Glenn Beck Admits That he is Nuts (well, he doesn't exactly admit it, but he does demonstrate it)

A little more Glenn Beck for you. This guy only gets better, and is making Stephen Colbert's job harder and harder. Does he want Obama to personally shoot him in the head, or just personally douse him in gasoline and set him on fire?

A Little Bourbon in your Port?

Apparently not a good idea, but still seems like an interesting experiment and worth trying for oneself (because bourbon is an aquired taste to some degree, and not all palates think alike).

In the United States, Woodford Reserve and Buffalo Trace have experimented with bourbon finished in wine barrels, a la many scotch expressions, to mixed success. (Woodford failed miserably; Buffalo Trace produced a fantastic bourbon finished in cabernet franc barrels). But this was something different and completely unheard of: the unlikely and, to an American palate, unwise blending of two dissimilar beverages. I had to try it.

I also didn't know that congress declared bourbon to be "America's native spirit"and "a distinctive product of the United States". Here are the rules for bourbon:

Federal regulations now stipulate that bourbon must meet these requirements:

• Bourbon must be made of a grain mixture that is at least 51% corn.^[1]
• Bourbon must be distilled to no more than 160 (U.S.) proof (80% alcohol by volume).
• Bourbon must be 100% natural (nothing other than water added to the mixture).
• Bourbon must be aged in new, charred oak barrels.^[1]
• Bourbon may not be introduced to the barrel at higher than 125 proof (62.5% alcohol by volume).
• Bourbon which meets the above requirements and has been aged for a minimum of two years, may (but is not required to) be called Straight Bourbon.^[2]
• Bourbon aged for a period less than four years must be labeled with the duration of its aging.
• If an age is stated on the label, it must be the age of the youngest whiskey in the bottle.

'Milk Teeth' and Fallout

Over 300,000 baby teeth were collected in the St. Louis area during the 1950s and 60s in order to study the link between above-ground atomic testing and human exposure to radioactivity. Researchers are now trying to track down some of those tooth donors in order to study correlations between fallout and subsequent health problems. From The Economist (yet another cute English phrase that I learned from The Economist: 'Milk Teeth'):

The radioactive isotope Strontium-90, one of the by-products of the bombs, spread into the atmosphere, fell onto the land, was ingested by dairy cows and passed into the milk supply. Strontium-90, like calcium, was concentrated in children’s teeth in detectable amounts.

....

The rediscovery of the 85,000 samples, about a quarter of the total collected, has spurred a new effort to study the link between early childhood exposure and health problems in later life. There is already some evidence that 1950s children in St Louis grew into adults with a higher-than-average rate of cancer. Now researchers at the Radiation and Public Health Project, based in Brooklyn, are attempting to find more than 6,000 of the teeth donors to track their health problems or, in some cases, their premature deaths.

The RPHP has begun their work:

In a pilot project RPHP has found it is possible to identify a significant sample of teeth donors, finding current addresses for 80% of the male donors and death records for donors who died after 1971. Nearly half of the sampled surviving donors have expressed a willingness to complete a health history questionnaire.

Big and Orange and Full

Did anyone see the moon last night (who am I asking this to, anyway?)?
The internet is failing me, because I can't seem to find a picture of last night's moonrise in New York, despite its spectacular-ness.
Unfortunately, the limitations of my iPhone camera were reached when I tried to take a picture of it:

As you can see, there is nothing that looks big, orange or full in this picture. I think the moon is one of the four white spots in the center, though I'm not sure which.... I guess I'll just have to remember it with my brain...

Snap

I think the running lesson here is that you just shouldn't debate Christopher Hitchens. The Family Research Council ought to get somebody who knows anything about either Christian history in America, the difference between pilgrims and the Constitutional Congress, or at least debate technique. Hitchens just looks bored with the whole thing:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Department of Homemade Instruments [I want that]

Miss Missy and I were talking yesterday about people we know that play weird instruments. This is not so much weird as it is awesome. I love the idea of making musical instruments, be they cigar-box guitars or Steinway Pianos: there is something beautiful about the patience and precision involved, and also about the foresight and vision needed to realize that various bits and pieces of metal and wood will eventually be put together into a whole that makes music. You can make your own Cigar Box Guitar by following these instructions. Shane Speal is the King of the Cigar Box Guitar:

[Thanks, Boing Boing]

Remember the Ten Commandments (and watch it again!)

While the film has its low moments (and is so long that it hurts- especially when you watch it on TV with commercial breaks), it also stars Chuck Heston and Yul Brynner (and Vincent Price) and was directed by Cecil B. DeMille (and was his last film as a director). I'll be catching scenes of it this weekend at my roommate's multi-media seder (his favorite scene is when Moses goes up to the mountain with gray hair and beard and comes back with white; I wonder if Tolkien ripped this idea off of Moses (and God, naturally) or if de Mille stole it from Tolkien/Gandalf- nerds, I'm looking to you for clarity, here) which also will include an LP he found of Heston reading biblical passages and doing the various voices with backup-gospel-singers.

Anyway, here's the trailer to get you excited: The Greatest Event in Motion Picture History:

Happy Passover

Passover is here again and I will leave it to those who know the rituals best:

Miss Modal goes a-Dining

After a week of hard work, I went diner-hopping in the Catskills with Miss Missy. She will be posting some reviews/reminiscences in the coming days. Until then, this is why you're fat (alright, its not that bad; these were diners, which try to attract customers, not make them want to throw up):