Pun Salad

Oh dear me, I've been having a hard time blogging about matters political. While I'm ostensibly interested in the upcoming elections, I'm pretty much fretful that, no matter who wins, they'll invariably think they've won for the wrong reason.

So some unpolitical URLs this time around. You're welcome.

• Via BBSpot, Men's Journal's list of the 25 Best Beers in America. Why, that might be a good list to keep on hand for Election Night, as you watch the returns come in! Granite Staters will cheer as our local Smuttynose Brewing Company makes the list with their "Big A IPA", which is deemed "uncouth". But in a good way.

• But if beer is not your thing, you'll definitely want to stock up on red wine, after reading about a new study:

  Red wine might work to protect the brain from damage after a stroke and drinking a couple of glasses a day might provide that protection ahead of time, U.S. researchers reported on Sunday.

  My preference is Livingston Cellars California Burgundy, which the linked site claims "excels with grilled or roasted red meats". This review, on the other hand, found "that it went just fine with a Red Baron Singles Deep Dish Cheese Pizza." Inexplicably, I was unable to find an opinion at Professor Bainbridge's Wine Blog; it seems he goes for the stuff with dates on the label.

• But it's not all life-saving booze URLs here at Pun Salad. The (I'm told) excellent science fiction writer John Scalzi unloads on George Lucas and his vision of Star Wars.

  … let's not pretend that the Star Wars series is this great piece of entertainment. … Instead, let's call it what it is: A monument to George Lucas pleasuring himself. Which, you know, is fine. I'm happy for Lucas; it's nice that he was able to do that for himself. We all like to make ourselves happy. But since he did it all in public, I just wish he'd been a little more entertaining about it.

  He's actually a little more R-rated in other parts of the essay. One of the commenters links to an older, also entertaining, essay: The Complex and Terrifying Reality of Star Wars Fandom where one Andrey Summers convincingly argures that "Star Wars fans hate Star Wars". It's like Zen. (Scalzi link via the aforementioned Prof Bainbridge).

• Ken Jennings proves, once again, that it's fun to be a trivia geek, as he visits Memphis on his book tour:

  I was checked into hotel room 1729. I'm no math nerd, but I've played enough quiz bowl to remember the famous story about Srinivasa Ramanujan knowing that 1729 is the smallest number that can be expressed as the sum of two different cubes in two different ways. In fact, I think I heard Jeopardy!'s Steve Chernicoff tell this story the other day when we were at dinner in San Francisco. So I christened my room at the Marriott "Roomanujan."

  Ken, being a Mormon, does not drink.

Yes, that last item contained, arguably, a pun. We apologize. Those responsible have been sacked.