No kidding.

We like much of what the folks at the Flying Dog Brewery come up with, but we cannot recommend their Double Dog "Double Pale Ale," because 11.5 % alcohol by volume is just too high for us.

"We've paid our bills and the President's been elected."

"We'd tried the music first, so it seemed only reasonable to start things roundabout, putting the dance first. Later, when thinking-caps were used, it became evident that underneath both music and dance was a common suport: time. This partial truth would have been hard to come by for a choreographer, due partly to the multiplicity of elements in the theatrical dance and due for the rest to the fact that analytical thought in the field of the dance was centered formerly on the problem of notation. Music, on the other hand, was, in those days, a relatively simple art: a succession of pitches in a measured space of time. ... All one had to do was establish a time-structure. Neither music or dance would be first: both would go along in the same boat. Circumstances – a time, a place – would bring them together. We've paid our bills and the President's been elected. Now we get down to business. ... The time-structures we made fell apart: our need faded, so that aesthetic terms have totally disappeared from our language. Balance, harmony, counterpoint, form."

- from John Cage's 1963 essay "Where do we go from here?" in "A Year from Monday: New Lectures and Writings by John Cage", 1969.

Not recommended.

NeuroCooking cannot recommend the "reef playa cerveza" sandals, with a bottle opener built into the sole:

Because, to us, it's about the beer – and just before you put it in your mouth, do you really want to rub it on the bottom of your shoe?

wonders of the marketplace, continued

We stand by our earlier statement agreeing with Fuji that their new thousand-dollar FinePix X100 camera is "in a class by itself" – as long as you realize that building a piece of dark grey glass into the lens makes that the class of cameras that are expensive and stupid.

But what about the new Leica M9 Titanium, which costs thirty-two thousand dollars? Is that expensive and stupid? Nope. That's just stupidly expensive. And stupidly expensive is not the same as stupid.

_____

Note: The above reflects only my opinion, which could be wrong, but which does reflect my honest understanding per this grab from the FinePix x100 website:

Got that? "A built-in neutral density filter (equivalent f-stop reduction of 3)." That means that seven-eighths of the incoming light is absorbed by the filter, and never gets to the sensor. Evidently this camera is designed exclusively for bright days & waterfalls.

[Late edit: I was wrong about that Fuji.]

The future is here, now.

We've all heard the complaints:

"Where is my jet-pack?"

"Where is my personal heli-car?"

"Where is my robot dog?"

It would appear that the future of the past has not arrived.

However, recently, three things have convinced us that, in fact, the future really is here.

Those three things are: The iPhone, the iPad, and spray-on sun-screen.

The power of "today".

One afternoon maybe sixteen years ago I was buying espresso coffee & olive oil at the family-run Italian deli long since displaced by a well-known national chain café as part of the process that was then called the "improvement" of downtown Rockville, Maryland. I put down my coffee & oil on the counter in front of a clerk, and looked at the display of loaves of fresh bread heaped on the counter behind him. Following my gaze, he asked:

"How many you want today?"

The local Audubon Naturalist Society has cardboard-on-wood signs staked beside their driveway, facing passing drivers, about half the year 'round, that say:

"Bird Food Sale Today".

Today I was sitting working at the dining room table and happened to look up to see, passing by, a piano truck. It was a white panel truck, with the business name painted on the side, and, really big across the back, the words:

"Piano Sale".

They forget the "Today".

99 >? 100

When I was a kid I loved figuring out "brain teasers" and "one-minute mysteries" and the like.

But I am afraid that now, search engines have made such things almost passé.

Consider this one: When is 99 more than than 100?

It's a good puzzle. It's a fun puzzle. But it's also one you can solve in a flash, just by typing it into a search box. So, I suppose that we could see this as a test of character: Today, it's not enough to enjoy doing puzzles; you also need sufficient self-control to eschew the search engine, and figure things out on your own...