- Beer is serious business in Deutschland. Beer is
everywhere, a part of every meal and every celebration of any kind. In fact,
Germans are so serious about their brew that their beer makers are pushing to
have their nectar of the (not really) gods protected by the same United Nations
agency that watches over such world treasures as Egypt’s pyramids, the hanging
gardens of Babylon and the Great Wall of China. "Thanks to our beer purity
law, Germany has an unchallenged reputation as a beer nation," said Hans-Georg
Eils, the president of the German Brewers Association. Hans and his pals in the
GBA have applied for the country's beer purity law to be included
on UNESCO's "intangible cultural heritage" list -- which
recognizes practices which require "urgent measures to keep them
alive." UNESCO is responsible for designating World Heritage sites, a
list of more than 900 landmarks seen having "outstanding universal
value." How German beer laws fit into this mix is a mystery, but it’s one
the oft-inebriated residents of the land that Hitler tyrannized believe will
work out in their favor. There strict beer purity regulation rules --
known as the Reinheitsgebot -- allow only four ingredients to be used in the
brewing process: water, malt, hops, and yeast. Bavarian dukes drafted the rules
some 500 years ago and Germans have followed them faithfully ever since. At
last count, the country boasts more than 1,300 breweries, more than 40 types of
beer and about 5,000 brands. Recent estimates peg the annual beer consumption of
the average German at 27 gallons a year. "The popularity of German beer in
great parts from the brewing tradition," said Marc-Oliver Huhnholz, a
spokesman for the German Brewers Association. "From just four ingredients,
we can make so many different tasting brews, that is really a special
craftsmanship." Germany’s neighbors/former conquests Austria and
Switzerland have also adopted the rules and according to the GBA, UNESCO status
would give the tradition a boost. For the record, maintaining "cultural diversity in the face of
growing globalization” is the official aim of UNESCO's cultural heritage list…….
- Fans who attend a Pearl Jam show typically come away with
something meaningful, be it tangible (a wildly overpriced T-shirt, hat or CD)
or intangible (great memories and a chance to sing along live to their favorite
songs). A fan who attended the band’s show in Spokane on Saturday night may
have come away with some of those things, but he also went home without
something important: his luscious locks. Yes, this fool was spotted by Pearl
Jam frontman Eddie Vedder holding up a sign on which the fan offered to shave
his head if the band played the track “Brain of J” from their album “Yield.”
Rather than gloss over the offer as the signage ramblings of an overly
enthusiastic fan, Vedder decided to have a little fun. Pearl Jam obliged the
request, giving the fan one final chance t to head bang before losing his hair. A video
that made its way to YouTube shows Vedder begin to shave the hair during the
song, then taking a brief break to, you know, actually perform, before
returning to finish his impromptu barber job. In return for hearing his
favorite song live and getting to see it happen from the stage, the fan
followed through and allowed Vedder to buzz off every last lock of hair. It was
far from the only unusual happening on stage during the band’s tour to promote
their new album, “Lightning Bolt,” which dropped in October. Last month, iconic
lady rockers Sleater-Kinney reunited on stage for the first time in
seven years at Pearl Jam's gig in Portland as . Carrie Brownstein, Corin Tucker
and Janet Weiss (along with REM's Peter Buck) joined the band onstage at their
Moda Center concert, with the informal supergroup covering Neil Young’s
“Rockin’ In The Free World,” much to the delight of the masses………
- Looking to carve out those six-pack abs AND stave off
dementia later in life? Then a team of Canadian scientists has potentially
wonderful news for you. According to their research, folks with dementia who exercise improve their thinking
abilities and everyday life. Under the direction of a mysterious group called
the Cochrane Collaboration, researcher Dorothy Forbes of the
University of Alberta and her colleagues carried out a systematic review of
eight exercise trials involving more than 300 patients living at home or in
care. On the negative side, exercising regularly did not have a significant
impact on participants’ moods, but it did have other positive effects. For
starters, it helped them better carry out daily activities such as rising from
a chair. It also upped their cognitive skills and while these benefits are substantial
enough to qualify as improving overall quality of life is up for debate, the researchers
believe their results are reason for optimism. Dementia affects millions of
people worldwide and the problem is increasing because longer life spans in
many countries means more people are around to battle the illness. In the
United Kingdom alone, the number of people estimated to suffer from dementia by
2021 is 1 million. There is no cure, but treatment options that might slow
dementia’s progress or lessen symptoms is a great thing. "Clearly, further
research is needed to be able to develop best practice guidelines to enable
healthcare providers to advise people with dementia living at home or in
institutions,” Forbes said. "We also need to understand what level and
intensity of exercise is beneficial for someone with dementia." For a nice
change of pace, science has accomplished something with direct and logical
benefits for the people………
- Rich people of the world strike again. The über-wealthy
reside in a world the rest of us cannot begin to conjure up in our impoverished
imaginations and in this world, the 1 percent does outlandish sh*t like pay $46
million for a single Norman Rockwell
painting at auction. The painting in question, titled “Saying Grace,” sold at
auction for that eight-figure sum, the largest ever for the late Saturday
Evening Post illustrator and for any American artwork sold at auction,
according to Sotheby's. The bidding process was a fascinating showdown of two
insanely wealthy people not in the same room and not facing each other down,
but bidding back and forth on the phone for nine minutes before the gavel came
down. The buyer’s identity was predictably withheld, but whoever he or she is,
they paid nearly three times the pre-sale estimate of $15 million to $20
million. The previous record for a Rockwell work was set in 2006, when Sotheby’s
sold Rockwell's "Breaking Home Ties" for more than $15 million. The
standing record for any American artwork was set in 1999, when George Bellows'
painting "Polo Crowd" sold at Sotheby's for $27.7 million. Perhaps
the price of Rockwell’s work is simply going up, as another of his paintings, "The
Gossips," sold a few hours before “Grace” for $8.5 million and before
that, a third one, titled "Walking to Church," fetched a little more than
$3.2 million. Prior to the auction, all three had been on loan at the Norman
Rockwell Museum in his hometown, Stockbridge, Mass. Back in 1951, Rockwell was
paid a now-paltry $3,500 for
"Saying Grace," which appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening
Post’s Thanksgiving issue. The painting was voted Post readers' favorite cover
in a 1955 poll and the work was inspired by a reader who saw a Mennonite family
praying in a restaurant. Rockwell worked at the magazine for 47 years and produced
321 covers, along with many works depicting small-town America and portraits of
famous figures………
- Has it really reached this point for the NBA’s Eastern
Conference, just one month into the 2013-14 season? Sadly, the answer is yes.
The Leastern Conference is the butt of many a basketball joke after less than a
quarter of the season because it has just two teams above .500. While those two
teams are damn good squads, having 13 teams below the break-even point when
eight squads from each conference are guaranteed playoff spots doesn’t reflect
well on the state of the conference. The situation has grown so desperate that
teams from the superior Western Conference are openly talking junk about their
Eastern counterparts on Twitter. The surprising Portland Trailblazers, who actually lead the West with a 15-3 record,
tweeted a message on Wednesday wondering if it would be possible to make a
mid-season conference swap. The tweet from @trailblazers asked, “Is it too late
to join the Eastern Conference? Asking for a friend.” That message netted a
response, but not from an offended East team. The Phoenix Suns, surprising in
their own right with a 9-9 record that currently ranks 12th in the West (but
would be good for third in the East) responded, “@trailblazers We asked you to
keep that on the down low.” To which the Blazers replied, “@Suns Well played.”
The yuks might be plentiful for teams exceeding expectations like Portland and
Phoenix, but the Twitter humor likely isn’t resonating well in places like New
York City, where the Knicks and Nets are a combined 8-26 and are kept from
occupying the bottom two spots in the standings by only the relative ineptitude
of the Milwaukee Bucks. Making
the matter even more depressing for the East is the recent conversation among
pundits that it might be time for the NBA to revise its playoff format to allow
deserving teams from the West to take up more than the conference’s allotted
eight postseason spots in order to prevent sub-.500 teams from making the
tournament………
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