Shiner Kosmos

Shiner Kosmos is named after the man who founded the Shiner Brewery. Kosmos Spoetzl was born in Bavaria, which is where most of the most savory beers come from.
Luckily for Texas Kosmos ended up building a brewery here in Shiner, Texas. Kosmos over came Prohibition and as of As of 2010, it was the fourth-largest craft brewery and tenth-largest overall brewery in the United States. If you have ever tried their beers you would know why.

This lager has an aromatic dry  taste with a slight hoppy taste. I would encourage anyone who has never had a Shiner beer to buy the Shiner family pack to try out all of the different beers. I wasn't a fan of the Shiner Blonde but my other friends love it.

You won't find Kosmos on tap anywhere but Shiner beers are something everyone should try.

As they say, prosit!

How it was tasted: out of the bottle from the family pack

Rating: 7/10 Good

Dead Zach Day 2

Midterms are fun! Also attempting to get into graduate school is fun but I know that you guys NEED your ToZ(Taste of Zach).

So here are some cool links to keep you from starving.

Scientists Reconstruct Brains’ Visions Into Digital Video In Historic Experiment
http://gizmodo.com/5843117/scientists-reconstruct-video-clips-from-brain-activity

Two chatbots

Justin Bieber 800% Slower
Feeling stressed? Try listening to this. I don't like Justin Bieber but this slowed down version is pretty cool.

Applebee's Bahama Mama

This mix drink is pretty sweet in a good way. The banana liqueur adds quite a smooth taste. This was a recommendation from a fellow Phi Sigma Pi member Marjolyn Varano. I think that most people will not want more than one of these since that may be a bit too much sweetness for one night but I think everyone should try one if you don't mind mix drinks. So if you end up at Applebee's during Sunday's happy hour give it a shot.

How it was tasted:At Applebee's with some Phi Sig brothers in a glass as seen in the picture

Rating: 7/10 Good

Ingredients
1 oz (28 grm). rum - light or dark
1/2 oz (14 grm). banana liqueur OR melon liqueur
1/2 oz (14 grm). coconut rum
1/2 cup (125 ml) orange juice
1/2 cup (125 ml) pineapple juice
1 tbsp (15 ml) grenadine
fruit for garnish

Fat Tire New Belgium

There is nothing like the copper color of this Colorado amber ale. This is one of my favorite Thursday night beers thanks to the specials at Greenhouse in Denton. $2 for a Fat Tire and free jazz music sounds about right to me.

Fat tire has a sweet after taste that makes you want more. I partook in this beverage while enjoying jazz music and writing short stories, and poems. It is hard to deny a high rating of a beer when you have such a great combo but the beer can not be judge on the atmosphere alone. Else one could rank Keystone way too high just because they had a good time. Yes the ambiance of a bar should serve only as an accent or the proverbial icing on the cake.

The website declares that this beer was inspired after a bike tour to all the brewery's in Belgium. I have yet to make such an alcoholic adventure but the drink seems to honor the taste of the few amber Belgium beers I have had.

I know I shouldn't rank a beer so high but with the combo of the price, atmosphere and the simple yet satisfying taste, and the fact it is fairly easy to find makes this a great beer. This is one of my favorite beers in the USA. It is a beer that one can love early in their beer drinking days and a beer that a veteran beer snob wouldn't turn away.

How it was tasted: in a pint glass, from the tap at Greenhouse while listening to jazz music.

Rating: 9/10 on my list of favorite beers.

Dead Zach Day 1

Named after some of the posts of a webcomic I use to follow religiously when I was younger. Every so often the creator will just have too much to do or will get sick or for what ever reason could not post his comic on the regular upload days. So I decided to do some filler here due to midterms.

http://megatokyo.com/strip/27

Also here is a small ode to Dennis Ritchie. He was the man who created the C programming language and the UNIX operating system. This man is a legend to all Computer scientist and should be remembered as much as Steve Jobs was. As many have tweeted on the day of his death "His pointer has been cast to void *; his process has terminated with exit code 0." I regret never getting to meet the guy.

Here is the most relaxing song in the world according to scientist:
http://soundcloud.com/justmusiclabel/marconi-union-weightless/s-kttxT 

Here is the article about it:
 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2049948/Most-relaxing-song-UK-band-Boffins.html

Here is a song by The Kooks I have heard recently. It is pretty cool.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCMykkcoyu8

See yall soon I hope.

Brett Fowler reviews Terra Nova

THE HYPE: Out of all of the fall shows, I have to say, this one had my “Welcome to Caprica City” panties moist at the mere mention of Jason O’ Mara, dinosaurs, time travel, that one dude from “Avatar,” and freaking Declan from “Degrassi” in the same sentence. Buzz for the pilot was strong, some even going so far as to claim this would be the next “Lost….” I’m not sure if they meant that as a compliment or an insult though… On second thought…

This device helps alleviate the smell of shit.

THE D.L.: It was probably an insult. If you’re a fan of watching old people try to take a shit before they've taken their Metamucil, listening to Dakota Fanning scream at Tom Cruise about aliens for two whole hours, and/or just happen to hold a fond appreciation for sticking firecrackers up kitten’s anuses, then this might just be the show for you. Because honestly, chances are quite good that you’re either painting portraits of clowns in a jail cell right now or the inspiration behind Shia LeBeouf’s riveting portrayal of a mentally retarded kid in that one obscure Disney movie (holla at ya boi, Tru Confessions fans!). This ain’t rocket science Terra Nova writers. Really. How can you possibly fuck up a show about dinosaurs and time travel so royally? I’m not sure what third grader you were consulting for that whole plot line about pterodactyls swooping down and pecking the Terra Novans to death (obviously one who had stayed up late to watch Pterodactyls starring Coolio on SyFy), but did you really have to pull out the amnesia card by your third episode? The pilot had potential, I’ll give credit where credit’s due, but this show jumped so bat-shittingly crazy over a shark by its second episode that Spielberg is gonna need a much bigger boat if he wants to save this one big pile of shit. Loaded references ya’ll!

The Binding of Isaac game

From the creator of Super Meat Boy and Braid comes an odd interpretation of an old bible story and a Zelda dungeon crawler.

You are Isaac a child who runs away from his mother since she is trying to kill him, because you know, God told her so.

Isaac has to explore his basement in order to find items to help him fight off bosses, enemies and finally his own mother. Now this sounds like it can get boring fast but the amount of items that you can get combined with the fact that each level is randomly generated makes this game infinitely playable. After going through it a few times new items are unlocked as well as new characters which makes you come back for more.

The game does slow down if there are too many enemies on the screen at once but the over all game play is solid. Over all, for $5 this game is a steal and everyone who has ever played a Zelda game should give it a shot.

How it was taste: On my gaming PC.

Rating: 8/10 Great

Super Meat Boy Super Meat Boy is a tough as nails platformer where you play as an animated cube of meat who's trying to save his girlfriend (who happens to be made of bandages) from an evil fetus in a jar wearing a tux.

Braid Braid treats your time and attention as precious; there is no filler in this game. Every puzzle shows you something new and interesting about the game world.