Seriously, food coloring is about the worst thing that you can do to beer… including the kind of cheap shitty beer that generally gets food coloring dumped into it this time of the year.  All it is is a green mistake.  If you want to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by having an “Irish” beverage, just have a Guinness.  Or Harp.  Or Killian’s.  Or some Jameson.

I was going to wear a green t-shirt to work today, but ended up not doing so (I wore a salwar tunic top with elbow-length sleeves that kind of had some light green on it instead) because I didn’t have any t-shirts that would cover my bruises.  They may be the right color (they are at the yellow-green healing stage) but the bruises that I got at fencing practice last week just aren’t appropriate accessories for the office.

Ahem.  Now for some important news about the news.

I get my news from three sources – The Daily Show and Colbert Report (yes, it is a comedy news show, but I think that they do a better job of hitting important events and stories and are more “fair and balanced” in their presentation then, say, Fox News), NPR, and the New York Times online.

Starting March 28, the New York Times will begin charging for unlimited access to their web site and mobile apps.

If I don’t subscribe, I will be limited to “20 free articles (including blog posts, slide shows, video and other multimedia features) each calendar month on NYTimes.com, as well as unrestricted access to browse the home page, section fronts, blog fronts and classifieds.”  (This is from the article.  To my understanding, I can look at the headlines on, for example, the home page for free, but if I click on an article, that counts against my monthly allotment.)  I probably read 20 NY Times articles every day.

I will subscribe.  I read the NY Times online daily and I don’t want to lose access to that news source.  (I donate to NPR as well, because I want them to stay on the air and continue to fund shows like Car Talk and News from Lake Wobegone.)

On one hand, I can understand their need to charge something.  I doubt that they make much money from the ads on the site or from the sales of the print papers, and they have to pay their reporters something in order for all of us out in reader-land to continue to enjoy their high-quality content.  On the other hand, I do think that their prices are a little high.

After some additional thought I realize that a year’s subscription to the NY Times online is about how much I donate each year to support NPR.

However.  There is a difference.  I freely give that money to NPR, even though I could continue to enjoy their programming without contributing a red cent.  The NY Times, on the other hand, will cut me off if I don’t pony up.  It is the fundamental difference here between donation and coercion that is sticking a bit in my craw.

John and I both prefer to listen to NPR when we are driving anywhere.  This can make road trips (to see his folks, to see my folks, to go to SCA events) interesting since here in the midwest good radio can be hard to come by.  There are a lot of country-western or Jeeeezus! radio stations, however, if that is your thing.  It is not our thing.  (We also have no real interest in getting satellite radio, which would also solve our problem.)

Inevitably, somewhere half-way through a trip to where ever, punching the station seek button on the radio over and over in the hops of finding something worth listening to, one of us will comment on how we should have downloaded a bunch of NPR podcasts for the trip.  We do this every time, and up until the most recent trip, always forgot about the podcasts until we were already in the car, and about half-way to somewhere.

I had resolved that we wouldn’t fall into that trip for the trip to NORAD, and the afternoon we were leaving I emailed John at work to find out his podcast preferences, and then left my office a bit early to download podcasts, pack, and other assorted last-minute chores.

I managed to download 4 Radiolab episodes and 1 Car Talk episode to my iPod before we had to leave.

Radiolab is awesome.

Everyone should listen to Radiolab.

After we got back I downloaded every single Radiolab episode that I could find.  (Warning: the Radiolab download server is about as quick as molasses, so I recommend downloading in the early morning.  It seemed to work best then.)

We have finally gotten into the wide world of podcasts.  I cringe at how long it took us.