This right here. This link. This is the single most important link you ever need to have.

The Beer Judge Certification Program lists 100 styles with defined ranges of alcohol by volume (ABV), bitterness (measured in IBUs, or International Bittering Units), and color (measured using SRM, or Standard Reference Method).

... and that link up there will take you to a mapping of every beer you could be consuming.

... oh - and talking of the other Beer Maps - I bet if you did this walk, the chances are that many of these delights could be sampled on route.

Enjoy.

If you see this ... you can ignore it.

I still don't get why Billy Bush was so bad that he was essentially thrown off TV - but Trump is now going to be President. But that aside ... though #Trumpet thinks he is safe - I am guessing he isn't and that someone is eventually going to break ranks - for the good of the country.

Read All About It.

PostScript - there is an expression in England that talks about welshing on somebody. It is a derogatory term about not paying your debts - and seems to come from a feeling that us English used to have abou the Welsh.

And then there are Leeks ... that are quintessentially Welsh.

See where I am going?

I have not owned a printer for the better part of 4 years. In that time I have had to actually print something once - for the Blue Cross/BlueShield. (I know - right !). Everything else that people think I print and sign, is actually done through my iPad using EMail, DropBox and Sign My Pad.

Still - if you do still enjoy paper - here's a deal.

REDUCED to $49 - from $149. Plus ink cartridges - of course. Oh - and paper. Oh - and you can only print wherever your printer is.

Sign My Pad costs $3.99.

#JustSayin

I was fixing a bug in OmniOutliner where it wouldn't open a file with an uppercase .OPML suffix. I did some digging, and the fix was to register the app as handling the com.apple.news.opml file type.

... Brent Simmons writing on his blog about OPML.

In the short piece, he references Dave Winer, the inventor of OPML. Why is this interesting?

Well I use Omni Outliner and I use some of Dave Winer's software - including this blog that you are now reading.

OPML is used for aspects of this site and the river site I run here.

Time to do some investigation because I rarely find OPML files created by OmniOutliner play happily with Dave's world. I have always put it down to operator (that would me) error. Now, I am not so sure.

Fascinating read from NPR. Bottom line - you do not have to be rich to sponsor the arts. Beth Morrison is one of Opera's biggest patrons and does it all out of a two bedroom flat in Brooklyn.

Read All About It.

The drama has some investors predicting more disasters. “What if Theranos is the canary in the coal mine?” says Roger McNamee, a 40-year VC veteran and managing director at Elevation Partners. “Everyone is looking at Theranos as an outlier. We may discover it’s not an outlier at all.” That would be bad news, because without trust, the tech industry’s intertwined ecosystem of money, products, and people can’t function. Investors may find the full version of the old proverb is more accurate: “One bad apple spoils the whole barrel.”

Read All About It. Because the main story is that Theranos might just be the tip of the iceberg.

BTW - The 'Theranos' that Roger refers to ... that's the Theranos that laid off 155 of its remaining 375 staff yesterday - after laying 340 of 790 just three months ago. 

However you look at it 220 people out of 790 just three months ago is a 72% staff reduction.

There is a lot of noise about the inadequacy of Twitter, that it is stagnant, lacks innovation and does nothing that actually improves life. In fact, there seem to be an increasing number of people leaving for just that reason. Here's another one. Lindy West has left because it is "unusable for anyone but trolls, robots and dictators".

Trump uses his Twitter account to set hate mobs on private citizens, attempt to silence journalists who write unfavourably about him, lie to the American people and bulldoze complex diplomatic relationships with other world powers. I quit Twitter because it feels unconscionable to be a part of it – to generate revenue for it, participate in its profoundly broken culture and lend my name to its legitimacy. Twitter is home to a wealth of fantastic anti-Trump organising, as well, but I’m personally weary of feeling hostage to a platform that has treated me and the people I care about so poorly. We can do good work elsewhere.

You might guess that I am a big fan of this idea - it's a kick starter project for micro-blogging and I am watching with interest.

Sometime this year - something has to happen with Twitter. If it goes away - then something needs to replace it. If it doesn't go away - it is still going to change.

Me - I have my Wordpress Blogs, Medium, Several Twitter Accounts and, and, and ... no Facebook - although I might even reverse that this year to grow my reach.

And of course, I have this platform that emanates from the mind of Dave Winer ...

So, with all of those places for me to provide content - not sure I have the capacity for another ... but we will see.

I just hope it is not another App.net.

Another place to track some outpourings of yours truly and my friend Graham. 

We are intending to develop a kind of 'Siskel and Ebert' approach to stuff we find and have an opinion on. And with that said, I am guessing that there will be many many many posts !!

And Another Thing is it's name - and in so many ways - this says it all ....

2017 is upon us and while this piece of writing is not about new years resolution, it is an excellent reminder to clean up our lives at least a little, if not a lot. 

Not only that, but remember what is important - and forget that which isn't. Thank you Dave.

I think I figured it out. He knew there would be a 45 minute wait, and decided to let me do the waiting. That's what an ass Dick is.

In remarks to reporters upon entering a New Year’s Eve celebration at his Mar-a-Lago estate on Saturday night, Trump warned against being quick to pin the blame on Russia for the hacking of US emails.

“I just want them to be sure, because it’s a pretty serious charge,” he said. “And if you look at the weapons of mass destruction, that was a disaster, and they were wrong.”

I remain completely stumped why the media continues to quote these absurd words without reminding the reader that The WMD fiasco was all about politics and not about intelligence. And now, to support his politics he is attempting to did credit The Intelligence Services.

Take a read of this ... it is very clear. The intelligence communities were not convinced of the claims but were railroaded into submission by Bliar, Bush and their cronies - culminating in that shameful spectacle at the UN by Colin Powell.

So please - if we are serious about holding Trump accountable - then don’t just repeat his words - but go on to point out the falsehoods he will always utter if they suit his purpose.

My thanks to my buddy Louis for this link .... a long story, full of detail and exposure of the coverups around The Trump Foundation .... love this line ...

Together, we had discovered Trump doing exactly what the law said he couldn’t do: using his charity’s money to decorate his resort.
A Trump spokesman later offered the explanation that the resort was actually doing the foundation a favor, by storing its art free of charge. Tax experts were not impressed by this reasoning.

Read All About it. (David Fahrenthold of The Washington Post) who at one point was told by Trump that ...

“You know, you’re a nasty guy,” he said. “You’re really a nasty guy.”

That's good enough for me to read more of David in 2017.

.. and that's just your house!

No crime had been committed in the Sourovelises’ house, but the title of the case against them was Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. 12011 Ferndale St. Somehow, a crime had been committed by the house. In civil forfeiture, it suffices that property is suspected of having been involved in a crime. Once seized, the property’s owners bear the burden of proving their property’s innocence. “Sentence first — verdict afterwards,” says the queen in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”

Read All About it - Courtesy of George Will

Oh - and that is the same Jeff Sessions who is now hiding his past of being deemed too racist to be a federal judge

“He left out major details from his years as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Alabama, from 1981 to 1993; as attorney general of Alabama, from 1995 to 1997; and as a first-term U.S. senator, from 1997 to 2002. The gaps encompass the time, for example, when Sessions was nominated to be a federal judge in 1986 ― and then rejected after being deemed too racist.”

To succeed, House of Cards has to be wayyy over-the-top compared to the reality of Washington. 

... David Frier

... and of course - that is why they are considering cancelling House of Cards. The excellent script writers just can't beat the wackiness of The Trump Reality show that we will call the US Presidency

• for the next 4 years
• until he is indicted
• unless something else happens

Of course, it might be just a rumour .... who knows?

... that you

1] Can never sell or retire.
2] Can have no more than 10 clients at any time.
3] Will never write unpaid written proposals longer than one page.
4] Cannot sell or track time.
5] Must always say what you are thinking to clients and prospects.

What a great list - provided by my erstwhile colleague and friend David Airey.

Read All About it.

Well - you were probably wondering anyway - right? Now it is official.

In the just released EIP report, North Carolina’s overall electoral integrity score of 58/100 for the 2016 election places us alongside authoritarian states and pseudo-democracies like Cuba, Indonesia and Sierra Leone. If it were a nation state, North Carolina would rank right in the middle of the global league table – a deeply flawed, partly-free, democracy that is only slightly ahead of the failed democracies that constitute much of the developing world.

I read something the other day about how the USA's President-Elect actually has no shame. Adding the North Carolinian Republican State elected officials into that category.

Read All About It. 

More than seven-in-ten (73%) say that Jesus was born to a virgin and 81% believe he was laid in a manger. And similar shares say that wise men, guided by a star, brought Jesus gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh (75%) and that an angel of the Lord appeared to shepherds to announce the birth of Jesus (74%). Nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults (65%) believe that all four of these things actually happened, while 14% say none of them happened.

Good grief.

This just in from Pew Research.