Trappist Ale.
(warning, music on first link.) The six Belgian breweries
Achel (little English),
Chimay,
Orval,
Rochefort (unofficial site),
Westmalle (no English), and
Westvleteren, along with the Dutch brewery
De Konigshoeven/
La Trappe (first is English link to monastery, second is non-English brewery site.) are the only recognized producers of
Trappist beers, although
the latter was only recently granted the appellation after several years without it. Ranging from the relatively commercial and large-scale operations of
Chimay and
La Trappe to the other extreme of
Westvleteren, who want to live quietly and
don't want their beer distributed, these beers are considered some of the
best in the world.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim
on Mar 4, 2006 -
38 comments
In the "debate" over the War on Drugs, there's a lack of nice quantitative data presentation in one place.
Brian C Bennett aims to rectify
that. From
trends in alcohol initiation relative to legal age limits, to
investigation of the
deaths classified by CDC as marijuana-induced. There are lots of charts, as for
cocaine purity over the years, or treatment
admissions, or
arrest trends. The site map is your
quick guide to the 2000 charts & articles.
posted by daksya
on Feb 27, 2006 -
18 comments
Drugs on the Rez. It's a hell of a life going from utter poverty, where your mom gets you drunk so you'll stop complaining about being hungry, to being able to buy your kids toys with $100 accessories and sending them to private schools, to going back to literally not having a quarter to call your dad. In this case, the money came from Canadian
oxycontin. It's not just Native Americans who are targeted by the authorities. It's also
Indians. There's a pretty good newish book on the subject of black markets,
Illicit. Laos' opium market is apparently gone -- in favor of
meth and Afghanistan's
market is black in name only, so why keep up the
facade?
posted by raaka
on Feb 20, 2006 -
14 comments
Sine-Off is the first brand of cold, flu and sinus congestion medicine to completely reformulate and remove
pseudoephedrine, the key ingredient needed to make Crystal Meth.
posted by ijoshua
on Feb 16, 2006 -
100 comments
Overgrow.com --one of the largest and most comprehensive sites written by and for cannabis growers about
cannabis cultivation, complete with user forums and immense photo galleries--along with Heaven's Stairway Seeds (hempqc.com), Cannabisworld.com, and Eurohemp.com have all been
shut down, their
owners arrested in Canada, and the servers seized. The story hasn't yet made the Canadian news, but it raises many questions about free speech online.
posted by fandango_matt
on Feb 5, 2006 -
45 comments
"Well, a lot of people have said DEA is in the dark on these issues,
but that is a little bit much." (.doc; long) Despite a power outage, an FDA-lead panel discusses how to manage abuse of the
infamous opiod painkiller
OxyContin.
Purdue Pharma, its sole manufacturer, had tried to bring its more powerful successor
Palladone (.pdf) to the market, before "dosage jump" issues lead to the drug
being pulled by the FDA. Meanwhile, trucks loaded with $3mil dollars of "oxys" continue to get hijacked for a $15mil street turnover, despite GPS tracking and other high-tech security measures used for cigarette distribution. Doctors invariably shuffle pills sideways despite
tamper-proof presciption pads (long). Purdue only stops selling more profitable and addictive
double-doses of OxyContin after government pressure. On the level of the street, addicts who find themselves too tolerant to the drug find their needs more than adequately met when they can buy many more hits of heroin for the same cost. Philadelphia-based writer Jeff Deeney outlines some of these fascinating
issues and more as he looks into how race, cost, manufacturing and distribution factors in OxyContin abuse invariably drive the addict to cheaper and more easily accessible heroin.
posted by Rothko
on Feb 2, 2006 -
72 comments
Tips from the Blue Devils - Dunking the ball is a flashy move. In some instances, it can be the wrong move. Pot and cocaine are wrong moves. They mess up your thinking and can kill you instantly.
posted by sdrawkcab
on Jan 25, 2006 -
41 comments
He is “
fine” by a certain very technical definition of “fine” which indicates he didn’t kill himself and do a header on the bathroom tile. Hillarious trip report from
scotto on
erowid.
Erowid previously here and here.
posted by lalochezia
on Dec 11, 2005 -
11 comments
That'll teach 'em. Two 10-year old girls arrested in Florida and suspended from school for possession of...
well uhm, parsely, actually.
posted by digaman
on Nov 29, 2005 -
55 comments
"I know these desires could kill me dead, but how you gonna act instead?" So sings eros-haunted Delta-blues-steeped songwriter
Chris Whitley on his superbly dark new album,
Soft Dangerous Shores, and he's not kidding -- Whitley is currently "
very very ill" and receiving hospice care. After Whitley's 1991 debut,
Living with the Law, the slim (drug-addicted?) songwriter was acclaimed by his peers as "the real deal." When he was dropped by Sony in 1998, he released an album of stark poetic beauty recorded in a barn,
Dirt Floor.
Soft Dangerous Shores updates Whitley's coiled-viper resophonic guitars with dreamlike electronic atmospheres (
one reviewer describes it as "a hypnotic wrestling match between juke joint blues and Kraftwerkian beats"). Instead of posting an elegy for another underappreciated self-destructive genius a la
Nick Drake after his death, check out Whitley's music (via
free downloads) while he's still with us on Earth.
posted by digaman
on Nov 14, 2005 -
46 comments
Strattera could make you commit suicide. Earlier today it was announced that Paxil could cause cause birth defects (
scroll down). Now Strattera (an ADHD drug) is on the list of "wonder drugs" that could have serious consequences. Is it really worth it to visit
Dr. Feelgood just to find out later that it really did more damage than good?
posted by Guerilla
on Sep 29, 2005 -
103 comments
Hey! Didn't anybody notice that today is the
International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, sponsored by
those bleeding hearts at the UN? The UNODC is declaring
"even occasional use of marijuana is a link in a long and dangerous cycle of crime, degradation and terrorism." In Afghanistan,
30 -or is it 60?- tons of drugs have been burned in large bonfires (If they're not sure how much, blame the contact high). Meanwhile China celebrated the day with
a massive demonstraton and
a few executions. The United Arab Emarites is
issuing a stamp. And the U.S.ofA.? Well, it's on the
State Department Calendar, but the
Office of National Drug Control Policy has never heard of it. Still, you can send an
Anti-Drugs Day Greeting to someone you know (is a user).
BREAKING NEWS:
In Kenya, 49 Killed, Hundreds Harmed by Poisoned... er... Alcohol. (nevermind)
posted by wendell
on Jun 26, 2005 -
35 comments
Nashville cops target gays: Since the fall of 2004, officers at the Hermitage Police Precinct have been quietly conducting a sting operation exclusively targeting gay men. Nobody there denies that.
posted by mrgrimm
on Jun 23, 2005 -
40 comments
Where are the areas in the United States with highest marijuana use? Where are the areas with the lowest? A different kind of red versus blue. But wait, there's
more, especially if you would prefer to be binge drinking to wash away those lonesome blues. And a
list of information broken down by drug, if your fix is more obscure.
posted by nervousfritz
on Jun 17, 2005 -
48 comments
Zombie attack in
small-town NH. As I live nearby, I have begun the laborious task of barricading the doors and nailing boards across every window. My cats are furious with me. Oh, and this comment from my friend, who once had the accused zombie as a student: "Travis Saulnier was a student here. At the time of 6th grade, he was already over 6ft and looked well on his way to being the next
Leatherface. Not surprised."
posted by ktoad
on May 24, 2005 -
30 comments
"Defending America's Most Vulnerable" - a new
bill, introduced in the
House by the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee,
Sensenbrenner (R-WI). Among other provisions, 10-year mandatory minimum sentence for a first-time conviction of distributing a small amount of marijuana to a person under 18 years of age; virtually every drug crime
committed in urban areas subject to "drug free zone" penalties that carries a five-year mandatory minimum sentence; a 2-year sentence for those who witness or learn about drug distribution near colleges and do not report it to authorities within 24 hours and do not provide full assistance investigating, apprehending, and prosecuting the offender.
posted by daksya
on May 16, 2005 -
45 comments
42. I had always wondered why Jim Henson did
The Muppet Show in England, after years of successful collaboration with
The Children's Television Network in NYC. As a then 9-year old, I felt a kind of betrayal that I couldn't exactly put my finger on. As some little punk kid, what did I know about the financing of entertainment?This analysis of The Jim Henson Co. as a globe-trotting band of gypsies goes a long way to explain the oddness of
The Muppet Show and the change in tone that resulted when the puppets moved from
Sesame Street to Lew Grade's London soundstages.
posted by vhsiv
on May 6, 2005 -
26 comments
