Photo above is mine. Below is from a Facebook page, Amazing Dogs and Far Side (bottom). The original creator is noted on the cartoon.
Dog Humor Again
Category: Non-Leonberger Topics
Other topics not necessarily related to Bronco, Leonbergers or dogs.
IPA
The India Pale Ale, or IPA, is a very popular beer style, at least among beer connoisseurs. It is the beer style that I drink the most. The IPA is a type of Ale (fermented at warm temperatures, unlike, for example, lagers). It is typically a Pale Ale (exceptions are black IPAs). It was invented in England in the early 1800’s and became popular for exportation to India. It is characterized by its higher content of hops and the level of alcohol is often higher as well. More hops and more alcohol made it easier to preserve the beer for the trip to India.
The aroma of the IPA is often floral, piney, and fruity, and it is less malty. If the flavor has fruity notes, it comes from the hops. The color can be light yellow, pale golden, reddish amber, brown or black. Just like lagers can be pale golden as well as black, so can IPAs, which combined with the fact that the beer advocate count 120 beer styles, is a good reminder that a broad classification of beers based on only color is not very helpful.
I tried to find out what share of the beer market IPAs have in the United States. I could not find that number, but I found out that in 2021 craft beer share of the American beer market was 26.8% and out of that IPAs share of the craft beer market was at least 40% (these two numbers according to statista), or 46% according to one source, which make the IPAs share of the American beer market at least 12.3%. It is probably closer to 20% since craft breweries aren’t the only ones brewing IPAs. I can add that craft beer is beer that is not mass produced, or not owned by large conglomerates. Examples are microbreweries and brewpubs.
Perhaps those among you who are Americans and were around in the 80’s remember the bitter beer face commercials. At that time beer was supposed to taste as little as possible. Bitter beer was to be avoided according to many. The IPAs have reversed that trend by making IPAs intentionally bitter, more bitter, and oh my golly super bitter having 100+ IBU. IBU stands for International Bitterness Units and brewers of IPAs often brag about the IBU, the more bitter the better. A public poll showed that more people prefer bitter beer over non-bitter beer. Jabberwocky an IPA from Lone Pint below feature 117 IBU. Beyond 100-120 IBU the IBU scale begins to lose its meaning according to Wikipedia.
The beer advocate divides the IPA style into American IPA (or Westcoast), Imperial IPA, New England IPA, Black IPA, Belgian IPA, English IPA, Brut IPA, and Milkshake IPA. The American IPA or Westcoast IPA is the most popular of the substyles and the most bitter. Imperial IPA is not really a substyle but just an indicator that it has more of everything including alcohol. The 120 minute IPA from Dogfish Head Brewery, is a very popular Imperial IPA with an ABV of 18%, IBU is 120. It is a bit sweet, very bitter in a good way, and this hides the alcohol, which is a bit dangerous.
Finally, miscellaneous IPA photos.
Dog Humor
Enjoy some dog humor I picked from FB
Beer and Fruitiness
I wanted to write a post about craft beer, but I realized that putting everything I wanted to say about craft beer into one post would make it a very long post. I am starting with a post about fruity beers, craft beers or otherwise.
First a word about Lager beer. Lager beer is a relatively recent invention that originated in Bavaria. Lager beers use a special kind of yeast for the fermentation process, it is typically bottom fermented, and fermented and conditioned in cool temperatures, unlike other beer styles. Lager beers can be of many colors, pale, amber, dark, even black such as Schwarzbier. The Pale Lager originated in Pilsen in Bohemia (Western Czech Republic) in the mid-19th century. The pale lager has become the world’s most common beer style and bland tasting mass-produced pale lager beers dominate the market. In countries that are not traditional beer countries such as France, Italy, China, Japan and South America, the bland pale lager is very dominant. I’ve come across many people who think that the more tasteless the pale lager is, the better beer it is (Corona).
Many people believe that beer is the same thing as pale lagers. However, the beer advocate counted 120 beer styles (so far). I can add that some mass-produced American pale lagers, such as Budweiser, contain adjuncts, such as rice and maize, which is prohibited by the German Reinheitsgebot tradition. The Reinheitsgebot tradition states that the only ingredients allowed in beer are water, malt, hops, and yeast and for bottom fermented beer (lager) the malt must be malted barley only. Therefore, what many people think of as beer, well, it’s complicated.
Beers with fruity flavors
Pale lager beers aren’t associated with fruity flavors, which can lead to the incorrect impression that beer with fruity flavors isn’t real beer. However, beers with fruity flavors have a very long history, and many fruity beers, perhaps surprisingly to some, follow the German Reinheitsgebot tradition. In addition, many beers with fruity flavors are among the most celebrated beers in the world. There are many fruit Lambics (Belgium) that are sold for several hundred dollars per bottle. There are a number of ways to add fruit flavors to beer.
- Hops is a flower that is used as a flavoring and stability agent in beer. It has been used since at least the 9th century and is allowed/part of the Reinheitsgebot tradition. There are at least 147 hop varieties in the world, many of them having fruity flavors.
- The fermentation process frequently generates esters (in addition to alcohol), a compound responsible for the fruity aromas and flavors in fruit. The amount of fruitiness that you get depends on the yeast and the grain used. For example, German and Belgian wheat beers often have more or less prominent notes of banana or pear due to an ester called Isoamyl acetate, also known as isopentyl acetate. Belgian lambics (not fruit lambics), gueuze, red flanders, and oud bruin beer styles has tart and very fruity flavors without any fruit or fruit juice being added.
- The German Berliner Weisse, a wheat beer, gets its fruity and tart flavor from a bacterium. Traditionally no fruit is added. However, now a day it is very common to add fruit or fruit syrup to enhance the fruit flavor.
- Sometimes fruity flavors can to some degree be added by aging the beer in, for example, wine barrels, adding notes of wine or grapes.
- Naturally you can also add fruit, or fruit juice, to the fermentation process. This is not in accordance with the German Reinheitsgebot tradition but perfectly acceptable among beer connoisseurs. Many of the highest rated beers in the world are so called fruit lambics that have added fruit.
- There are other ways to add fruit flavors in beer but above are four very common ones.
Below are some photos of beers with fruit flavors
Speak 25 Languages in One Hour
I’ve got a number of hobbies, one of them being learning French. Back in December I took and passed the DELF / CEFR B1 level language test in French. The CEFR is a European standard for assessing an individual’s language proficiency that is being adopted around the world. It includes all European languages as well as other languages. The A1 & A2 tests are for beginners with A2 being more challenging. The B1 and B2 tests are for independent speakers, meaning you can get around without help, listening to the news, having conversations, etc. C1 & C2 are advanced levels, like native speakers and experts. If you immigrate to France, you need to pass the B1 test to become a citizen. Most countries do not have such a language requirement for citizenship. The A1, A2, B1, B2 tests (and maybe C1 & C2) consist of four parts but the different tests have different difficulty levels.
- Oral comprehension: Listening to recordings like a conversation or a radio broadcast and answering questions about what was said.
- Reading comprehension: Reading articles and answering questions
- Writing: Such as writing an essay, and for A1 it is just filling out a form or writing a 40+ word post card
- Oral production: Participating in conversations and doing presentations on topics decided on at the exam.
To pass the test you need 50 out of 100. As mentioned, the test is designed to assess your level. It is not like a test you take to get a grade at school. Therefore, if you do what is expected of you at the B1 level you may get 50-60 points and more if you can do more. If you get 80+ on the B1 test, then you probably should have taken the B2 test. There are no A, B, C, D or 1,2,3,4,5 grades.
There are a couple of things that come to mind regarding these tests.
Learn to Speak 25 languages in one hour!
Yesterday I saw an advertisement on Facebook for the Pimsleur approach that stated, “start speaking a new language after just one lesson”. Well, I used the Pimsleur approach for French for a short while and I remember the first half an hour lesson. You learned to repeat one short sentence. That’s not speaking a new language in my opinion. The advertisement sounded like there should be more to it. I should say I think the Pimsleur approach is a good approach. It is the ad I have a problem with. I’ve seen other language program commercials stating that you will become fluent in 24 hours, or become conversant right away, and many other ads that are just BS.
There are some language geniuses but most of us need a lot of practice to learn a second language regardless of method. There is no way around the fact that you need to know a few thousand words, internalize sentence structure and grammar, etc., before you can be fluent. I think one reason these language companies get away with unrealistic promises is that many people expect ads to be BS and another that many language learners greatly overestimate their proficiency. These universally accepted tests are great for assessing true proficiency.
When our younger son (pictured above) was 6-7 years old my wife used to play a song in the car that featured Hello and Goodbye in 25 languages, and he learned that song. One day I was having a conversation with a waiter at a restaurant who noticed that I had an accent. He was curious about my native language Swedish. That’s when my son told him “I speak 25 languages”. So, the waiter started asking him questions about how to say hello and goodbye in the various languages he claimed to speak, and he knew. So, the waiter asked me, “does he really speak 25 languages?”. I said, well that’s what he says. Perhaps, the language companies could put this song in the first lesson and then claim, not entirely incorrectly, that with their method you’ll speak 25 languages in one hour.
Proficiency assessment for other subjects
I sometimes wonder if rather than assigning grades to students it would be more practical to allow people to attain certain levels in one or more fields that they are interested in. Naturally, people could reach their levels any way they like, and not necessarily through the university system. Considering the many failures of modern universities, extremely high tuition, student loan issues, grade inflation, crazy partying and drugs, failures to protect girls from sexual assault, political indoctrination, antisemitism on campuses, fewer people going to college, parents losing faith in universities (including myself), and the list goes on, maybe it is time for something new. What should replace it I don’t know. Perhaps assessing proficiency levels instead of class grades could be part of it.
Robotics Research
Someone suggested that I write a little bit about my background in Robotics and the fact that I did a PhD in Robotics (Department of Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics). My thesis involved the emulation of basic animal behavior such as reflexes and fixed action patterns, as well as tree-search based artificial intelligence. I used neural networks in other contexts, but not for my PhD research. It also involved quite a bit of non-linear robot system control and the study of chaotic systems. I implemented my research on many kinds of robots but the robot I used the most was the 7-degrees of freedom Robotics Research Corporation Robot pictured below.
It looks messy in the picture, and I should probably explain. I had hung a few boxes from the ceiling and placed a coatrack in front of the robot. There is also another robot just outside the picture to the left. I placed a sonar sensor, or perhaps more correctly eco-location equipment on the tip of the robot. I used the sonar/eco-location to create a 3D map of the robot’s surroundings. Since the sonar-sensor could not see everything at once I used the arm of the robot to search and investigate the surroundings, including discovering that the boxes were open on one side. The motion of the robot was guided by the sonar and was not directly programmed by me. The robot was able to avoid colliding with the objects, including the other robot as it was moving. I moved objects around and added clothes and hats to the coatrack to make it harder. It looked like an animal figuring out what was around it. This was in 1993.
Maybe I should explain what 7-degrees of freedom mean. One degree of freedom could be a rotation (around a joint) or a translation. To arbitrarily position an object in space you need at least three degrees of freedom. To arbitrarily orient an object in space you need an additional three degrees of freedom. So, to arbitrarily position and orient a tool in space you need at least six degrees of freedom. Industrial robots frequently have six degrees of freedom. However, if you also want the robot arm to avoid collisions with objects in its space you need an additional degree of freedom. That’s why I needed a 7-degrees of freedom robot.
In the picture below an arc welding robot PW-10 is moving around unaware of its surroundings. The RRC robot detects that the PW-10 is in its space and perhaps approaching and quickly gets out of the way. Reflex control in action.
Robotics can be Math heavy (Algebra, Trigonometry, Calculus)
Part of the job of creating the control system is to create the kinematics, dynamics, and perhaps inverse kinematics, for the robot, and this is math heavy. Lots of algebra, calculus and trigonometry. I have included the Jacobian matrixes for the first four degrees of freedom for the RRC robot below. Just to illustrate how math heavy it is, and this is just four degrees of freedom. Note, doing this was not part of my research. It was just a basic mandatory task to get the robot to move predictably before you even get started.
I should say that as soon as I finished my PhD, I was offered a job at JPL in Los Angeles to work on an 11-degree of freedom robot that was supposed to be on the International Space Station. However, the government cut the funding for the project, so I never got to do it. Instead, I took a job with ABB Robotics. I did not get to do the math for the 11-degree robot but one of my first tasks at ABB Robotics in Wisconsin was to create the kinematic matrixes for more than 20 ABB robots.
Algebra is indeed a good skill in many professions. A lot of engineers, scientists, mathematicians, IT professionals use algebra in their work, and algebra teaches you how to think logically and methodically. Therefore, schools should teach it. Which is why I don’t find this common joke funny “Another Day Has Passed And I Didn’t Use Algebra Once”. I don’t find “Another Day Has Passed And I Didn’t Play An Musical Instrument Once” funny either but somehow I think the problem with the joke is more obvious to some people in the latter case.
Note, not all factors are explained or shown so to see the complete equation you have to open the link in the first paragraph.
Santa Lucia and The Nobel Prize Too
Today, December 13, is Saint Lucy’s Day (Santa Lucia in Swedish) in Sweden. On this day girls or young women dress up in white robes and the chosen St. Lucy places a crown of candles or lights in her hair, The other girls/women are referred to as “Tärnor”. Boys dress up in white robes and wear white cones on their heads. Some of the boys dress up as gnomes. Then they march through the streets or inside buildings. They sing songs and hand out Lucia buns, gingerbread cookies and other goodies. They typically do this early in the morning while it is still dark. If the Lucia group is inside, you typically turn off the lights to create the right ambiance.
This evening my daughter surprised me by baking the traditional saffron buns, so called Lusse Bullar or Lucia Buns in English. She prepared a Swedish meatball dinner and dressed up as St. Lucia. I had completely forgotten about St. Lucy, so it was a surprise. She did not want her picture online, so I am including online photos of St. Lucia.
St. Lucy takes place during the Nobel Week. The Nobel award ceremony happen on December 10. It should be noted that we often speak of the Nobel Prize, but there are six Nobel Prizes. The prizes for Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Economics, are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden. The Nobel Peace prize is awarded in Oslo, Norway.
Anyway, On December 13 a St. Lucy parade visit and sometimes surprise the Nobel Prize winners in Stockholm who are staying for a few days (they stay at the Grand Hotel). In the past, these surprises did not always work out well, as the St. Lucy group of white dressed women sometimes frightened laurates from East Asia. In East Asia white dressed women are often thought of as ghosts (yūrei and onryō). Think of Samara Morgan in the Ring movies. Therefore, they modified how the Lucia train (as it is called) marches through the hotel. For example, they no longer show up in people’s rooms unannounced.
As a little piece of interesting information this is a list of this year’s Nobel Prize winners.
- Physics: Pierre Agostini; Ferenc Krausz; Anne L’Huillier – “for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter.”
- Chemistry: Moungi Bawendi; Louis E. Brus; Alexey Ekimov – “for the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots.”
- Physiology or Medicine: Katalin Karikó; Drew Weissman – “for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19”
- Literature: Jon Fosse – for “his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable”.
- Economics: Claudia Goldin – “for having advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes”.
- Peace Prize: Narges Mohammadi – “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all.
Ice Hotel Adventure in Jukkasjarvi
Someone reminded me that today is the day of writing, so I decided to make a blog post even though I made one yesterday. This post is not about Leonbergers or dogs but about our visit to the ice hotel in Jukkasjärvi in northern Sweden. It was 2005 and the kids were still small. It was the first ice hotel in the world and is the biggest one.
I should say that Jukkasjärvi is located north of the arctic circle and is typically very cold in winter. The ice hotel itself does not have any bathroom, but they have an adjacent wood building with bathrooms, showers, and rooms for anyone who can’t stand the cold for too long. If you are OK with being a bit cold, you sleep in sleeping bags on top of blocks covered by reindeer hides. Below are some selected photos that I took.
The ice hotel had put out lots of kick sleds, referred to as “spark” for people to use as a mode of transportation on the snow and ice, or just to sit on. As my dad, Stig, was sitting on one of them, our son came up to him and told him “Stig the hotel put out these sleds for children to play with. It is not for adults to sit on.” My dad was so surprised that he just handed him the sled.
The day after I took some photos of the other rooms.
Would you stay at an ice hotel?
Sleep Paralysis And The Beagle Boys
I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling. As I tried to get out of bed, I realized I couldn’t move. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t move a finger. I heard my parents talking downstairs so to get their attention I tried to scream but I couldn’t. I was completely paralyzed, and I did not understand how it had happened.
Then I saw three beings coming out of the walls, like the Cenobites in Clive Barkers Hellbound Heart. I should say I had not read the Hellbound Heart book or seen the movie at the time. It was just how it looked like. As they came closer, they looked down at me, and I realized that they were the Beagle Boys from Duck Tales. They promptly started to torture me by sticking long needles into my back, and it really hurt. I knew it was some sort of hallucination, but I didn’t know how to stop it.
When you dream you don’t know that you are dreaming, and logic and common sense does not work. This was different. I was fully aware, and I understood that what I felt and what I saw couldn’t be real. I guessed that I had some sort of condition causing a hallucination. I would later find out that it was sleep paralysis, a sort of mixed state between being awake and asleep. It happened to me several times during my teenage years and later on it happened to me once as an adult.
Have you ever had sleep paralysis?
The Day Surstromming Gave American Students a Culture Shock in Their Own Country
In my recent post called “Culture Shock Sweden USA” I included a photo of myself opening and smelling a can of north Swedish fermented herring, or as it is properly called “surströmming”. It is a specialty from the north Swedish Highcoast where I grew up. Underneath the photo I wrote “Unfortunately, all the Americans experienced a culture shock from the fermented herring.” See the excerpt below. What I should maybe have mentioned in my post is that even though it was a joke, it was still true. People were not ready for what was coming.
After I had posted “Culture Shock Sweden USA”, I posted a link to my blog on my Facebook and I received a few comments including comments from two people who actually were there at the fermented herring party in 1987. I’ve included the comments below.
Surströmming first-timer videos are getting pretty common these days, but I still always end up laughing until I can barely breathe when they start the uncontrollable retching! Always reminds of the Surströmming party and that nasty prank we pulled on the residents of Glaser House! 🤣 — Lee
Delicious memories….NOT!!! 🤢🤮 — Alyce
What happened was that as soon as I opened the can, all Americans dashed for the windows or doors trying to escape the smell. In the party invitation we had left out one or two details, like that surströmming is often said to be the worst smelling food in the world. The “nasty prank” Lee was referring to was me and him going around the dorm and placing left over surströmming in the ventilation drums of the dorm. I admit that was immature. Luckily, it did not work as well as we had hoped, or we probably would have both been expelled.
This is an excerpt from Wikipedia on the topic:
Since gaining notoriety as one of the world’s smelliest foods, surströmming has become the focus of a number of “challenge” videos on YouTube and other platforms where people uninitiated to the food show themselves opening a can for the first time, usually to visceral reaction, and then try to eat the fish without additional preparation. Often the videos show the participants gagging, swearing, holding their nose, or vomiting.
To read more about surströmming on the disgusting food museum’s webpage click here.
In the end we had a good time. The smell dissipated and people ate and drank other things we offered. We swedes ate the surströmming but a few others tasted a little bit as well. We knew what the reaction would be, and we did not offer the fermented herring in the hopes that people would love it. It became a good source of conversation and jokes, and that’s what we hoped for. I should say that you normally open the cans outside and let the smell dissipate before you eat them. The surströmming taste mostly like pickled herring with lemon and lots of salt and you typically eat with onion and potato or rolled in soft and thin bread (tunnbröd).
Have you eaten any weird foods?
Leonberger Life 