A cloud's-eye view

Here is a really neat relief image* of the Portland/Vancouver basin:

(North is at the top; the lower Willamette River through Portland flows from the lower center to the left center of the image, where it drains into the lower Columbia River, flowing east to west (right to left).)

This image shows well the results of the deep geologic history of this area, including the Missoula Floods.

This deep geologic history has played an important role in Willamette River pollution and pollution abatement efforts. My book on the topic will articulate this dynamic in more detail.

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* Many thanks to Sharon Wood Wortman for sending me this image via email a few days ago.

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My book project

I neglected to inform the blog universe* back in December that the Oregon State University Press has decided to offer me a preliminary contract for my book on Willamette River pollution. This contract hinges upon completion of my manuscript on or before Oct. 1, 2011, and positive scholarly review of the manuscript.

Yaaaaayyyyy!!!!

In climbing the figurative mountain, I've reached a plateau.

Atheism or Agnosticism? That is the question

Uh-oh, time to get deep and contentious!

Don't read this post if you're not ready to think about that sticky R-word, religion. If you're easily offended or firmly ensconced in a fundamentalism, this is not the post for you; go read something light, fluffy, and meaningless like this.

Still with me? Ok, you've been warned . . .

Budweiser vs. real pilsner

Budweiser sucks.

Or, at least, this was my hypothesis when I brought together thirteen friends and family members for a blind pilsner taste test on January 22, 2011.

The Vibe.

I had been thinking about hosting such an event for a few years now, but kept finding opportunities for postponement.

I discovered in 1991 that beer meant more than BudCoorsHammOly when I first tasted Paulaner Hefeweizen while stationed in Gaeta, Italy, with the U.S. Navy. My friend PJ and I used to frequent a small pub in Gaeta [PJ: help me recall the name! Update Feb. 13 2011: Bar/Cafe Uno, V. Europa. 20, Gaeta]. The proprietor, Mario, was from Bavaria originally but married an Italian woman and was then living in Gaeta. I distinctly remember one day Mario serving up a tall glass of Paulaner with a lemon slice. I took one sip and was thrust instantly into an entirely new world.

Until that moment in Mario's pub, I equated beer with the highly-carbonated, straw-colored, slightly-bitter soda water that I had been drinking legally (in Europe) for about a year and had drunk other-than-legally in high school. The Heineken, Bira Moretti, and similar styles in Turkey, Morocco, Greece, and the other countries I visited weren't appreciably different than the Hamms, Coors, and Olympia that I ~sampled~ in high school.

After Paulaner had changed my worldview forevermore, I had the good fortune of going home to Oregon, where the microbrewery movement was really starting to pick up speed. After serving my country honorably from the age of 17 to 21, in 1994 I finally received my discharge at an age that I could drink legally in my own country. I had volunteered to die for my country and had been drinking legally in other countries, but once I had turned 21 I was finally able to drink legally at home [one of these days, in another post, I'll rant in excruciating detail about this silly dynamic].

For nearly two decades now, I've been an unrepentant Beer Snob, evolving beer connoisseur, and fledgling beer geek. I regularly snub my nose at American Style Pilsners. I consider Budweiser and Bud Light so bad that I won't even drink them if they're free [Seth can attest to this], and I'd gladly go without beer in any form than drink Pabst Blue Ribbon on a consistent basis (in spite of the ridiculous ongoing PBR billboard campaign here in Portland and elsewhere. Note to Pabst: this campaign is LAME).

However, I do possess just enough self-reflective ability to wonder if I'm full of sh*t. Is Budweiser really the worst beer in the known universe? Continue below the fold to find out . . .

Answers to two Very Big questions

I can write with the utmost confidence and without qualification that you, reader, have asked yourself the following two Very Big & Important questions:

1) Certainly there are many alternate universes, but how good is the band Joy Division in the Playmobil universe?

2) What does God look like?

As soon as you look below the fold, lucky reader, you'll have answers to both pressing questions.

A lamentation on social values as represented by $$$

I've had two exchanges recently that have got me down.

This is a lamentation on our social values.

Grant me, for a moment, the proposition that a society's values can be represented in general--but highly important and informative--terms by the amount of money it expends on activities, infrastructure, and professional salaries. I'll call this the "show me the money" proposition.

If the above proposition holds any water, then, regardless of what a society might say it values, when push comes to brass tacks, a society will consciously or unconsciously allocate resources to the categories it considers most worthy.

Then, looking at where the money goes, one can determine what a society values.

Therefore, the American society most values the following . . .

Hiding the beer from Mom

Tom Scocca has provided a fascinating interpretation of a topic that has baffled me for quite a number of years: Why macrobrewery beer commercials (from the likes of Budweiser, Coors, etc.) are so ridiculously asinine. The way Scocca outlines it, many of these beer commercials (for the past twenty years or so, in my experience) revolve around the following two-point narrative:

1. Beer—cheap, common, domestic beer—is a rare commodity that drives men mad with the desire to have it, at any cost.

2. Women are the great obstacle between men and the fulfillment of this desire.

"Taken literally," Scocca writes, "this is baffling" because "beer is cheap and easy to find" and "many single adult heterosexual men seek out female company when they're drinking."

Why do the big American Lager breweries perpetuate the same two-point narrative, then? Scocca asserts that they do so because their target audience is sixteen-year-old males:

The girls [in the commercials] aren't really girls; they're Mom. And Mom is the first hurdle in the thrilling obstacle course that makes up the world of the teenage beer drinker.

The big American Lager brewers perpetuate this dynamic purposely:

That's what the beer commercials are going after—the enthusiastic desperation of the underage drinker.

Fascinating.

The comment thread on Scocca's post is also worth reading.

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