Category: Science

Categories
Science

The Perseid metor showers are upon us

Throwback Thursday: The Meteors You’ve Been Waiting For

“Here in the Solar System, meteor showers are one of the things we take for granted on Earth. In particular, the Perseids is just starting to peak now, reaching its maximum on August 11th-12th, and remaining worth looking up for until about the 16th or so. The most reliable shower year after year, it causes spectacular streaks of light to illuminate the night sky. Over a period of many hours, it’s not uncommon for hundreds of meteors to delight skywatchers on a moonless night.”  … Read more

Basically, find the constellation Cassiopeia and look below it’s “W” shape, that’s where the meteors will be coming from over the next few nights. Peak is this next Monday (Aug 11th).

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Categories
Beer Science

Summer BBQ Tip: add beer to your marinades

Today I learned that not only does grilling meat create harmful molecules that are bad for you (and can increase the risk of developing colon cancer), but that adding beer (dark beers in particular) to meat marinades can reduce the presence of these molecules.

“The PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) created by grilling form from molecules called free radicals which, in turn, form from fat and protein in the intense heat of this type of cooking. One way of stopping PAH-formation, then, might be to apply chemicals called antioxidants that mop up free radicals. And beer is rich in these, in the shape of melanoidins, which form when barley is roasted.”

And sure enough, marinading a steak with a dark beer cut the PAHs in half.

“When cooked, unmarinated steaks had an average of 21 nanograms (billionths of a gram) of PAHs per gram of grilled meat. Those marinated in Pilsner averaged 18 nanograms. Those marinated in black beer averaged only 10 nanograms.”

So this summer, be sure to add beer to your marinades and have a “beer-becue” (har-dee-har-harr).

Categories
Beer Food Science Work

The past month (a slacker’s recap)

I have once again managed to ignore my blog, this time for a whole month. Oops. I was going to post-date a bunch of individual posts, but I’m too lazy to do that, so in true slacker form here’s a recap of the events from the past month.

July 17, 2009 – Portland International Brewfest

Like the past 3 years, several coworkers and I kicked out of the office around 3:30 PM to walk over to the Portland International Brewfest to sample some of the finest beers from around the world. It was very hot that day, so we tried to stick to the shade whilst sipping our beers. I had a couple delicious Belgian ales, German lagers, and an English ale called Combined Harvest which was light and tasted really good for the hot day that it was.

July 24-25, 2009 – Seaside, Warrenton, Fort Stevens

Kelly and I joined our good friends A & R and their two kids for a night in Seaside. They have a timeshare deal, and we got to stay in the new-ish Worldmark resort hotel right at the end of Broadway. I hadn’t been to Seaside in about 10 years, not since the hotel had been built, and it was a very nice place to stay. We went to dinner at the Goose Hollow in Seaside (which is also new since I’d last been to Seaside), and had a delicious reuben sandwich. Later, we all went swimming and hot tubbing at the hotel, and spent the night out on the balcony of our room, sipping drinks and chatting. Spent saturday doing the things you do in Seaside, like eating elephant ears, playing some skee ball and other video games at the arcade, walking down the beach, and driving bumper cars.

We left Seaside and drove to Warrenton to visit my Mom who was out at the coast the same weekend. Kelly, Mom and I spent a few hours wandering around historic Fort Stevens. I hadn’t been there in well over 10 years, and had a really fun time at the museum, exploring the forts and batteries. Loads of info here, if you’re curious.  Had dinner at a local restaurant called Bouy 9 (delicious fish & chips, btw) before driving home and back to the heat. The short vacation was a welcome break from both work and the heat.

You can see all my photos here.

July 29, 2009 – Holy fuck it’s hot!

Heatwave strikes Portland, and holy crap is it hot! I don’t like it one bit. It doesn’t get this hot in Portland very often, but the last couple weeks of July were pretty much unbearable. Fortunately my friend Snooks lent me a window-mounted AC unit, which allowed for the upstairs to be tolerable for sleeping. Glad that shit’s over. At least, I hope we don’t get much more of that nonsense.

Today

Spent my day doing yard work, washing the car, running over to Belmont Station for an assortment of English, Belgian and German beers, and finally blogging. Having a nice relaxing day around the house. As I water the lawn and grill chicken burgers, Kelly is preparing a delicious potato salad that contains loads of onions and peppers. Going to eat well tonight. Hooray!

Misc bits

Got to witness the International Space Station zip across the sky on July 24th, pretty cool, and amazing how fast that sucker moves.

My friend and coworker Icontra found this jem, (and yes, the voice work is none other than Patrick Warburton). All I can think about are delicious hamburgers now.

Categories
Entertainment Movies Science

Well darn it anyway

Yeah, I know, two posts in one night. Well, there's a good reason. Just after I finished writing the last post, I get a call from K. As part of her job at CompuHyperGlobalMegaNet (as GhostDog would say, and yeah, same place) she was invited to a VIP event tonight to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. The reason being, her employer is a sponsor of a very cool exhibit, Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination… where they have all sorts of Star Wars things on display, fun games, etc, all related to the real-life science in science-fiction.

She had called me at my work at about 4:30pm as she was on her way, saying how she'd just learned that spouses / significant others were invited to this private event (food and drink supplied). Since I'd learned this so late in the day (and had my heart set on getting some of the previously mentioned painting done) I declined and told her to have fun. Also, we'd already planned to go about a month from now, when the event would be open to the public, so I thought "eh, sounds kind of boring".

Well, I just got a call from her, she said she was having a blast, that there were all sorts of people in costume, and to check my email. I got the photo to the left from a coworker's camera-phone. Dammit! And here I was, painting the stupid fence. Argh!

Categories
News Science

Coffee & Alcohol

This morning I received an email from a coworker containing a link to this article at CNN about how coffee may reduce the liver damage that alochol causes. Sweet! Though naturally they caution that this isn’t a free ticket to drink loads more booze.