.  I was not able to find everything on his list, but that’s okay because I supplemented it with quite a few other things.  These were notes taken whilst drinking, so standards of insobriety were upheld.  Transcribing is a bit difficult however:

Knappstein Reserve Lager – strangely orange/citrus on first taste, and a peppery after taste several sips in.  Enjoyed in at the “pub” in Mona Vale.  The name escapes me now.  See, I’m already forgetting things.

James Squire Golden Ale – very pleasant fruity flavor with a hint of char from the malt.  I obviously liked it because my notes say I had five of them.

Coopers Sparkling Ale – light and refreshing, but I prefer the Coopers 62 far more.

Coopers 62 – clean and fruity.  Went away remarkably fast, dammit.

Little Creatures Bright Ale – A bit bitter at first, but grew on me by the 3rd sip.  After that had about six of them at the wedding.  Addictive little buggers.

Blue Tongue Pilsner – skunky wheat flavor.  No thank you.

Blue Tongue Lager – very skunky smell, but the flavor quickly turns sweet on the tongue.

Mercury Sweet Cider – appallingly sweet, felt like was exhaling granny smith apples.

Mercury Dry Cider – Brut champagne.  Very, very dry as advertised.  I like it.

Lord Nelson Old Admiral – caramel aftertaste.  Despite claims to being heavily hopped, they’re barely noticeable by Californian standards.  We are insane.  Had 3.

Toohey 5 Seed Extra Dry Cider – very tart, not dry, green apple flavor.  Feh.

Fat Yak – very fruity nose, “golden” flavor with even more meaty, fruity flavor.  Apricots?  Had 4.

The “Playa Grade” Stein Of Science

A while ago, sometime in the vicinity of February in the warm and boozy cocoon of the Forbidden Island tiki lounge, I seem to have promised a certain burner that I would figure out how to make a Stein of Science that could stand up to Black Rock City.  She declared the idea of loading up the stein in the morning with a cold beer, tromping around all day, and still having a cold beer in there to be perhaps the best possible thing EVAR.  I may have been a scorpion bowl or two deep into the evening and with a pshaw or two, I said that it shouldn’t be a problem and I’d get right on that.

Fast forward five months to this week.  Project Status Report – Diddily/Squat, to quote one of my favorite Bloom County strips.  UNTIL TODAY!

You see, the problem has primarily been a matter of creating a lid that:

  1. Was sufficiently airtight to not let dust sneak in.
  2. Was sufficiently watertight to not leak the delicious beverage that it is keeping cold.
  3. 1 & 2 remained so with a little bit of playa dust accumulation.
  4. Did not completely defeat the thermal properties of the dewar.

First efforts revolved around trying to cannibalize an existing airtight sealing top and adapting it to the stein.  This was a failure mainly due to the dewar’s internal dimensions not particularly matching any other extant vessel.  I do have a lovely variety of bailtop preserve jars for my kitchen to preserve…something…in I guess.

Other identified problems involved that the average airtight lid would turn the stein interior into a greenhouse while out on the playa.  Dewars are exceptionally good at keeping a constant temperature, but if you intentionally add more thermal energy it’s going to keep that too.

Working from a very simple baffled pancake design of silicone and HDPE (if it’s good enough to build chemistry labs out of, it’s good enough for my steins), I think I have a functional lid design and ordered some bits to start experimenting with.  If all goes well, I hope to have something to throw out to the world by mid-August.  But to answer these three questions right away:

  1. No, it won’t have a straw hole.  A straw through the top and down into your beverage introduces an opportunity to leak, collect playa grit and, most importantly, is a thermal short circuit from the outside world directly into your drink.
  2. Yes, I’ll sell the lid separately.  But for the sake of the sanity of your safety people, DO NOT fill a dewar with liquid nitrogen and use one of these lids.  The foam lids that dewars normally come with are vented so that expanding vapor can escape.  This lid is intended for beverages in the desert, not LN2 in the lab.
  3. Of course, the Playa Grade Stein of Science will come with a carabiner.  It would hardly be Playa Grade without one.  Dur.

And now the three rums and Coke is gone.  Perhaps another is in order.  Perhaps bed.  Hmmm…

A Caffeine Clarification

In response to an urgent missive that asked if I was adding an extra caffeine to BBotE (or, perhaps, massive quantities of speed) I must answer with a most emphatic “No”. He took a 50ml belt around 10pm before heading out the clubs, was still dancing long after the bar closed and, after willing himself to sleep sometime around 8am, woke up without the usual trashed feeling he got from his usual “Club Power Ups”.

Incidentally, I think someone’s been playing a bit much Mario.

While BBotE may indeed by the club drug of the future (new ad copy: “The dance-all-night pep of meth, but delicious and without losing teeth”), the only thing I’ve got in BBotE is what I can extract from the beans. Experience from environmental clean up operations tells me that nothing tends to grow well in the soils contaminated with methamphetamine and the precursor chemicals, so the bean growers around the world probably aren’t lacing their beans with it.

The average coffee bean has somewhere between 10-20mg of caffeine in it, depending on varietal.  By comparison, the average 8oz cup of drip coffee has approximately 120mg of caffeine.  The is speaks to the efficiency of the normal extraction techniques as I somewhat expect that we all use more than six beans to make a cup of coffee.

So, no, there is no need to add extra caffeine.  There is plenty there to work with in the beans, you just have to work a bit to get at it.  Besides, the happy days of getting reagent grade chemicals by mail order is receding further into the sunset.  Alas…

More Awesome For The Entire World

My time in Australia and New Zealand taught me several important lessons:

1) Winter is the best time to visit the antipodes.  Most of the unpleasant wildlife is hiding from the elements.  Humans, luckily, have mastered pants technology and can cope with inclement weather.  Sadly, winter does limit the scantily clad on display.  Take the good with the bad, I suppose.

2) Asia and Australia go to New Zealand to ski in austral winter.  Sure, they have their own snow at that time of year, but New Zealand’s is nicer.  Late June/late July is not yet peak season so good deals are still available for lodging.  Cheap flights…less so.

3) New Zealand’s immigration/customs authority has gotten less friendly since I last visited 7 years ago after spending a year in Antarctica.  They are quite stringent about you providing proof of a departing flight and a visa to prove that you can go where said flight declares as its destination.  It seems that some cheeky monkeys discovered that quite a deal could be had by buying a one way ticket to New Zealand and then letting the Kiwis pick up the tab for sending them home by deportation.  Not likely to permit you a return visit, but good value travel.

Now, on to more salient observations about beer.

I am to shocked to report that for the majority of establishments in Australia, their default serving size is a 330 fl.oz. (AKA half imperial pint) glass.  This left my Stein of Science regularly half full and me pouting for more beer.  I attribute this to the harsh summers of Australia where serving more than a half pint of beer at a time would leave it warm and unpleasant before the drinker completed their glass.  It is a natural response, I suppose, when a superior drinking vessel is unavailable.

New Zealand, however, has hewed more closely to their cool Brittanic roots and still serves in proper imperial pints.  The United States has no excuse for the bastardization “standard pint” that we serve.  To me, it is as if the founding fathers are gypping me out of beer every time I go to the bar here.

However, the time of want for superior drinking vessel and BBotE is at an end!  Behold, the new international listings!  (edit: since superseded with a superior shipping module, all you have to do is enter you address anywhere in the world) The time has come, fair is fair…no longer must Australia suffer at the hands of warm beer, baked to 45 degrees just as Midnight Oil once sang.  You too may enjoy a beer or cocktail that maintains a nicely chilled temperature.

Oh, and the rest of the world, this applies to you too.

P.S. – Still working on the bulk shipping option to other lands.  A 12 pack of 1L bottles seems to be a bit heavier than the US Postal Service wants to cope with. More news as it becomes available.

Herr Dirketor Funranium, Down Under (100% Paul Hogan Free Content)

The quote of the trip so far: “I think that in the depth of winter, Australians have forgotten what summer is like and what it does to beer.  This thing is brilliant.  How many thousand have you sold to Queensland?”

Answer: None…yet.

Let me begin by thanking the exquisite attack hospitality of the people of Australia with their demands that I try their favorite beers.  A stein that is empty is a void that demands to be filled and no suggestion has been ignored so far and all enjoyed.  I do have to scoff at the declaration for one of the brews at the Lord Nelson Brewery that it was “very hoppy”.  The brewers of California are demented and fighting a war of nuclear escalation with their ever hoppier beers.  Like the decendents of white mice turning black in mutagenic defense against radiation in the MegaMouse Project, I’ve had to acclimate to the ambient beer.

The mother of the groom on being served a modicum of Kona BBotE declared in good British fashion, “Ooo, yummy!” with Wallace & Gromit cheese-related finger wriggles.  I’m calling that a win.  A budding librarian has her 2L of Ethiopian with gleam of delight & fear in her eye.  I look forward to hearing how it treats her.

I have, unfortunately, discovered that all the tales of indifference and horror attributed to Australian Post are entirely accurate.  There is a certain level of quantum uncertainty combined with a lackadaisical attitude that gives one the impression that an package will get there when a passing drunken traveler can be flagged down and bothered to care.  I realize this is a traditional postal service mode, but BBotE demands a higher level of professionalism.  Eventually, when sufficient money is waved in their faces, postal employees remember that they do have actual express mail options and have to go rummage for the forms and remember which buttons to press on the McMail Service register screen.

I did bring extra Steins of Science with me to the antipodes, but both the imperial pint FMJs have been claimed leaving only a 350ml and a 1000ml.  Unlike BBotE, the steins are not perishable and can be entrusted to the slow pace of Australian Post.  The listings are active on the main page, but I will refuse orders from anywhere outside Oz and NZ until the 13th of July.  I am all about the instant gratification.

Vacation – The Sad Truth

Now in the homestretch before the redeye flight to Sydney on Tuesday.  All of you in America who placed orders for BBotE last Thursday will have your precious braingojuice shipping on Monday and in your hot little hands by Wednesday.  As for you lucky Australians, assuming Oz Customs does not declare me to be a potential terrorist based on the quantity of caffeinated beverage and steins I will be carrying in my luggage, steins will be ship out on Thursday and BBotE the following Monday (I don’t trust Australian Post not to leave your BBotE languishing over the weekend anymore than the US Postal service…with damn good reason).

For everyone else, I am sorry to report that I’ll be taking no orders until July 12th.  The listings have all been switched to Out Of Stock.  Stay tuned for announcements of the taps being turned back on and tales of misadventure in Australia & New Zealand.  For those coming to meet Herr Direktor Funranium in person in the pubs of Sydney and Christchurch, I look forward to some damn fine racontuering…

Coming Down To The Wire

Ordering for BBotE will be turned off this evening at 10pm PST.  For you people who like to wait until the last minute, I have one 1000ml FMJ and one 350ml FMJ Stein of Science on hand.  Grab them now if you want them, otherwise they go in my luggage to Australia & New Zealand.  You never know, a wallaby or kea might steal them from me.

Goddamn keas…

Last Call: A Literary Review

Last Call for BBotE.  I’ll stop accepting new orders on June 17th, resuming July 13th.

In other news of a Last Call nature, I highly recommend the book by the same name written by Daniel Okrent.  While the over-arching story of Prohibition, the abolition/temperance/suffragette movement, and the 19th century religious revival is one I am familiar with, this book has been fantastic at filling in the names, dates, and fine detail in the story.  I think I’ve read roughly a third of the book out loud in dramatic style to the delight/annoyance of my girlfriend.

What strikes my most while reading it is how very little has changed in the tactics of the control of illicit substances, attempting to legislate morality, and general manipulation of the American political process since the dawn of the Anti-Saloon League.  We are still inheritors of the temperance movement’s textbook approval process where they gave up on the adults and instead tried to educate a generation that “would hate the bottle” to vote the previous generation away.  Sound familiar?  The marginal politics of micro-targeting and “single issue voters” in the last 20 years are nothing new; the original yes/no political litmus test was “Are you dry or wet?”.

It makes me want to cry into my beer and keep reading.  I am very thankful for my legal beer.