Monthly Archives: October 2006

music, Spoofs, YouTube

Effective Advertising

1 Comment

Promotional video on Dan Levitin’s book:

[youtube=http://youtube.com/w/?v=JvBoHohvQ54]
YouTube – This Your Brain On Music: Punk

About the title of my new book: Most people born before 1984 or so and raised in the U.S. remember a PSA (public service announcement) that ran for many years as part of the government’s “say no to drugs” campaign. In that ad, which has been parodied many times from “Married With Children” to Weird Al Yankovic, a man holds up a single egg and says “This is your brain.” he then cracks it onto a frying pan and as it cooks, he says “this is your brain on drugs. . . any questions?”

The title of my new book is a nod to that old Reagan-era ad, because of new research that shows that music activates many of the same pleasure centers as drugs do. Also, there is lots of new research on how people use music in their everyday lives; many people use music for mood-regulation, and for self-medication. We use music the way we use drugs such as caffeine and alcohol – to help us get out of bed in the morning or finish an exercise workout, to calm us after a stressful day, or to ease social interactions. As a fan once told Joni Mitchell, “before there was Prozac, there was you.”

Beer, craft beer

Burning Hops

Leave a comment

CNN.com – Beer drinkers beware: 4 percent of U.S. hops crop burns – Oct 3, 2006

No mention of which hop varieties were present but it sounds as if these hops were meant for macro-breweries like Anheuser-Busch. Which means that the price of hops might increase a bit. Because consistency is extremely important for those macro-breweries, they can’t simply start brewing less hoppy beers. Those huge breweries are already having a relatively tough time so even though they will easily overcome this problem, it is sad (though not devastating) news for them.
One advantage craft brewers have is that they can easily adapt to changing conditions. In fact, that’s how many beer styles have sprung up and it’s part of what makes craft beer so interesting.

academic podcasting, course management systems, democracy, Digital Life, folkloristics, geek culture, language ideology, Moodle, online publishing, Québec, tolerance, Web 2.0, writing style

Early October Quickies

1 Comment

Actually, they’re more like late September links, but still…

Is that Disparate enough for you? 😉

Beer, craft beer, culinary, food philosophy, podcasting

Beer, Food, Culinary Podcasting

Leave a comment

Just listened to:

Food Philosophy: Food Philosophy #21: Beer and Food Pairing

From the Culinary Podcast Network.

My comments:

Welcome to the world of beer!
Incidentally, the Craft Beer Radio podcast is the reason I went to the CPN (though it had been mentioned on Eat Feed and by Fran, over at Betumi).
As it so happens, beer is one of my passions.
The interview itself was fairly interesting (shows that you’ve done your homework). But the world of beer as a culinary item is much larger than what A-B lets out. A-B should be commended for their attempts to join up forces with the craft beer movement in North America, but there’s still a lot more to think about.
On food pairings, you might want to check out a recent episode of Basic Brewing Radio when they interviewed Randy Mosher on food pairings. Very insightful and quite surprising to some (IPA and… carrot cake!).

As craft beer people tend to say, pairing food with beer makes much more sense than pairing food with wine (with a few exceptions in Italian cuisine). And beer is really quite complex, with more than a hundred styles in several categories:
(Not to mention regional differences. There are literally hundreds of different Belgian Specialty Ales…)
A large beer category which wasn’t mentioned by A-B (because they don’t brew any) and which pairs very well with food is that of sour beers. From gueuze, Flemish Red, Oud Bruid, and Lambic to Berliner Weisse and Gose.
Some restaurants are even hiring beer sommeliers:
Actually, there really should be a feature on beer and food in Imbibe magazine.