bdolan's posterous

Boston Beer Co's Utopias Illegal in 13 States

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/11/30/utopias_pushes_new_limits_on_extreme_beer/

The maker of Samuel Adams beer has released an updated version of its biennial beer Utopias -- now the highest alcohol content beer on the market. At 27 percent alcohol by volume and $150 a bottle, the limited release of the brandy-colored Utopias comes as more brewers take advantage of improvements in science to boost potency and enhance taste.

"Just part of trying to push the envelope," said Jim Koch, founder and owner of the Boston Beer Co. the maker of Sam Adams. "I'm pushing it beyond what the laws of these 13 states ever contemplated when they passed those laws decades ago."

3d printing with Shrinkydinks

http://www.technologyreview.com/TR35/Profile.aspx?Cand=T&TRID=764

Racking her brain for a quick-and-dirty way to make microfluidic devices, Khine remembered her favorite childhood toy: Shrinky Dinks, large sheets of thin plastic that can be colored with paint or ink and then shrunk in a hot oven. "I thought if I could print out the [designs] at a certain resolution and then make them shrink, I could make channels the right size for micro­fluidics," she says.

To test her idea, she whipped up a channel design in AutoCAD, printed it out on Shrinky Dink material using a laser printer, and stuck the result in a toaster oven. As the plastic shrank, the ink particles on its surface clumped together, forming tiny ridges. That was exactly the effect Khine wanted. When she poured a flexible polymer known as PDMS onto the surface of the cooled Shrinky Dink, the ink ridges created tiny channels in the surface of the polymer as it hardened. She pulled the PDMS away from the Shrinky Dink mold, and voilà: a finished microfluidic device that cost less than a fast-food meal.

Focusing on the Ordinary

From http://falkenblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/focus-on-ordinary.html

"A common idea is that outliers are more important than averages, as this is the them of Taleb's Black Swan, or Gladwell's Outliers. Predicting one great outlier is worth predicting many ordinary outcomes, so on one hand it seems like an optimal focus. Also, the outliers should highlight the essence of something. A stock that has risen 10 fold, or a great athlete, supposedly lays bare the essence of its greatness.

But I think we forget how biased our view is on exceptional events and people. We watch sports and learn about Usain Bolt, a most unusual man. Or my kids read the Guiness Book of World Records, containing stories about 1200 lb men and giant frogs. News is biased towards the exceptional, it takes no effort to emphasize it. In fact, it takes effort to see the ordinary. It's too bad people think of heroes as those who, for a brief moment, offered their life in some battle or harrowing situation, compared to the much more common heroism of providing one's family, not complaining, and being charitable to friends and neighbors, for decades."