Progress and such

I'm about halfway finished reading Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy[?] which was always the next book on my list after Rise of the Meritocracy. It is so well written. It flows like a running narrative, but woven in there is a critique of America building to a final point. I hope that he has some excellent recommendations for alternative models, but the picture he's painting is spot on and has a great eye for history.

If you've read Rise of the Meritocracy and think that Young's warning should be payed warning, Twilight of the Elites is Christopher Hayes ringing the alarm bells and shouting.  Even if you're not an American, it's a pretty fascinating look inside of the body politic of America and how we came to feel like a bloated and rotting corpse in just 236 or so years.

In unrelated news I'm gonna get my beer brewing on this weekend, so I can get something in that beautiful and sadly empty oak barrel!  It will remain sadly empty for about 2 more weeks while the beer finishes fermenting to be ready for the barrel.  The style is going to be American Strong and the hops I plan on using are Cascade but that is about all I've managed to make my mind up on.  I'm waffling back and forth about using extract and sugar to bump the OG up, or just tough it out and try for higher efficiencies with the all grain.

I also started a batch of sauerkraut 2 days ago, that should be ready to eat in a few more days.  It's a pretty simple recipe and pretty traditional, but I needed to do something for the fall.  If I'm still feeling frisky I've got my sourdough that needs some attention this weekend.  In all it will be a busy long weekend!