And Slaters Go Plop

Eternal life means there will inevitably come a time where it would take you a billion years just to type out how old you are.

Been busy and not all that inclined to keep the blog up to date lately so here’s a bullet list:

• Just got back from Beervana in Wellington. Some amazing beers and some stinkers (oddly, a couple of the biggest duds were also the most expensive). New Zealand is producing some really top quality beer and I was surprised to discover many companies I’d not heard of before.
• Came 3rd at the Western Brewer’s Conference for my Comte Ordinary Bitter
• Reading The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker at the moment after watching the documentary Flight from Death. Interesting but having difficulty stomaching wacky Freudian fascination with the anus, castration, Oedipus and so on. I mean, really?? Come on. But I think Becker might be onto something with the whole fight/flight reaction to the concept of death and the need to use culture, symbols, beliefs and other illusions of immortality to quell that anxiety. Threaten someone’s culture/beliefs/illusions and expect an extreme response.
• Just finished Truth, A Guide for the Perplexed by Simon Blackburn, Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels and Matter by Iain Banks
• Next up: Escape from Evil by Ernest Becker, Two Little Boys by Duncan Sarkies, The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell and The Critique of Practical Reason by Immanuel Kant
• Got a Kobo e-reader. Verdict so far: pretty good. Linux under the hood. EPub and PDF formats. 100 free books.
• Visited Steam Brewing in Ota-two-hus. Fascinating!
• Heading off to Australia on Thursday with Sal for a month of travelling around. Adelaide to Perth by train. Fly to Broome and pick up 4×4 camper. Three weeks through the Kimberley to Darwin. Going to Powderfinger’s last ever concert in Darwin. Fly to Brisbane to catch up with bro and family. And then home, home again, I like to be here when I can.
• I’ve been mostly vegetarian for the last three months or so.
• Not running enough and got the Auckland Half Marathon sneaking up on me.
• GST change causing headaches for a number of applications I’ve been involved in. Didn’t think of that at the time. Doh.
• I agree with Phil Plait about ‘dickish’ behaviour. Don’t agree with PZ’s approach. Sorry to hear about the Hitch but refreshing to hear straight talking in the face of mortality.
• That’ll do for now. Sorry for the silence but there’s not going to be much happening here for another month or so.

BIG BANG BIG BOOM – the new wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Pat Churchland talks to Nigel Warburton about eliminative materialism on my favourite philosophy podcast series.

q = (b*r)/100

The quality of your brew (out of 100) is equal to the number of batches (to a maximum of 100) you have brewed multiplied by how highly you rate it (out of 100) and divided by 100.

(Or, in plain English: “The beer you make yourself doesn’t taste nearly as good as you think it does, especially when you first start out”)

Sal and I just finished the fifth and final season of The Wire on DVD last night. As far as I know it’s never been shown on NZ television before but I rate it as the best TV drama I’ve ever watched. Totally recommended.

Read the background story and listen to the chillout song. Ahhh.

HT Boingboing.

Long before humans began to keep records we’ve been doing philosophy. It’s very much a part of what makes us who we are. We question how things work, how we got here and where we fit in the universe. And now at the height of our powers and on the shoulders of so many giants http://www.philosophy.com is a website peddling skin care products with the limp tag line of “Believe in miracles”. Is that a mass rolling of bodies in graves I hear?

I’ve just seen Boy. If you’re from New Zealand then you really ought to see it. If not, you probably won’t get the opportunity and most of it would probably be lost on you anyway.