Brian Dusablon

Khan has no training or experience in teaching, and his videos are relatively crude by the standards of online course material produced by traditional educational publishers. They consist almost exclusively of Khan explaining things in conversational English while doing the equivalent of writing on a blackboard, which he does without benefit of a script or even a second take.

“I teach the way I wish I had been taught,” said Khan…

- Steven Pearlstein: Mark them tardy to the revolution – The Washington Post

The rapture has been delayed more than the opening of the Spider-Man musical…Now that the Rapture didn’t happen again, it’s just a matter of a few minutes of Googling to figure out the real date of the Rapture. Tip: Pick May 21st, 2111 so you only have to change one number on all your signs.

Stop Believing In Fake Bullshit.

- Gawker

And, life goes on. Think I’ll have a beer.

Last Thursday night I attended a special Chimay dinner at The Tasting Room in Houston. It was one of the dinners listed on the Texas Beerfest website and I knew it was the one I wanted to attend.

The back room at the restaurant was very nice – a large table, surrounded by a towering wine library. The best part of the room is that it is soundproofed. Once the heavy doors were closed, it was as quiet as a library in there, which was wonderful as we listened to Bobo the Brand Ambassador narrate a wonderful history of the Trappist monks and their fine beers.

You can ready more about Trappist beers on the Chimay website and on Wikipedia, but here’s a quick history:

• There are only seven Trappist beers in the world.
• To be considered a Trappist beer, it must be brewed by Trappist Monks inside the walls of the monestary.
• 90% of revenue is used to serve the community.
• With ten Trappist monestaries in the United States, we’re likely to have the first American Trappist beer sometime in the next decade.
• The monks mostly drink the Red Label, which they refer to as liquid bread. It is hearty enough to live on.

We started the evening with the Chimay White, a Tripel. It was refreshing and a nice pairing with the first course of our meal, which consisted of mussels and soda bread.

Next up was the Red Label, a Dubbel, paired with a wonderful plate of fried green tomatoes with a creamy crawfish topping. I’m not a huge fan of fried green tomatoes, but these crawfish were wonderful, and it was a very nice combination. I’ll be trying this one at home.

Finally, the blue label special reserve with braised pork belly and butter polenta. Wow. The pork fell apart when touched with a fork, and tasted amazing. If you ever visit the Tasting Room, and this is on the menu, go for it! Of course, the Chimay Blue is my favorite, and it was very well matched with the pork belly.

The dinner was scheduled from 7-9pm, but we didn’t leave until 11. There were two buckets of Chimay bottles along the window to be split amongst twelve of us. When we finished that stock, more were ordered from the back. We literally cleaned them out of the Blue Label while enjoying more tales from Bobo and his history of beer.

I received some wonderful insight into the world of quality beer and the way it is distributed here in the States. I also learned about several other beers I’m anxious to try, recommended by both guests and our gracious host. Bobo was a quite funny and very knowledgeable, and I look forward to seeing him again soon, in Austin or back here in Houston.

Thanks again to Texas Beerfest for spreading the word. I had a wonderful evening.

Oh, and as a bonus, I also came away with these treasures:

• Two 8 oz Chimay glasses
• One 12 oz Chimay glass
• One Chimay beer tin.

Cheers!

Along with the new MacBook Pros, Apple had some news about Mac OS X Lion, today. The biggest news for me, other than that they inexplicably don’t come standard with SSD, was that Lion Server is part of the regular package. This is awesome.

What intrigued me the most about Lion Server is this tidbit:

Profile Manager Profile Manager delivers simple, profile-based setup and management for Mac OS X Lion, iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices. It also integrates with your existing directory services and delivers automatic over-the-air profile updates using the Apple Push Notification service.

I might be reading too much between the lines, but is there hope for profiles on iOS devices? Oh how I would love to be able to manage multiple profiles on our iPad(s), and do it all from my Mac Mini hub.

The food industry is quickly ramping up the options, offering milks derived from soybeans, rice, coconut, hazelnuts and even hemp. The sales growth follows decades of slow, steady decline in consumption of cow’s milk in the U.S.

Move Over, Cow

My daughter has a mild dairy allergy. We’ve had soy and/or almond milk in the house for quite some time now. I still enjoy a nice cold glass of 1% cow milk with dinner or a cookie, but we’ve considerably decreased our consumption, following the trends described in this article.

I would definitely try some hemp milk.