America the sort of free. Top Secret America

Watch Top Secret America on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Why don't I ever know anything?

So I just say that Puscifer (Maynard James Keenan's other, other band (Tool and A Perfect Circle you jerk you really should know this)) was in town for a show on Monday.  Now I doubt I would have gone, but it's hard to plan if you don't know it was coming. The link above goes to their site that plays the whole album, but here is a video for good measure.

Puscifer - Momma Sed (Official Video) from Ryan Hopman on Vimeo.

Kombucha?

From time to time I long for something other than soda, and consider trying to brew Kombucha.  I've read about it before, and kick around the idea every time I read about it on the internet, but now that I have the facilities to actually brew things this may be the time that gets me to start a batch for myself.  Like I said the health benefits are dubious, but I've said it before fermented stuff is great for your gut, and it has to be better for me than my daily sodas.  The other day I found Fentimans Shandy Soda, and have been longing to make something lightly alcoholic that is not beer for consumption.  In general my beers are 4.5% and up, the Shandy was .5% yeah less than 1% alcohol, and the Kombucha is .5-1.5% on average.

Because I love me some Mad Fermentationist I checked and sure enough the guy had cultured some Kombucha, made some that was malted, and even tried a fusion with the Flanders Red style beer and Kombucha.  It's kind of sad to me that everything that I find interesting in the Beer science world this dude has done about 3 years ago.  Sigh, nothing new on heaven and earth I suppose.

What do you think, healthy wacko food or interesting science drink?

Making your own sea salt

So there is a Lifehacker author that apparently knows how to push my buttons, they posted an article on making your own salt from sea water. I really think this is a cool idea, but the first sentence makes me think that this utopia doesn't exist.

If you live near a non-polluted source of salt water...

So basically the best I think most of us can get is to claim that our water is cleaner than the water near the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (link in case you where dead for the last year and just suddenly found yourself alive). Anyhow it's a cool idea, and I may give it a try just because it would be fun to see the salt drying.

Corruption all over

Wow, I am a little stunned about learning that Olympus has been hiding investment losses for 20 years!  That is pretty amazing feat of accounting and collusion by so many people would be required to pull this off.  I don't have any witty commentary to add, I just cannot believe that they where able to hide it for so long.

Sony loosing money?

Not to sound smug, but here is another company that I am not a huge fan of.  Sony has repeatedly treated their customers poorly with proprietary formats and crappy drm software, now they are projecting a loss, in the same breath I hear Lenovo is posting a large Q2 profit.  I realize that Lenovo inherited the legacy of IBM, but they have built some really solid products on their own right.  The Lenovo Ideapad U260 is the computer I give to my executives and they love it, core i5 with 4 gb of ram.  Its tiny and wicked fast, and looks damn sharp.  I have several Sony products but my house is boycotting them until they stop with their go fuck yourself attitude about consumer standards.  SD card won the format war, get over it Sony.  They sank millions of dollars into seeing that the HD-DVD standard failed (fuck you very much for that one Sony) in part because it wasn't technology controlled by them

Don't lie your excited for this

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