by Chris Bertram on January 2, 2004
Oddbins the off-licence (that’s liquor store to you guys) nearest my home recently got in a largish selection of Belgian beers. I spent a month in Belgium just over a year ago and one of the many pleasures of being there was sampling as many of “their excellent brews”:http://www.belgianstyle.com/mmguide/ as I could. There are many many different styles, but my favourite of all was a Trappist beer (made by monks) called “Orval”:http://www.orval.be/an/FS_an.html . It is not as strong as the other Trappists and has a slight aftertaste of grapefruit (no-one else tastes this!). Every Belgian beer has its own dedicated glass and Orval is no exception – it is one of the most stylish.
As well as the Trappists (“Orval”:http://www.orval.be/an/FS_an.html , “Chimay”:http://www.chimay.be/ , “Rochefort”:http://www.producteursdupaysderochefort.be/nl/prodinfos.php?iduser=anddsr&societe=ABBAYE%20NOTRE-DAME%20DE%20SAINT-REMY ,”Westmalle”:http://www.trappistwestmalle.be/ and “Westvleteren”:http://www.sintsixtus.be/eng/index2.html – the hardest to obtain) there are many distinctive styles such as the Lambics (Gueze Belle Vue) either straight or fruit flavoured, lager-style beers, British-style beers (developed for WW1 Scottish soldiers), dark ales, white beers (such as Hoegaarden) and so on. I’ve been given many different estimates of how many different ones there are (up to 2500!) Wonderful.
by Jon Mandle on January 2, 2004
Here’s the lead of a Washington Post story by Guy Gugliotta and Eric Pianin on Bush’s “Climate Leaders” program to recruit companies to voluntarily reduce greenhouse emissions –
Two years after President Bush declared he could combat global warming without mandatory controls, the administration has launched a broad array of initiatives and research, yet it has had little success in recruiting companies to voluntarily curb their greenhouse gas emissions, according to official documents, reports and interviews.
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by Chris Bertram on January 2, 2004
Readers with long memories will recall that “I commented”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/000946.html on chapter 5 of Michael Otsuka’s “Libertarianism Without Inequality”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0199243956/junius-20 nearly a month ago. Chapter 6 is very much a continuation of the theme of that earlier chapter, and addresses a central liberal-egalitarian objection to the conception of legitimate state authority that Otsuka advanced there. Below the fold are some reactions to Chapter 6: feel free to comment if you have read or are reading the book.
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