Virtual Illusions

I have come to the conclusion that the perm politically correct (and more often politically incorrect) to declare in equal parts the speaker’s lack of empathy and the de-humanizing of the subject.

Politically correct is almost always applied in the negative or at least cast in a negative light; “It may not be politically correct but….”, “That’s just politically correct garbage”, etc. It strikes me that all politically correct means, once removed from the political point the phrase is trying to make, is to have empathy for a group that is Other. By denying political correctness as a positive is to deny having empathy for the subject of the speech.

Take an example like “It may not be politically correct but I think affirmative action is bunk.” It seems to me that could be re-written as “Since I have no empathy for poor blacks I think affirmative action is bunk.” That isn’t to say the only reason not to support affirmative action is due to a lack of empathy, but by applying the political correct marker that is the suggestion. A belief that affirmative action doesn’t work to relieve the problem is not a lack of empathy, however, employing the political correct phrase is to say that there is not problem to begin with. That is a lack of empathy.

A lack of empathy is usually a less than admirable quality in a person, if a person is sufficiently lacking in empathy we call them a sociopath and we lock them away in a cage (One of the more extreme forms of de-humanizations). So an admission of a lack of empathy needs to be disguised and further it needs to imply a de-humanization of the subject for which the speaker has no empathy. This de-humanization is needed to make the speakers opinion acceptable. It is okay to not have empathy for a group that has been identified as less than human (it is how racism, classism and xenophobia has flourished for years.).

The same old racist, sexist, classist, xenophobic, etc screeds get rehashed under the politically incorrect moniker thus pretending the dehumanization of these screeds is not the speaker’s lack of empathy but some horrid self-censoring in the extreme. It re-enforces the de-humanization of the subject of the speech thus allowing the speaker and anyone he convinces to have even less empathy for the subject thus perpetuating there position as Other.

I guess I am suspicious when ever anyone invokes politically correct or incorrect, it seems that someone is trying to describe a perfectly good human as less than that because they would prefer not to care about fellow human beings who are different.

Culture, Politics

“Many of today’s problems can be attributed to clean-shaven men in suits.”

– FRANCIS W. RODGERS, Rensselaer, N.Y.
Tuesday, July 26, 2005; Page A18
Washington Post, Letter to the Editor, “A Sandal Scandal? No.”

Quote

Back from the third Beer Gazetteer class. The guest in the hotseat today was Brian O’Reilly of Sly Fox Brewhouse & Eatery of Phoenixville, PA. There wasn’t a particular method to the madness in the sense of lines of beers or anything so after a brief intro I’ll start talking about the beers/lecture. We sampled 8 beers, 4 of them I liked a lot the others were types of beers I’m not usually happy with so no surprise I wasn’t terribly fond of these examples. The IPA, a style which I’m usually a fan, was a bit over the top, but it wasn’t there standard IPA so I’m not sure what that means.

Started with the Pikeland-Pils. More or less your standard pilsner. It was unfiltered which is odd but not much turbidity to begin with so not a lot of change. I generally feel like this style of beer reminds me of soap suds and is generally why some people refer to beer as suds. Obviously not a fan and this example didn’t change that.

Second beer was the Royal Weisse. This is what I look for when I order a hefe-weissen, it had the spicy clove, banana thing going for it. Very yummy. For the homebrewers: brewed with 52% wheat and hefe-weissen yeast. It was of course unfiltered with a turbidness that I expect from a weisse beer. This was very good and it was one of the beers I finished. I think it was my favorite beer of the tasting. First admission of possibly illegal activity happened here. It seems that that the yeast was first imported from Germany but now they have a friend who works in big pharma as a microbiologist or similar and he uses his labs/facilities to store and propagate this strain of yeast. When bosses start asking questions apparently beer bribes have taken care of that to date.

Third beer was Savannah Maibock. The name of this beer changes each year, it is named after the goat that won last years goat race. So it seams the brewpub has an annual festival in the beginning of May and part of is a goat race. It’s been suggested that we need to mark this in our calendars to make sure we can see the goat race live and perhaps we need to enter a goat, or sell goats at the door so other people could enter them. Anyway this was probably my second favorite beer of the tasting. I don’t really have much in the way of notes. I think I was too busy drinking this beer. You’ll have to trust me that it was good without me being able to invoke critic like words about it. I finished this beer as well. This was also the second admission of possible illegal activity. Apparently during the festival they sell a single batch of ice bock. Essentially freeze a good chunk of the water out of the beer concentrating the flavor/alcohol. No one is sure about the legality of this on a commercial scale.

Fourth beer was Progress IPA. No one at my table was terribly impressed by this beer. It was too bitter without even a nod to balance, but it does have an interesting story. So it seems this beers is made with exclusively progress hops. It is one of 8 IPA they make/made with only one kind of hop. In December they blended them into what they call the Odesy IPA. Conceptually pretty interesting implementation wise I’d go for a Dogfish head instead.

Fifth beer was Black Raspberry Wheat. This is a basic cool-aide beer. The fruit overtakes everything. I, like most people I know, don’t really like this sort of cool-aide style. I like fruit in my beer but it should be just tinged. You should notice the flavor complexity but you should have to work at it to figure out what it is if you didn’t already know. Anyway I hardly touched this beer for the above reasons, but if you care this beer weighed in at 8% alcohol, they add about a pound of pureed fruit for every gallon of beer. It is based off an American wheat beer. A style I haven’t found very prevalent in recent years.

Sixth beer was Renard D’or. The name means golden fox and beer is essentially a begian-style golden ale. It had Coriander seeds and about 7% sugar. The sugar pushes up the alcohol without adding body density. This was probably a fine example, but not really a style I’m too fond.

Seventh beer was a Rauch Bier. I’m not sure I’ve encountered the style before but it was pretty good. It was made with 80% beachwood kilned malt giving it a strong smoked flavor. In a beer tasting sense it had a certain bacony flavor to it. I suspect this beer isn’t for everyone but it was pretty good. In all likely hood originally all beer had this smoked flavor to it to some degree or another since all malt was originally kilned over smoking wood. Any pretty good but maybe too flavorful for a session beer.

Last was O’Reilly’s Stout. You can debate the hubris of naming a beer after yourself. A decent if not too imaginative example of the style. It’s nitrogen gassed a comes across a bit too bitter at first drink you quickly adjust and it is pretty good. It has just 3.8% alcohol and is a bit thin making it a pretty good session beer. I finished this one off no problem.

Just a last word about Brian. He was a decent speaker but his style seemed a bit hesitent/nervous but I don’t know if there was anything real about that or just how he spoke.

Any way I’m out. Have some good beer.

Beer

So I suppose I should mention that I got a letter to the editor published in the Washington Post about a week ago. It’s sort of odd it wasn’t something I really felt strongly about, just something I sort have had written before… about 4 years ago. So type, type, type and send. They confirmed some thing and bang it appeared in the paper a couple of days later. Here is the link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/13/AR2005071301982.html

However, I expect it will stop being availible in a couple of days. I had affirm that it isn’t anywhere posted anywhere else including a personal log when I submitted it to them, but they probably don’t care once its been published so here is what was published.

=====================

Words to Live By, From a Greek Philosopher

Thursday, July 14, 2005; Page A24

Diane Ellis suggested in her July 7 letter that religious leaders and atheists get together and come up with a set of principles that both could agree are good “Rules of Living.”

I prefer the concept of principles over rules. The following were attributed to the Greek philosopher Solon, who drew them up almost 2,600 years ago:

1. Trust good character more than promises.

2. Do not speak falsely.

3. Do good things.

4. Do not be hasty in making friends, but do not abandon them once made.

5. Learn to obey before you command.

6. When giving advice, do not recommend what is most pleasing, but what is most useful.

7. Make reason your supreme commander.

8. Do not associate with people who do bad things.

9. Honor the gods.

10. Have regard for your parents.

Perhaps if elected officials want to engender good character, they should post these instead of religious texts.

I say that as an atheist; I read “Honor the gods” as “Respect what people believe” and not as a requirement to worship any god.

TODD KUSTERER

Rockville

Culture, News, Philosophy/Religion

So today is my brother’s birthday, tomorrow is an ex-girlfriend’s birthday and Saturday was a former roommates birthday.

Since I’m not really talking to my brother much I think I’ll ignore it. I think his new wife is pregnant. At least I’ve heard that he has news. Married couples’ news is usually confined to having kids. I suppose it could be something else but I’m operating under the kid premise. It hardly matters, I’m sure he’ll act all proud, as it is another step towards his image of completion but long ago I learned it has nothing to do with me.

I will send the ex-girlfriend an email, I haven’t talked to her in a while. She should be married by now I figure. It was a while ago when she told me she was engaged and sent me in a bit of tailspin, but I should check I figure, say hello, etc.

Should grab the former roommate for dinner some night, but as he is a recent father I’m not sure what his schedule looks like, but I suppose and email will clarify.

Off to send emails.

Life

Today was the second of the Smithsonian/Brickskeller classes. The speaker du’jour was Dick Cantwell of Elysian Brewing Co located in Seattle, WA. We had six beers: Loki Lager, Bete Blanche Belgian-style tripel, Yuzu’s Belgian Golden Ale, The Wise ESB, Avatar Jasmine IPA, Draongstooth stout.

The early ones I thought were ho-hum for a Smithsonian/Brickskeller class. Early ones often are. The Bete Blanche was pretty good I thought the line really started to become solid with the ESB. The final three turned out pretty nice, but the Dragonstooh was called an oatmeal stout when it was an Imperial stout. If you aren’t prepared for that it can be a bit shocking. I think either the ESB or IPA were the best of line. Apparently the IPA is their primary seller.

We devised a simple drinking game based on when the annoying guy asked an annoying question. There is one in every class, though I guess it could always be the same one. By simple I mean when he asked a stupid question we drank.

The speaker was decent, told interesting stories, including being submerged in the beer we were currently drinking. He could have saved that story perhaps. Admitted serving his infant children beer, etc. I wonder how many brewers come to these things and admit some crime or another.

Anyway I have other entries to write so if you’ll excuse me.

Beer

Just got back from my Smithsonian beer “class.” If you are not lucky enough to at least know what one of these is, if not actually attending one, allow me to educate. These classes are held at the Brickskeller the premier beer bar in D.C. (and certainly the East coast and probably the U.S.). They have over 1,000 beers available though some jest ‘not all at once.’ This comes from the fact that invariably some or many beers ordered won’t be in stock. In my opinion this originates from the fact that their menu is static while their beer selection is fluid (Mmmm… yummy fluid).

Anyway Jason and Tom were there which was good since I didn’t really have confirmation that they had gotten tickets. I had heard that Jason got spousal permission, but I hadn’t heard that he had acquired actual tickets. At a party a few weeks ago Chris claimed he was going to sign up but that hardly counts and he didn’t seem to be there.

Anyway back to the “class”, a brewer, in this case Vinnie Cilurzo the owner/brewer of Russian River Brewing Co. of Santa Rosa, CA, comes by and talks about his beers as we taste them. Tonight we had samples (~5 oz) of nine beers. Russian River’s (RR) main claim to fame seems to be as the first brewer of a double or imperial IPA. In addition to that they seems to have two main beer lines, Big Hops and Belgium style.

Of the big hops line we tried Blind Pig IPA, Russian River IPA, Pliny the Elder, Pliny the Younger. As a disclaimer, I enjoy hops but rarely feel beers need more that can be found in a standard IPA. Pliny the Elder is the double IPA weighing in at 100 IBU and Pliny the Younger is a triple IPA weighing in at ‘Gobs” of IBU. Apparently the techniques for measuring IBUs become unreliable past 120 or so.

I didn’t feel the two basic IPA measured up to Dogfish Head 60 min which is easy enough to get. The hops were there but there was something about them that made me come away with the feeling that the flavor wasn’t as clean as it should/could have been. This is full on beer snob mode, if you handed me either I’d be happy enough.

The Elder and Younger had too much hops for my taste. I’ve had the style before and they aren’t a bad example, but at that hop level really all you can taste is hops everything else gets lost. So full marks for example of style, but not my favorite of styles.

The Belgium styled beers were much better to my taste. We had Damnation, Temptation, Little White Lie and Supplication. Supplication was by far the best. Vinnie started off calling it a brown ale, but this is a mistake. It may have gotten there by the wrong route, but if you tasted it you would be pretty sure it was a decent lambic. It had a bit of cherry, I might shave just a touch of the cherry off but it wasn’t enough to seriously notice if weren’t at a beer tasting.

Second favorite was Temptation which is a golden ale aged in Chardonnay barrels. Quite good. Little White Lie is an unfiltered spiced wheat. A very good summer beer. I would have preferred if its spiced/tartness was a bit higher, but I tasted it 6th so it is quite possible outside of the context of big hop ales it would have been near perfect.

The Temptation was okay but it didn’t seem to do anything special for me, just sort of average. The Perdition was a sort of hybrid thing, not really Pale Ale, not really Belgium. I suspect it will work itself to a good place eventually, but for the moment seems to still be a work in progress.

More stuff going on but that sums up the beer tasting.

Beer