Beer of the Week

The beer: Mardi Gras Bock

Brewed by: Abita Brewing Company, Covington, Louisiana

Description (from the website): "Mardi Gras Bock is the first of our seasonal brews. Abita Bock is brewed with pale, pilsner and caramel malts and German Perle hops. Our bock is similar to German maibocks with its rich malt flavor and full body. A perfect choice during Carnival season in New Orleans. Gruyére, Emmental and Swiss are nice cheese choices with Bock. Great with roasted beef or pork. Try it with Mexican food, too."

Would I buy it again?: Yes. I'm a big fan of bocks, and while this one wasn't the best I've ever had, it was still very good. A malty taste, but not thick. Very easy to drink. A great beer for a spring evening.

Something Is Rotten In The Planet of Uranus

I had to do it. I had to make the joke, it had to be done. 

Anyway, if you ever find yourself floating around in the Uranian atmosphere, you would be very well-advised to not crack open your space suit helmet and take a whiff of the air. Well, other than the obvious "oh, it's minus 200 degrees, there's no oxygen, and the wind is blowing at hundreds of miles an hour." Turns out, there's lots of hydrogen sulfide floating around the Uranian atmosphere, which is the same molecule that gives rotten eggs its signature pleasant aroma. And given the similarity between Uranus and Neptune, odds are pretty good that Neptune probably suffers the same problem.

So, on the one hand, it's really funny that Uranus smells bad. On the other, given how people like to mispronounce the planet's name, we were so close, and yet so far...

Beer of the Week

The beer: Single Digit Dubbel

Brewed by: Smuttynose Brewing Company, Hampton, New Hampshire

Description (from the website): "Smuttynose Single Digit Dubbel (formerly known as Winter Ale) is a full-bodied, amber beer brewed with a special Trappist ale yeast. Stylistically reminiscent of a Belgian Abbey Double, it features fruity aromas and flavor, balanced by spicy Sterling hops. Warming, mellow & pleasantly complex, Smuttynose Single Digit Dubbel is your perfect cold weather companion."

Would I buy it again?: Probably not. Sorry, this beer just didn't really grab me. It didn't really have much going on, I expected a bit more from a dubbel. Definitely not bad, just not enough to distinguish itself from other, better beers.

Review: Glade Valley Golf Club

Spring has thus far not been too kind to the Northeast. For the second year in a row, the average temperature in February has actually been warmer than the average for March, a combination of unusually warm weather in February and unusually cold weather in March. And for the second year in a row, the biggest snowstorm of the year took place well into March. So golf has been tough to come by, but I have managed to play some, something I was honestly a little concerned about. The "one golf course review a month" streak can continue.

However, don't hold your breath for anything spectacular this month. I wouldn't play a good golf course at the end of March. And Glade Valley is not a particularly good golf course. Now, you may remember I mentioned Glade Valley when I talked about all the new courses I played last year. The key phrase from that little paragraph is "thoroughly average." And that's a phrase I'll stick with. Glade Valley is a very average golf course. But it is close to home, very cheap to play, and I did want to get back there so I could take some pictures and do a review anyway, so this seemed as good a time as any to play it.

Glade Valley does get off to a fairly okay start. The first hole and second holes are very similar in length, but play in opposite directions, and have some decent challenge to them. The first hole doglegs slightly to the right around a group of three fairway bunkers to a green guarded by three more bunkers. The second hole is basically straight, but the drive is best hit down the right side of the fairway. This gives you a better angle at the green, which is guarded short-left by a small pond. Yes, this golf course does feature several small ponds, which I am not a big fan of. The one on the second hole isn't too bad, but we'll get to a worse one in a little while. The greens at Glade Valley are in general not too terribly interesting, but compared with the rest of the golf course, I'd call them above-average. They're a little on the small side, but they have some decent contour to them.

The first green.

The second from the tee.

The second green. It's not a very impressive water hazard.

The third hole is the first par 3 at Glade Valley, and at 184 yards, is actually the longest par 3 on the course. It has a very wide and shallow green, much of which is behind a hazard. It's not water, more a pit with native grasses inside. The difficulty of the hole would obviously vary based on where the flag is located. It was on the left the day I played, which is clearly the nicest place it could be.

The third hole.

The next three holes are pretty bland. Two par 4s of about the same length, and then the first par 5 at the sixth. All three are essentially straight and run parallel to each other. This is a very forgettable stretch of holes, so we'll just skip over them. But I'll give you some pictures just to give you an idea of what they're about.

The fourth hole from the fairway.

The approach to the fifth green.

The sixth hole, a par 5

The seventh hole is a shortish par 4, and it's where things get sort of interesting again. Unfortunately, it's interesting in a bad way. The tee shot is blind, which is fine. I'm perfectly okay with blind shots. It's the second that lets things down. The green is surrounded by a pond on three sides, which is annoying, and if your ball goes over the green by a little bit, it will roll down into the water, because there's almost nothing but pine straw back there. It's very unforgiving, and really out of place at a golf course like this.

The tee shot on 7 is fine.

The seventh green is not fine.

The eighth hole is a little par 3 with a bunker in front and behind. Pretty simple hole. The ninth is a short par 5 that doglegs pretty significantly to the left, which is a nice change of pace for this golf course. Long hitters can cut the corner and leave themselves a shorter shot to the green. Lay-up shots have to contend with a fairway bunker, so it's almost better to go for the green even if you're further back. I wish the green didn't have a front bunker, but that's the way it goes sometimes. It's still not too bad a hole.

The eighth hole.

The ninth hole.

The back nine starts with a dull and difficult stretch. The tenth, eleventh, and twelfth holes run parallel to each other, and the tenth and twelfth are fairly long par 4s. The tenth and eleventh (a par 5), have water in play near the greens. This course does this a fair number of times, putting ponds next to greens, and I am not a fan of that.

The tenth green.

The eleventh hole.

The eleventh green. It's very exposed, and this was probably the windiest portion of the round.

The twelfth green.

The thirteenth hole is a par 3, with a pond next to the green (how original). Strangely, the fourteenth hole also has a pond next to the green, but it's also the most interesting hole on the course. Not in a bad way like the seventh, at least not exactly. It's just weird. It's very short, easily drivable, but you'd have to be crazy to try. The hole doglegs a bit to the right, and there are trees in the inside of the dogleg, so you'd need to hit a fade. That's fine, but your drive would have to flirt dangerously with yet another pond (thankfully the last one), and somehow find a green which is both ridiculously narrow and flanked by the pond left and trees right. So while you could go for the green, I really, really wouldn't recommend it.

The thirteenth hole.

The fourteenth green. It's 15 yards wide at most.

After another straightforward par 3, we get to the sixteenth hole. It's a long par 5 (the longest on the course), and played straight into the wind the day I played. Another sign of bad design, three of the four par 5s on the course play in the same direction. It's not the greatest feeling when you step up to a potential birdie opportunity and you're slapped with strong wind blowing in your face. Anyway, the hole is once again, not particularly interesting, but I think the bunkering at least looks halfway decent.

The fifteenth hole.

The sixteenth green.

The course closes with a pair of long par 4s. The seventeenth is actually fairly strategic, in that the green is best approached from the right, but there's a bunker and O.B. on that side of the fairway. It's not too bad a hole. The eighteenth is kind of just a long, difficult par 4, but at least there's no pond next to the green.

The seventeenth green.

The eighteenth hole.

The eighteenth green.

So, Glade Valley. It's not a particularly good golf course, but it is maintained very well considering the price, and it's a very easy walk. After 2 PM you can get a round here for something like $17, which is extremely good value. And I'm sure the place does a lot of business. I think it's actually a decent strategy, don't charge too much, and get all the casual golfers in. Just be prepared for a very slow round, it took almost exactly 5 hours to get around, and it was starting to get kind of cold by the end. It's a good place to warm up your game in the spring, to play on an unusually warm winter day, or if you want to hang out with friends, but I wouldn't play there any other time. It's the epitome of an average golf course, nothing special, nothing really interesting, just 18 holes of golf.

Beer of the Week

The beer: Hager-Weiss Hefeweizen

Brewed by: Antietam Brewery, Hagerstown, Maryland

Description (from the can): "Unfiltered and unfettered, this refreshing and complex wheat ale is brewed with 100% German ingredients which grace the palate with subtle hints of clove and bananas."

Would I buy it again?: Definitely. I had this particular beer on a unusually warm spring evening, and a wheat beer is perfect for warm, sunny days. Not to mention the proximity; it's always nice to support your local brewery.

Could a Planet Without Night Really Exist?

This is a question right out of the Isaac Asimov short story Nightfall, which I would highly recommend if you haven't read it, it's a sci-fi classic. The basic premise is that there's this civilization on a planet where night only falls once every 2,000 years, and that night is coming soon. It's a really cool story, but there's a logistical problem. Turns out, the star system Asimov imagined is inadequate. Night would fall every couple months, not every couple of millennia. Now, that's a lot of daylight, but hardly the stuff of existential dread like it is in the story.

So now the question is, can such a planet exist? Can an Earth-like planet exist where there is no true night? The answer is yes, but boy is it complicated. The first thing you would need is a centrally-located black hole, and you just know you're in for a doozy when that's the first thing you need for a scenario to work. Now, there are a few options from here, but at minimum you'd need at least nine stars in the system, eight of which orbit in a ring around the black hole. It is fantastically complicated, and in order to get the rare night instead of no night, a couple of big moons to do some eclipsing are also necessary.

Okay, so there's a reason Nightfall is science fiction, but hey, it's cool to think about trying to make that planet work. And the guy who did this has a whole bunch of articles like it, where he tries to figure out how various planets from science fiction could be scientifically possible. So I know where I'm going to be wasting my time today.

Beer of the Week

Oh my goodness, is this a new type of post? Good heavens. I had this idea suggested to me, and after a while, I decided that it was a good idea. So let's give this a try. This isn't a review, per se, I can't tell you all the fancy little details that a real beer reviewer would give you, just more of a "hey, look at this cool beer I drank recently!"

The beer: Kentucky Vanilla Barrel Cream Ale

Brewed by: Lexington Brewing and Distilling Company

Description (from the website): "Kentucky Vanilla Barrel Cream Ale is our take on a classic American style of beer. We took a cold-conditioned cream ale, brewed with a hint of flaked corn and bourbon vanilla beans, and aged it in freshly decanted bourbon barrels for a minimum of six weeks. Kentucky Vanilla Barrel Cream Ale's medium body and 5.5% ABV make it the perfect barrel-aged beer for an all day event."

Would I buy it again?: Yes

Okay I couldn't resist a little bit of review.

Could Venus Harbor Native Life?

Yes, this is a question people are asking. And it may not be quite as crazy as you might think.

Clearly, there isn't going to be any life on the surface of Venus. It's about 750 degrees too hot there for even the hardiest of single-celled organisms. For life to exist on the Venusian surface, it would have to be beyond anything we've ever seen. Almost beyond the realm of fiction. The upper atmosphere of Venus may be a different story. The pressure and temperature is actually fairly hospitable if you're at the right altitude.

Of course, what would a crazy theory be without evidence? And this time we have some interesting observations from the Japanese space probe Akatsuki, which observed periodic dark patches in the upper atmosphere rich in sulfur. The particles in these patches have the similar dimensions to terrestrial bacteria, and the periodic nature of the patches could indicate a phenomenon similar to algae blooms here on Earth.

So is there life on Venus? Can we add it to the list of places in the Solar System where life likely exists? I'd say probably not. But there's a chance, and it's probably worth checking out. And since Venus is pretty close, we may check it out sometime in the next 10-15 years. We'll see. I won't hold my breath, but I have to say, it would be kind of funny if the first extraterrestrial life we found was on Venus.