No that’s not a typo. Today’s Friday frivolity is a nice mix of drinking and math. Remember people, don’t try to figure out the quadratic formula while operating heavy machinery. Once you start deriving, it’s hard to stop. I assume this will resonate with the illiterate and math-challenged among the neo-prohibitionists.
It’s now being widely reported, including by Business Insider, that at the Masters at Augusta National earlier today golfer Tiger Woods on the third hole drove his ball into a cup of beer held by someone along the fairway watching the golf tournament. Apparently there’s no picture or video because inexplicably one of golf’s most famous events is not being televised.
I came across this cartoon by Bill Coleman for his strip Salty Dog beer comics that he apparently did in 2007, presumably shortly after Michael passed away, as tribute, and so I saved it to run on Michael’s birthday today. Enjoy.
Today’s infographic is a funny one, and comes from the Huntsville Beer Week, which took place in Alabama last October. The local paper created a fun poster for the event, entitled Funky Brewers, which anthropomorphized various styles of beer, giving them unique personalities that corresponded to the character of their flavors. It was created by the staff of the Huntsville Times and illustrated by Bethany Bickley, and the whole process is explained in Brewing up something special for the weekly entertainment tab in Huntsville, Ala. at the website of the American Copy Editors Society. To fully appreciate the humor, not all of which works, you really need to see it full size.
Click here to see the poster full size.
Today is my 54th birthday, and even though it’s still early in the day, I’ve already been overwhelmed by an embarrassment of riches from well-wishers sending me notes via e-mail, Twitter and Facebook. My sincere thanks to one and all. As it’s usually me posting embarrassing photos of friends and colleagues, for the fifth year in a row, here’s some more howlers of me from over the years.
An early studio portrait.
Motorcycles: just one of my youthful indiscretions that prevented me from seeking political office later in life.
If I cut my hair short, it doesn’t look much different than this today.
This is an Easter outfit from when I was maybe nine or ten.
And this is the same outfit, which looks positively restrained in comparison to my Mother and my Grandmother’s Easter outfits.
Ready to party, look out ladies.
My first band, we were rockin’ out.
Probably from around junior high or early high school. I love the shiny shirt, straight out of That 70s Show.
The world of a teenager … circa 1977.
There’s many more where these came from, for a good laugh just check out the photos from the last four years at Beer Birthday Again: Jay Brooks, Beer Birthday: Jay Brooks, Beer Birthday: J (Yes, Embarrasing Myself This Time) and Beer Birthday Overkill, from 2009, when I posted a bunch encompassing my first 50 years on planet beer. Oh, and thanks once again to everybody for the generous birthday wishes.
It’s February, and that means it’s time for the 11th annual Strong Beer Month, once again with six new extreme beers each at 21st Amendment and Magnolia throughout the month. Try them all, and you get to keep the commemorative logo glass. Just collect all 12 punches in your Strong Beer Month ticket before the beer’s all gone.
Here’s the beer for this year:
This year’s theme is the 1969 album “The Band” featuring Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, John Simon, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson and Richard Manuel, and while I know the names, I couldn’t pick most of them out in a line-up, so I’m not sure who’s playing who this year.
And here’s the back cover, too:
If you’ve ever been to the loft that overlooks the Lagunitas Brewery, you’ve probably seen this orange couch. I’ve sat in it on numerous occasions. As I remember it, it’s a pretty comfy sofa, and you sink right into it.
But I guess I’ll have to travel to Chicago if I want to sit on it again. Check out its journey in this humorous video from Lagunitas.
While I had a logic class in college, and dabbled in debate, I’ve probably forgotten more than I ever learned. But I still love the notion of breaking down the thought process. My son, who’s 11 and autistic, often has trouble understanding humor. As a result, I increasingly find myself trying to explain the punchline of a joke — why it’s funny — and I’ll break it down for him. What invariably happens, of course, is that in that process, the joke is stripped of its humor and is no longer funny. For some reason, that never deters me. I’ve always had a thing for jokes and thinking about why they’re funny. If I wasn’t so damn shy I would have loved to have tried my hand at stand-up comedy back when I was a younger man. I think that’s why I loved The Aristocrats so much. Ninety minutes breaking down and re-telling one joke. What’s not to love?
So check out the comic strip below. It’s mildly amusing, at least to me. You most likely won’t laugh out loud, but you may smile, at least. But from the point of view of logic, it’s also quite correct, and instructional. It was originally posted by Spiked Math Comics, who admits he doesn’t know the strip’s original creator.
But here’s where it veers headlong into geekdom. It was picked up by a Danish University linguistics student, Emil Kirkegaard, who posted Three Logicians Walk Into a Bar: A Formal Explanation, a breakdown and analysis of the joke, complete with formulas, and explanation of the logic principles behind it.
Here’s one expressing the root problem: E↔(Wa∧Wb∧Wc)
The whole explanation is just as funny as the original strip, to me at least, in its own right and certainly does explain the joke, although if you didn’t think it was funny to begin with, this probably isn’t going to help. But us geeks have to stick together, no matter what geekworld we belong to.
Good for a quick chuckle. What brewers do, from different perspectives.
Click here to see it full size.
In case you didn’t see this, it’s been up since last November, but it’s pretty funny, and mesmerizing to watch, especially from the laziness of your own couch or office chair. The video is simply workers at a beer distributor in Romania sorting the cases on mixed pallets as the come into the warehouse. I”m not quite sure why it’s called “Sorting Cases of Beer Like a Boss,” I think I’d call it “Sorting Cases Like It’s Friday Afternoon Minutes Before Quitting Time.” Or maybe happy hour was about to start?