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Christmas Beer
My illustrious colleague has blogged about seasonal beers. I knew about the various October-fest driven special beers, the Halloween and pumpkin ales, the harvest lagers.
But Christmas beer? That's new to me. It's apparently a European tradition, of long-standing, traditionally made from a late barley harvest as an "October" beer, and then allowed to mature until Christmas. Christmas beer was, even in the middle ages, a matter of some local pride.
Probably the most famous of all Christmas beers is Samichlaus, from the Hürlimann brewery in Zurich, Switzerland. Named after Santa Claus himself (but pronounced pronounced Sommy-Clouss), the beer is 14 % alcohol by volume, making it one of the strongest lagers in the world. Samichlaus was the creation of the Hürlimann Brewery in Zërich, and was first commercially brewed in 1979 for the 1980 season; previously it had been made in small artisan batches using traditional methods, and used as a special seasonal gift from the brewery. Unfortunately, the brewery closed its vats in 1997, but in 2000 Schloss Eggenberg collaborated with the Hürlimann brewers to re-create the beer using the original recipe. Samichlaus is brewed once a year, using traditional natural ingredients, on the 6th of December, Saint Nicholas' day. A traditional Bavarian Doppelbock beer, Samichlaus is different in that it has a secondary, long, fermentation using traditional cold lagering for ten months. The fermenting yeast devour most of the sugar. If you can forebear drinking it, the beer keeps very well, and becomes increasingly smooth with age.
For those of us with less exotic tastes, there are Christmas beers from a variety of sources. Norway has its own Christmas beer tradition, and Belgium has SPRL Brasserie Léon Huyghe, makers of Delirium De Noël.
Closer to home, there are a variety of American micro brew Christmas beers. Anchor Steam, back in 1974, produced the first popular American Christmas beer. You can find their Christmas Ale fairly easily in bottles now, if you can't find it on tap. Part of the fun of their Christmas Ale is that it's a little different, every year. For those celebrating Hannukah, there's Jewbelation, Full Sail Brewing company in Oregon produces Full Sail Wassail, a Winter ale for the season. Or, for the pagan beer lover, Anderson Valley Brewing's Winter Solstice Seasonal Ale is available, on tap and in the bottle.
For those of you who are dedicated winter holiday beer aficionado, you can always pick up a copy of Don Russell's book, Christmas Beer: The Cheeriest, Tastiest, and Most Unusual Holiday Brews. And for the true cerevisaphiles, here's a recipe to brew your own Christmas beer.
Freezing Baked Cookies
There are many cookies that are fine when room temperature but that are absolutely heavenly if they're fresh from the oven. My first tip in terms of freezing cooked cookies is that you take them out of the oven two or three minutes before they're quite done cooking. That way, when you pop the frozen or defrosted cookies in the oven again, you're less likely to over bake them.
Make sure the cookies are completely cooled, before you wrap and freeze them. Otherwise condensation may form on the wrapper and the cookie and when you thaw them they turn soggy and rather horrible.
- Freeze separate types of cookies separately. Otherwise cookies that are meant to be soft and chewy will render cookies meant to be crisp and crunchy soft and gooey, or your ginger cookies may end up tasting faintly of peanut butter.
- Cookies with a butter or shortening base will freeze better than those without. Brownies and bar cookies tend to freeze very well, and don't need to be par-baked or re-heated, though they work well that way too.
- If the cookie is glazed, iced or frosted, wait until you reheat the cookies to decorate them according to the recipe's instructions.
- When you take the cookies out of the oven, let them sit for a minute or two then transfer them to a wire rack to cool.
- If cookies stick to the sheet, pop them back into a hot oven for a minute or two, and then transfer them to a cooling rack.
- Place completely cooled cookies in pairs, flat side/bottom side to bottom side. Wrap each pair of cookies in plastic wrap, then place them in either zip lock freezer bags, or another air-tight freezer safe container. Cookie tins, or even coffee cans work well for freezer storage.
- Label the bag or container with the date and type of cookie, and the oven temperature called for in the recipe.
- Most cookies will stay fresh in a freezer for three months. Try to freeze them in the central portion of the freezer rather than in a door (the door is not as cold).
When you get ready to use an entire container of frozen cookies, defrost them for a few hours in the refrigerator, or even over night. Don't remove the plastic wrap until the cookies are thawed, so that the condensation stays on the wrap, rather than being absorbed by the thawing cookies. If you only par-baked the cookies before freezing them or you want to serve them warm, pop them in a pre-heated oven for a few minutes at the temperature the recipe calls for.
If you only want to serve a few cookies, remove the number you want from the container or bag, and re-seal it. Let them thaw at room temperature for a half hour or so, outside of the container, but still in the plastic wrap (so they won't get soggy as they thaw). Remove the wrap and re-heat them in the pre-heated oven for ten to fifteen minutes at the temperature the recipe calls for. Keep an eye on them the first time you reheat a particular kind of cookie, so you'll know how long they need. Make sure that they are heated through, and completely cooked.
Fun With the Number 273
=== Moon Over My Family Dept. ===
The Earth and Moon move together around the Sun every 365.25 days, with the Moon revolving around the Earth every 27.32 days— called the "sidereal" month. Is there any connection between these dual circular motions?
Stunningly, the reciprocals of the Earth's and Moon's orbits correspond exactly:
1/27.32 = 0.0366, and
1/366 = 0.002732
Another way to say this is that, while
The Moon's orbit around the earth takes 27.32 days
At the same time,
The Earth's orbit around the Sun takes 10000/27.32 days
In a leap year. While you're on this number, notice that:
The diameter of the Moon measures 0.273 Earth diameters
Notice also that
The acceleration of the Moon in its path around the Earth is 0.273 cm/s²
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=== Maybe the Moon Bought the Stadium Naming Rights ===
The number for absolute zero is not arbitrary. It is based on the Celsius temperature scale, which is based upon the freezing and boiling points of water.
Absolute zero is ?273.2° C, the point at which all motion stops .... and,
Gasses expand by 1/273 of their volume with every degree on this scale.
......
Also notice that:
A human fetus spends exactly 273 days—10 sidereal months—inside the womb
The mean for female menstrual cycles is regarded to be 27.3 days. Why should the female cycle be so closely connected to the moon's orbit? Speculation used to be fairly mainstream that the moon somehow influenced the reproductive cycle, but the current scientific consensus is that this relationship of
Moon orbit x10 = 273 = Human Gestation
is nothing but coincidence.
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=== In Visual Terms, 1.273 = Square / Circle ===
The number 0.2732 has a very direct relation to the number Pi: it is the percentage by which a square is larger than a circle (of the same "diameter").
So 0.2732 can be calculated by very simple geometry alone, and in fact represents one of the simplest proportions in geometry, the circle to the square:
Inscribe a circle within a square ... 0.2732 is the simple ratio between the area of the remainder of the square after the circle has been cut out, and the area of the circle itself.
In other words, if you cut a perfect circle out of a perfect square, the "remnant" material is 27.32% the area of the circle. For a circle of diameter 2 inches inside a square whose side is 2 inches long, the ratio is (4-p)/p = 0.2732.
The earth-moon system is therefore a live-action illustration of the relationship between a circle and a square -- all of these 2732's "state" how much larger a square is than a circle, one might say.
The Earth's orbit, and the Moon's orbit, and the Moon's/Earth's diameters, and the Moon's acceleration, and the value of absolute zero, and the human pregnancy, all precisely "state" how much larger a square is than a circle.
For quick-reference documentation of the above, see New World Encyclopedia on the subject.
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=== 237 Is Popular with Other Numbers, Too ===
We might add, as editors, that:
273 is a sphenic number (the product of three prime numbers, 3, 7, and 13)
and so its Mobius function is -1.
and that
273 is a repdigit (a natural number composed of repeated digits of the same number) in base 9:
273 is notated as 333 in base 9.
As well,
273 is notated as 111 in base 16
273 is notated as DD or 13 13 in base 20
273 is notated as 77 in base 38, and
273 is notated as 33 in base 90.
273 is notated as the nicely symmetrical number 100010001 in base 2.
.............
We checked to see: did anything notable occur in the years -273 and +273 years before and after Christ's birth? Not that we can tell, no.
In the years -273 and +273 years before and after Christ's death? Well, +273 years after His death was the year that the Roman Empire declared war on Christians, for what that's worth.
.........
The area of our galaxy is 273 decillion square miles.
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=== Not Your Average Quirks List, Dept. ===
Most numbers have distinctive properties, but compare (for example) the lists found here -- particularly their entry for 273 -- to the list above for the single number 273.
Cheers,
jemanji
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images:
http://static.desktopnexus.com/wallpapers/11348-bigthumbnail.jpg
http://www.zefdamen.nl/CropCircles/Reconstructions/2002/Sompting02/sompt...
Stars of the Internet: Case File- heita3
Ganymede: Now You See It, Now You Don't
Yesterday NASA released a nifty photo of Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede, immediately before Ganymede seems to disappear behind Jupiter. Ganymede makes a complete orbit around Jupiter every seven days, but because Ganymede's orbit is tilted, from Earth's perspective, it looks as if Jupiter's moon passes in front of Jupiter, then disappears behind the "dark side" of the massive planet, only to reappear again later. Ganymede is not nearly as tiny as the image would suggest. In fact Ganymede is larger than the planet Mercury, but Jupiter is so huge that it dwarfs Ganymede, making the moon seem tiny even though it is the largest moon in the solar system, larger even than Earth's own satellite.
It's a lovely sharp image; well, actually, it's a color image that's made by combining the data from three images shot by the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 using red, green and blue filters, thus creating an image that shows both Jupiter and Ganymede in colors very close to reality. The images were taken on April 9, 2007, but the combined image is new.
Ganymede, as you can see in this image of the icy moon taken by NASA's Galileo, has had a rough life. The lighter pock-marks are craters, some of them from relatively recent impacts. Jupiter's four larger moons, referred to as the Galilean moons because the Astronomer Galileo first made note of them, are all visible from Earth with mid-range telescopes.
You'll notice the now familiar "Great Red Spot" of Jupiter's Southern Hemisphere on the upper left of the image of Jupiter. It's actually a long-running storm, one that astronomers spotted well over 300 years ago. The Spot has changed shape and size over time, as you can see from this collage of Hubble images taken between 1992 and 1999. The Spot is huge. The largest known storm in the Solar System, it has a diameter of 15,400 miles; that's roughly one-sixth of Jupiter's diameter, and close to twice the size of Earth.
NASA also released a very short video made from the same data. It shows Ganymede slipping behind Jupiter as the planet rotates. The video was made by creating frames from images taken during a two hour period on April 9, 2007.
Dr. Peter Plichta and His Book God's Secret Formula
In Carl Sagan's "Contact," Dr. Sagan describes what he personally would view as an acceptable scientific proof of the existence of a transcendent intelligence: a mathematical design element. In "Contact," the aliens reveal that after 1,000,000 digits of the number Pi, you can "grid" them (as in a Bible Code matrix" to reveal a circle. This, to Sagan, was the type of occurrence that should constitute convincing evidence of design.
................
Dr. Plichta has multiple Ph.D's and scientific credentials in chemistry, biology, physics, and mathematics, as well as major discoveries in chemistry.
In his book "God's Secret Formula," he describes a series of purported design elements in the very nature of real numbers, the very territory that Sagan suggested. Plichta's main argument comes from his "Prime Number Cross," in which he places the prime numbers on a visual matrix to draw a cross.
It is not the placement of these primes onto a 24-radius grid that is exceptional, but the properties of the number 24 (2x3x4) and properties of the prime numbers on these rays that Plichta discusses at length.
His main works have not been translated from German, but Plichta points out many other natural coincidences that he finds suggestive:
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=== Occurrences of Threes in Nature ===
We see:
1. Three dimensions of space
2. Three kinds of chemical bonds (ionic, covalent and metallic)
3. Three components of atoms (protons, neutrons and electrons)
4. Three components of DNA (sugar, base and phosphate)
5. Three states of matter (solid, liquid and gas)
6. Three aspects to time (past, present and future)
7. Three forms of life (plants, animals and humans)
8. Three races of man
9. etc.
Note that, weirdly, the speed of light is almost exactly 3 x 1010 cm/sec. This phenomenon is indeed incredibly improbable and deserves reflection.
See Plichta's English-translation book for a fuller development.
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=== Incidences of 81 ===
Plichta spends a lot of time on the number 81 and its cousin, 19 (100 = 81 + 19). A few oddities that he develops further:
There are exactly 81 stable elements
81 = 34
The reciprocal is an infinite sum of numbers: 1/81 = 0.0123456789 (10) (11)…
... the equals the number 0.0 + 0.01 + 0.002 + 0.0003 + 0.00004 ....
0.0123456789 x 81 = 1
Plichta became convinced that beneath the surface of physical, chemical and biological phenomena lay a deeper structure, composed of numbers. He is not the first to have such an idea; that pedigree goes back to Pythagoras. But he is the first to try to give it a rigorous scientific foundation.
Bear in mind that whole numbers, for most scientists, are human inventions for our own convenience, and that certainly base-10 is an anthropomorphic system. So, obviously, there could not be any designed properties about the whole numbers, such as 1, 2, 3 and 4.
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=== Numbers and Astronomy ===
The Earth and Moon move together around the Sun every 365.25 days, with the Moon revolving around the Earth every 27.32 days— called the "sidereal" month. Plichta emphasizes that the reciprocals of their orbits correspond:
1/27.32 = 0.0366 .... and .... 1/366 = 0.002732
For a long series of "coincidences" that Plichta notices with respect to the number 273, see supplementary article The Number 273.
.....................
Dr. Plichta, rather better trained in science than us, does not feign intellectual indifference to the fact that:
In a solar eclipse, the Moon’s disk is exactly the right size to cover the Sun
The Moon is about 400 times smaller than the Sun, and about 400 times closer, so that they take up almost exactly the same space in the sky. (Do you suppose this is true of Europa?)
Plichta believes that all of theoretical physics is mistaken, and quotes a Nobel Prize winner to the same effect. He's either a crank or a scientist who is getting the first glimpses at futuristic technologies. Only time will evaluate him. Cheers, jemanji ................ images: http://www.autobild.de/ir_img/59488125_ef1d65a544.jpg http://www.jainmathemagics.com/Editor/assets/webprime-number-sequence.jpg
