Photo by Jamie Wiebe / North by Northwestern.

Lagers

Country of origin: Germany

Fermentation temperature: 45 to 55 degrees F

Yeast characteristics: Bottom fermenting. Brewers use yeasts that ferment in the wort at the bottom of the vat.

Color: Tend to be a lighter yellow in color

Flavor: Clean and crisp. You won’t taste the bitter hops as much as you would in an ale.

Average alcohol content: 2 to 5 percent

Common lagers: Bud Light, Coors Light, Heinekein, Corona, Miller High Life, Amstel Light, Busch, Keystone Light

Most common sub-genres:

• Pilsner/Pale lager: Light but somewhat bitter. People used to differentiate between a pilsner and a pale lager, but now brewers seem to use the terms interchangeably. Today, just think of it as a “premium” lager. Examples: Beck’s, Stella Artois, Pilsner Urquell

Ales

Country of origin: Britain

Fermentation temperature: 60 to 75 degrees F

Yeast characteristics: Top fermenting. Brewers use yeasts in ales that ferment in the wort at the top of the vat.

Color: Usually darker in appearance than a lager, sometimes amber-colored or darker.

Flavor: Complex, rich, and somewhat bitter. Some brewers even add hints of fruit.

Average alcohol content: 4 to 7 percent

Most common sub-genres:

• Pale ale: Bitter and a sweet, hoppy flavor. Examples: Bass Ale, Dogfish IPA, Budweiser Pale Ale
• Brown ale: Nutty and sweet. Known for going down smoothly. Examples: Newcastle Brown Ale, Sierra Nevada Brown Ale, Goose Island Nut Brown
• Stout ale: Roasted coffee flavors. Often sweet. Examples: Guinness, Russian Imperial Stout, Goose Island Oatmeal Stout
• Bitter ale: Rich in hop flavor with some bitterness. Examples: Goose Island Honker’s Ale
• Amber ale: Bitter but smooth. Amber in color. Examples: Budweiser American Ale

My favorite new hobby: Liking a Facebook status that shouldn’t be liked. I mean, let’s be honest — there are people on your Facebook you barely know, but hate with every ounce of your being. If Chuck Klosterman were writing this post, they would be those people you have sex with once because you hate them. They’re your guilty pleasures.

Too bad Facebook doesn’t have a “dislike this” option. That would be even more fun considering how overwhelmingly happy most updates are. Facebook, take note.

The deal: Add BK’s Facebook application and delete 10 of your friends from your Facebook account to receive a free Whopper from The King.

The result: The application notifies your friends that you deleted them. You eat your Whopper, end up gaining even more weight and lose more friends than just 10.

The real downside: It takes two to four weeks to receive your free Whopper coupon in the mail.

Via Whopper Sacrifice

At Northwestern, there’s a formal nearly every weekend. But when we look around at the gentlemen here, their suits often leave something to be desired. So, based on our knowledge, we’ve composed a handy man’s suit style guide to help every man look his best. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be the James Bond of the party.

Know your size before you walk in the store. Knowing your size before you walk in will help you gauge if a suit actually fits or not. You can never be too careful when it comes to dealing with salesmen. Here are some lengths to measure before you walk in:

• Wait size and pant length. Obvious, but a must. Pants, when you try them on at the store, should fit within an inch. If they’re looser than an inch, you might have some trouble tailoring them.
• Neck size. Don’t worry about the size of the shirt. You’ll be tucking it in. Button the top button and make sure it’s comfortable. You should be able to fit one finger between the top button and your neck easily. An unbuttoned top button just isn’t classy when the party starts.
• Arm length. This size is measured from between the shoulder blades, along the elbow and down to the wrist. It usually falls in the 32 to 34 range. This number combined with your neck size gives you your shirt size.

Tailor your suit. About 95% of the time, you’ll want to bring your suit to the tailor. If you don’t, you might be left with a suit that doesn’t fit quite right. Wafa Zanayed, the owner of A-1 Tailor in Evanston, has been in the business for 45 years. “Typically, it only costs around $50 to tailor a suit, and it definitely doesn’t hurt the look.”

• Sleeve length: “It should break at the base of the hand. You should be able to feel the bottom with your finger if you curl it up. Most people are wearing their sleeves so long that it’s almost covering the fingers. I’m not sure how they eat.”
• Jacket length: “With your arms straight, you must feel the bottom with your finger. If not, you have to treat it.”
• Trouser length: “It should hit the start of the heel of the shoe. Another way is to have it cover the heel a bit. Some people want it to touch the ground. But I ask, why do you want it to drag?”
• Shoulder fit: “It should fit well on the shoulder. If you raise your arm, there shouldn’t be much pull on your muscle. Having too much fabric there makes the suit look too big for you.”
• Sizing: “Pay attention to the size of the suit. If you’re 5′7″-ish, you’re probably a short. If you’re 5′9 to 6′0, you’re probably a regular. Above that, you might be a long.” Sizing note: With the suit buttoned, you should be able to fit your fist in between the buttons with a little give. Anything more and it’s too big.

Zanayed adds that you should “get the suit as close as you can to your size in the store. While [he] can fix almost anything, why pay for a suit that doesn’t fit to begin with?”

Go bold. Nothing ruins a good looking suit more than a unmatched or boring shirt and tie combination. Stay away from run-of-the-mill solid blues and reds with an equally boring tie combination. Try a pattered shirt with a subdued tie pattern. Remember, paisley ties are not feminine. They’re in style and a sure fire way to get compliments if they come in a bold (but not overly loud) colors. Salesmen are also more than happy to match ties with shirts for you. All you have to do is ask. Just don’t let them pressure you into purchasing something you don’t like. They may come up with surprising combos.

Grab a two button, two piece suit. Three button suits have come and gone. One button suits are gaining popularity, but are harder to pull off well. Three piece suits (ones with a vest) worn at a formal will often make you look like a novelty rather than a gentlemen. And outside of the tuxedo and thrift store industries, they’re getting more expensive and harder to find. A dark, two button cut is by far the most modern and popular these days.

Dark suits are for formals. Black and navy suits are best for night events. Don’t be afraid to throw a nice pinstripe on your suit either. But don’t make them too big. You’re not buying a zoot suit. Khaki suits work best for day events, not night. Suits that are white, yellow, pink or any other loud color aren’t classy, they’re tasteless. If may have been funny with a cane and a top hat in high school, but now that’s not going to fly.

Accessories. For guys, accessories are more subdued than those the women wear. Here’s a look at the dos and don’ts.

• Grab a good pair of cuff links. Shirts with a French cuff look amazingly professional. On top of that, one pair of silver or black cuff links can go with almost any shirt, tie and suit combination.
• Stay away from pocket squares. Matching a pocket square with a tie looks tacky. And more often than not, too many men make their squares look like there’s a bouquet growing from their pocket. But if you absolutely must have one, only let it peep out of the pocket.
• Tie bars. Tie bars are coming back in style. However, they seem to work best with daytime, khaki suit or suits worn in a business environment.
• Sunglasses. If it’s not a daytime event, you’ll look like an idiot. Period.
• Top hats and cranes. Like we said, they’re just silly and stupid if you’re not Willy Wonka.

Now with this information in your hands, have your ‘rents give you a suit for the holidays instead of that Xbox. A good, fitted suit will never go out of style and it will sure come in handy as you scrounge around for a job post-college.

And while my thoughts were demolishing my dating crusade, the candidates were also flubbing up their political campaigns. Obama was trying to disassociate himself from other angry black men while the geriatric McCain was pretending he wasn’t too old for the presidency. “The candidates are just so sexy,” my friend Elizabeth told me out of the blue one day. What? Politicians can be sexy? After all their political mishaps, I was worried, angry and disgusted with them. Maybe I wasn’t disgusting enough. I began to seek out some sound dating advice from them.

But my efforts were fruitless in getting them to join me at a local dive bar to discuss the opposite sex. In fact, neither campaign returned any of my calls for this story. What friends was McCain talking about? I decided to do the next best thing: get plastered. So there I was, standing at the bar of my favorite Japanese steakhouse with one of my good friends, when she walked in. She was a girl who I had come to know over the past few weeks and whose humor I found intoxicating. She was kinda cute, too. But good-humor girl wasn’t alone. She brought her best friend and bar-hopping running mate, Caroline, along. I was constantly being told how genuinely nice Caroline was, so I knew I had to make a nice, diplomatic impression. Just like Obama would. But when I’m debilitatingly inebriated, the polls aren’t exactly stacked in my favor. My friend nudged me. This was my moment to shine. I stick my hand out to her and say, “Hey Caroline, I hear you’re a real big bitch.” I might as well have called her, “that one!” It was supposed to be a joke, but it was largely misunderstood — even by a hungover me the next day. My friend’s face fell into his hands. It was a dick move.

Confident, charismatic and always cordial — Obama always knows the right thing to say to a woman. Photo by patrick dentler on flickr, licensed under the Creative Commons.

I needed guidance. But with no girls on the radar to fawn over besides Sarah Palin, I turned on CNN and watched the presidential campaigns smother themselves in shameless self promotion. One of McCain’s advisers jumped on the airwaves and told me that I wasn’t living in “real America.” I expected an apology from McCain, but he mainly tried to ignore the comment — that, or the media just never picked it up. Was McCain ignoring me? Why didn’t he call and apologize? Like a text message, I decided that any robocalls wouldn’t cut it. And Obama was pulling similar stunts. He actually had the audacity to jump on a handful of major television networks and broadcast a thirty minute after school special about how great he and America would be together. Did he really think that showing he cared about someone else’s interests besides mine would sway my vote? He probably did, and he was right. McCain’s blatant disregard to assuage my desire to hear an apology and Obama’s self confidence sparked my interest even more. I subconsciously saw their sexiness, and I loved them even more for it.

On election night, I ventured off on a first date just hours before the polls were scheduled to close down in a few swing states. Thankfully, this girl was worlds from good-humor girl and her bitchy friend. I decided to make big decisions to bolster my self confidence. “We’re going to eat at Panera! You might enjoy the broccoli cheese soup!” I quickly found myself resorting to outright lies as well. “I thought those naked pictures of Vanessa Hudgens were totally disgusting too!” And when she asked a deep question, I was tempted to give a well thought out answer, but I instead opted for the sound bite. “What do I think about the economic crisis? Let’s ride this roller coaster, baby!”

“What are you talking about?”

She had me. Her reaction wasn’t one I had rehearsed. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember what I had been saying. My political dating machine was out of steam. “You know, I don’t have any idea. Guess I just had some word vomit in me. Want to take a walk?” She giggled at my disgustingly bad joke, the first genuine laugh I heard from her that night. “So,” I said as I opened the door for her, “do you think McCain is sexy?”

Let me Google that you for you, a new online service, lets your friends know how completely moronic they are when it comes to the Internet. For example, if your friends ask you what time the Northwestern game is on Saturday and you want to make them feel like a dumbass, go to this site and type in their question. Then, send them the link that appears. The site will take care of the rest. Try it out for yourself.

The CAESAR course selection system at Northwestern is a piece of crap. Sure, it had an upgrade about a year ago. We now have shopping carts and stuff. Sounds fantastic. At any rate, here’s my list of CAESAR add-ons that would make my life so much easier.

1. Stop having the search function default to the previous quarter. Oh, this pisses me off so much. I’m trying to register for my Winter 2009 classes, but CAESAR likes to default to Fall 2008 classes. I’m sure this has happened to numerous people: You’re sitting and looking through classes and you find an amazing class on Lumberjacking Techniques. “OMG,” you say, “let me add that to my shopping cart.” But you can’t because that class already happened. Would whoever controls CAESAR just update the damn thing in a timely fashion?!

2. Get a recommendation system. “Based on your CTEC reviews of Lumberjacking Techniques, you also might enjoy The Fine Art of the Blacksmith.” It would be just like iTunes, Netflix or Amazon’s systems. CTECs would still remain anonymous. The data would just be anonymously harvested for this process. Yes, I know it would take some time to code this, but it would be eternally useful. I don’t have time to search through every department. Give me some recommendations. Better yet, get the Computer Science majors to code this as a project. They’d love it and it would save NU some green.

3. Nix the shopping cart, add a wish list. The shopping cart sucks. Once you add stuff to the shopping cart, you have to enroll in those classes. Yes, you can hit the little trash can icon, but if I ever want that class back, I have to search for it again. If I had a wish list on CAESAR, I could add every class that I’m thinking about taking (usually 7 or so each quarter) and simply check the ones I want to enroll in when my time comes. Sometimes, I want to drop a class and add one of my other choices. If I had a wish list, this would be simple. Ultimately, this could be easily fixed by just adding check boxes to the shopping cart in addition to the trash can.

4. Let Quikpay communicate with CAESAR. There are times when I get behind in my quarterly payments and Northwestern puts a registration hold on my account. Understandable. But once I pay the balance due, the hold is supposed to be lifted. However, in order to have the hold lifted, I have to call some office at Northwestern and speak to someone. Why? Why can’t these two systems talk to each other? And if I pay my balance on the weekend, why do I have to wait until Monday to get my hold released? Absolutely ridiculous.

Have any more ideas? Let us know in the comments.

If you were watching CNN last night, you might have noticed that Jessica Yellin was beamed into Wolf Blitzer’s studio all Star Wars-like. While nerds across the Internet are claiming that CNN’s hologram isn’t a true hologram, it’s still pretty damn close and still pretty kickass. Singer Will.i.am was also beamed into the CNN studio from Grant Park that same night.

Gizmodo has a good article on how it all works.

While the polls are indicating an Obama smackdown, there is still a slight chance that Obama won’t be moving into the White House come January. If that scenario becomes a reality, Chicago storefronts might see a few bricks hurled through their windows. So for those of you heading downtown this Tuesday for Obama’s sold-out rally in Grant Park, we’ve talked with Assistant Northwestern Police Chief Daniel McAleer and prepared a handy riot survival guide.

Tip 1: Walk or cab your way out quick. If you can find a cab outside of the chaos, hail it. Tell the driver to avoid all major roads. North Michigan Avenue and Lake Shore Drive are big no-nos. The 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention riots — some of which took place at Grant Park — and the 1992 Los Angeles Riots were examples of rioters blocking major intersections, making it impossible for cars to get through. If you need to walk your way out of the situation, stay in well-lit areas. McAleer says that while side streets might seem like they are safer when walking, “you might just be taking yourself out of one bad situation and putting yourself into another.”

Tip 2: Avoid mass transit. The El, especially the parts of Red Line that are underground, is a particularly dangerous place. If enough people clamor in front of an El train, it ain’t going to move. Back in 1984, rioters in India’s 1984 Anti-Sikh protests incapacitated buses and trains running in every direction to use them as shield against police force. Yikes. The situation becomes worse underground. If rioters enter the El’s subterranean level, you’ll find yourself in one hell of a mess. And if the police decide to throw tear gas down there, it’s not going to dissipate anytime soon.

Tip 3: Don’t head toward police lines. Usually when you find yourself in a dangerous situation, you gravitate toward Officer Friendly, right? Wrong. Walking, running or driving toward police lines can be easily interpreted as a threat in the eyes of a riot control officer. “Officers will be responding to the scene,” McAleer says, “they will be there to stop the situation that’s happening.” Armed with tear gas and riot control weapons, these guys are not the people you want to barge through in order to find safety. And because rioters typically don’t have a dress code that they follow, your best bet is to get away and stay away from the front lines.

Tip 4: Get inside and stay there. “Generally,” McAleer says, “people tend to do civil disobedience in the streets.” If you can find a building that is still open to the public, McAleer says it is probably best to get inside. Once inside, treat the space as though you were experiencing a natural disaster: Avoid windows and doors. Rioters will tend to want to smash and break them in. While riots can sometimes last for hours — or even days — they tend move like a storm at sea. Once you deem the area riot-free, safely make your way out of the building and onto safer ground.

Tip 5: Trust your instincts. “If you think it’s okay to stand in the crowd and wait for a riot to pass,” McAleer says, “you’d be making a mistake. You need to trust your instincts and get out of the situation.” With the majority of the police controlling rioters, it will be up to you to direct yourself to safety. Put complete trust in that almost-Ivy-League brain that your parents gave you.

While McAleer says that he hasn’t heard of any expected rioting in the city (the Chicago Police Department was unavailable for comment on this story), he says that it’s always best to expect the worst. And just because the Gallup polls are indicating a major celebration for Chicago Democrats, it doesn’t mean that there won’t be a riot. After the Los Angeles Lakers won the NBA title in 2000, L.A. fans rioted. Why? Who knows. Some people just enjoy a good riot. Let’s hope Obama fans don’t fall into that demographic come election night.

I have no words. Why is the dog sitting on the iPhone? Is he using the vibration function as a pleasurement device? Why is the dog talking? Does anyone speak Japanese? I knew I should have tried harder in school. My mom always told me that I wasn’t the quickest gazelle in the lion hunt. This post is getting very degrading, very quickly. I’m going to go think about voting for Obama tomorrow while dreaming about how Palin could have been America’s first VPILF.

This post made just about as much sense as the people who read this blog: None. I’ll try better next time, promise kids.