Hehehe…this is pretty funny. I’m not sure how anyone could dig this chick, but there are obviously plenty of people that do. It bums me out to know that there are tons of little girls out there that look up to her. Paris Hilton? If you’re a parent of a little girl that digs Paris, please do something about it…hehehe…I’m not sure what, but something.

This is a little lighter than I expected before pouring it into my chilled pint glass. Having said that, I guess it makes sense that the flavor is a little ‘lighter’ than I was hoping for…hehehe.  As IPA’s go, this one doesn’t provide the flavor that would keep me coming back, but I’d say that it’s still an enjoyable brew. Maybe this should just be called a ‘pale ale’ without the ‘india’, since it’s a good tasting brew for a pale ale, but falls short as an IPA.

For more info: Click

Peace,
~zOnk

This Image = The reason WTF was invented. Hehehe…my friend sent me this and I laughed out loud how the first thing that comes to mind when seeing this image is obviously “What The F@ck?”

On my trip up to Alaska I got to sample some of the local brews, most of which were the various flavors from Alaskan Brewing Co., but they do have a few smaller breweries that I’ve never seen for sale anywhere but there. I saw this 22oz. while at the local liquor store in Valdez. I bought some beers for the night and this one to ship home with me. The artwork on the bottle looked interesting and I was sure that I had never seen or heard of this brewery before, so it seemed like a logical choice (not to mention the wonderful letters I, P, and A on the bottle). So….after sitting in my fridge, for way too long, it’s finally time to crack this mother open and give it whirl. Here goes:
Although not the ‘boom! pow!’ that I was hoping for after traveling so many hundreds of miles to sip this, it’s still pretty damn good. It has a distinct flavor and aroma that I don’t get from other IPA’s that I’ve sampled. I can’t exactly nail the familiar smell….it’s kind of along a piney scent. Reminds me of the insane beauty of Alaska (I don’t care if that sounds cheesy…hehehe).This stuff isn’t the most intense IPA, but it’s definitely not for the light beer fan or the beer squeamish. There’s plenty of flavor packed in this, but light enough to enjoy more than one pint (or six). It only weighs in at 5.7% alcohol by volume, so it’s not the usual ‘grab you by the boo-boo’ that IPA’s are known for. This is bottled and brewed in Anchorage, Alaska by Midnight Sun Brewing Co. As the bottles’ tagline says, “Spawned in the last frontier.”
If you should happen to see this in your local beer spot, check it out, it’s worth it. Better yet, do yourself a favor and drink it on location in Alaska…the scenery mixed with good beer is pretty unbeatable.

“In The Abundance Of Beer, The Fool Is Thirsty” -Bob Marley (zOnk remix)

peace,
~zOnker.oNer

»Listening to:« »DJ Drez – Windtalker 2«»Album: “Windtalker 2″«»Hip-Hop«

Is chucking a soda can in the trash an unforgivable sin? That depends who you ask: You’ll find plenty of people on both sides of the great recycling debate, each equally convinced the other side is ill-informed. The truth is that opponents and proponents alike often rely on facts that are outdated, oversimplified or simply untrue. We tackle five of the biggest myths about recycling. For more, check out the December issue of Popular Mechanics.

1. We have to recycle because we’re running out of landfill space.
That was the rallying cry for recycling advocates back in the 1980s, when the Mobro 4000 garbage barge wandered up and down the East Coast searching for a place to dump its moldering load. It’s a bit of a red herring, though. After all, we have pretty much unlimited space to dump garbage—if we’re willing. In practice, for every town that refuses permission to build a landfill, there’s often another town eager for the revenues that a landfill site can bring.

According to the National Solid Wastes Management Association (NSWMA), the United States has about 20 years of disposal capacity left in existing landfills. There are, however, places where space is getting tight: Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, North Carolina, New Hampshire and Rhode Island all have less than five years capacity, and the northeastern part of the country in general has the least available landfill space.

These regional variations point to a different motivation for the “recycle to save landfill space” argument. The average tipping fee at landfills in the Northeast region, according to the most recent NSWMA figures, is over $70 a ton, compared to a national average of just $34. In other words, even if the scarcity of landfill space turns out not to be a strong environmental argument for recycling, there can be powerful economic incentives to reduce landfill intake.

2. The trucks that collect recycling burn more energy and produce more pollution than recycling saves.
Collecting recyclables isn’t cheap—it eats up about 50 to 60 percent of the budget of a typical curbside recycling program, according to Lori Scozzafava of the Solid Waste Association of North America. And the trucks burn gas and emit pollution as they go. That said, “You’re going to collect waste one way or another,” points out Jeff Morris, a Washington-based environmental consultant. A recycling program should allow garbage collection to become less frequent (or to use fewer trucks), offsetting the cost and energy involved. Plus, new truck designs can collect both recycling and garbage (at different times), avoiding the huge capital expense of an extra fleet. They can also self-dump specially designed bins, saving time and manpower.

But all that turns out to be pretty much irrelevant to the question of whether recycling makes environmental sense. Scientists have conducted hundreds of “life-cycle analyses” to compare recycling with other options like landfill and incineration, following the entire chain of events from the manufacture of a product (using either virgin or recycled materials) to its disposal. The dominant factor in virtually every case is the enormous amount of energy required to turn raw materials into metals and plastics compared to the energy needed to reprocess products that already exist.

A study by Morris found that it takes 10.4 million Btu to manufacture products from a ton of recyclables, compared to 23.3 million Btu for virgin materials. In contrast, the total energy for collecting, hauling and processing a ton of recyclables adds up to just 0.9 million Btu. The bottom line: We don’t need to worry that recycling trucks are doing more harm than good.
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