Carlsberg isn’t the best beer in the world, but it’s not bad. Well, some of it is bad. I had a Feldschlösschen out of a vending machine in Switzerland once that tasted like skunk sweat. Carlsberg makes me think of football (soccer), maybe because of Liverpool, maybe because they were a sponsor of Euro 2008, I dunno. Carlsberg also make me think of strippers. We saw a guy at the White House in Auckland that may or may not have been Jørgen Buhl Rasmussen, wearing a white Liverpool kit, lining the runway with dollar bills. Good times.

Some folks missing out on good times are the warehouse workers and drivers for Carlsberg. As a rather nasty April Fool’s prank, management mandated that these guys couldn’t drink on the job any longer (on the company’s øre, no less). Unfortunately, it was no prank. Beers were removed from refrigerators all around the Copenhagen factory, forcing workers to drink in the canteen, and then only at lunch. Gasp! What’s a hardworking Dane to do? Strike, that’s what. In a big “eff this noise” to Carlsberg, some 800 employees walked off the job in protest over the new policy. Shipments have been suspended and the dispute has been taken up by the trade union. All work and no beer make Lars something something…

Source

I don’t know what the motivation behind this article is, but here’s my favorite passage:

“… what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat.”
“Omigod. Singing meat.”

Meat.

Meat, by Terry Bisson

As a single person, have you ever found yourself saying “It’s impossible to find a good [man, woman] anymore”? You may have been closer than you thought.

A PhD student at the University of Warwick in the UK developed an interesting hypothesis on the matter. He repurposed Drake’s equation on the number of highly evolved civilizations in our galaxy to estimate how many potential girlfriends there were for him in the London area. His guess: 26.

Well, with about 7.6 million Londoners… I wish him luck.

Read his paper “Why I don’t have a girlfriend: An application of the Drake Equation to love in the UK”

via Salon

Everyone thinks of moving to a nicer neighborhood. In the early 1970’s, Gerard O’Neill considered moving to the raddest neighborhood. He argued for the colonization of space. In the summer of 1975, he led a study on space habitats at the NASA Ames Research Center. Here’s a little of what they came up with:

Art

More on space settlements

Space Habitat Design contest for secondary schoolers

Further reading: O’Neill, Gerard K. (September 1974). “The Colonization of Space”. Physics Today 27 (9): 32–40. ISSN 0031-9228

If you’ve ever been to Australia or New Zealand, or have aussie or kiwi friends, chances are you’ve heard of Tim Tam cookies. Excuse me, bickies. You probably also know, they’re effing fantastic. For years, America has been unjustly deprived of these treats.

Tim Tams

No longer, my friends. It has recently come to my attention that Tim Tams may now be available at your local grocer. I bought some today at Vons! A little research revealed that they are also for sale at Target. The strange news? They’re being treated as a seasonal item, available October to March. Nation, I urge you to seek out Tim Tams at a retailer near you and purchase regularly. You will not be disappointed.

For coffee break fun, try out the Tim Tam Slam.