The Anti-Wood Woody

By Kimbriel Dean for Igniteme Woody Harrelson was my first crush. As a kid, all it took was a cute face and a big smile to make my heart flutter. As a naïve, sweet but not-so-bright bartender on Cheers, Woody was right up my pre-teen alley. Today, it takes brains, passion and heart to win me over. (Though a cute face and a big smile certainly don’t hurt!). Once again, I have a crush on Woody Harrelson, for all the right reasons this time around.In this day and age, we form opinions of celebrities based, in large part, on their lives outside of work. Whether or not that’s fair to them (I don’t think it is right for us to judge based on what we see in the media), it may be a good thing for the future of our world. Celebrities know how we expect them to behave with the money we give them in the form of movie tickets and music downloads. We know there are plenty of celebrities who pay lip service to their cause of choice, but some of them appear to live their word with integrity.…
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  • July 18, 2013
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Want Great Beer? You Need Clean Water

by Peter Lehner Some archeologists think humans learned how to make beer before bread—beer is that fundamental to human civilization. We know they were making beer at least 7,000 years ago, in what is now Iran. Ancient Sumerians, about 5,000 years ago, spiced their beer with cardamom and coriander. In 16th century Belgium, monks flavored their brew with bitter orange peels. I’ve always favored Belgian beer myself--my mother is Belgian—but I confess I’ve never sampled this version. Back then, beer (or ale) was sometimes a safer alternative to water, especially if you didn’t know where your water was coming from—heating during the brewing process would kill off most pathogens. Today, modern brewers rely on clean water to make their product. Because no matter how carefully craft brewers tweak their malt and hops and strains of yeast, at the end of the day, beer is about 90 percent water. That’s why craft brewers across the country are rallying behind the Clean Water Act, o…
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  • July 6, 2013
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