Google Brews a Pilsner

Google has joined with Delaware boutique brewer, Dogfish Head to produce a Belgian Dubbel styled beer, URKontinent. Our favorite search behemoth even brought a list of recommended ingredients to the blending table, including its own honey, pulled from its Californian beehives. This unlikely partnership has culminated in a hearty brew just in time for what looks to be a steaming hot U.S. summer. Named after the original super-continent, the collaboration conveniently exploited a broad swath of Google’s international employees, the Dogfish Head-Google brew team surveyed thousands of Google’s employees around the world, quizzing and poking at what they’d like to see in a beer. A smaller – executive, no doubt – team from Google then worked closely with Dogfish brewmiesters to refine the concept for the beer, create the recipe, track down the assortment of obscure ingredients they had settled on and ultimately brew it. M★S  READ MORE

Midweek Chill-pill: Northern Lights Time-lapse [video]

It’s got to be half way through the week, doesn’t it? Fag it, it’s time for a chill, a little midweek meditation. Check this STUNNING time-lapse from those fantastic Finns at Flatlight. It was shot earlier this year in several locations throughout Finnish Lapland. Just to set the mood, temperatures can plunge as low as -50°C in the winter and the sun is not seen for days on end during the polar night (kaamos). By contrast, summer brings out the Midnight Sun and temperatures can occasionally rise to 30°C, although summer temperatures in the 10-20°C are mostly the norm. July is the warmest month. Flatlight Films has created this beautiful time-lapse montage of the aurora borealis, the time-lapse is a commercial for Visit Finland.  Lapland is the Wild North of Finland and the last refuge of Finland’s Sámi people, who subsist on reindeer herding. There isn’t too much history to see, the end of the Second World War, retreating German troops implemented a scorched earth policy to punish their Finnish allies for agreeing to peace with the Soviet Union, razed everything in their path. By the time they were done, 100,000 people had fled, 675 bridges blown up, all major roads mined and the capital Rovaniemi had only 13 houses left standing. But then, people don’t come to Lapland for the architecture, they come here for the nature. While there are no craggy mountains or fjords here, the endless pine forests and the treeless rounded fells (tunturi) poking out between them can also be breathtakingly beautiful. Throw us a pair of mittens and a sensible hat and away we go! V★P READ MORE 

READ A BOOK! Adam Mansbach

Childrens books, hmmm . . .  The problem with this genre  is the audience, without which it would be an admirable, even honorable calling. So lets imagine they don’t exist, lets imagine writing a childrens book that only the most lowbrow or hippest parents would ever read to a child. And hey presto, it’s been done already. Go the F**k to Sleep by Adam Mansbach with illustrations by Ricardo Cortes is an <R> 18+ childrens book. Mansbach is surprisingly - not – a professor of fiction at Rutgers University. His previous scribblings include Angry Black White Boy and The End of the Jews - for which he won the California Book Award for fiction in 2008. If you’ve read any of my rants, you’ll know that I despise children, they’re a necessary evil, a little like botox. Unfortunately they exist and any opportunity to take the upper-hand is grabbed with glee. Mansbach has created a wonderfilled thing in Go the F**k to Sleep, he’s allowed the childless among us to grin at the antics of breeders, for this I thank him. Oh the book. buy it, read, stick it on a coffee table. There’s also an outstanding Audio Book, read by a man who’s voice was made to cuss, Samuel L. Jackson D★D READ MORE

Quote of the Day: Oscar Wilde

Shut The F_ck UP: Leisha Hailey

The L-Word Actress was booted of plane for swearing – not kissing. Lesbian actress Leisha Hailey and her girlfriend Camila Grey were escorted off a plane as it sat at a Texas airport because of their potty-mouths, not their passion lips or tongue tangling. A Southwest Airlines spokesperson said the couple became profane after being reprimanded for what actress Leisha Hailey characterised as “one modest kiss” Hailey immediately jumped onboard Twitter accusing the airline of Lesbian Hating and called for an immediate boycott of Southwest Airlines. Hailey has got to be thanking her lucky starlessness for the incident! She’s been thrown back into the international media spotlight – for 12 minutes. Halley’s publicist Libby Coffey said the encounter was real and was “absolutely not” done as a publicity stunt. Hailey and girlyfriend Camila Grey also denied in a statement on Tuesday that the affection they showed toward each other was inappropriate. READ MORE

Seriously! Thai Breast Slapping Therapy?

At highpants we’re pretty serious about breasts, we’re forever trying to figure out how to get them on this front page without google kicking our ass to the gutter end of the interweb. GOT ONE! Breast Slapping! We jest not, and guess where – Thailand! Yeah Yeah, back it all up a moment. This isn’t some odd webcam sport or peep show, eeew. It’s a natural therapy for breast augmentation, plastic surgery free breast enhancement, and they do bums and faces as well, separately we assume. While Khemmikka Na Songkhla’s slapping can do wonders, she admits there are some women even she can’t help. If a woman’s breasts are too small, or if she is too skinny, she advises her to plump up before coming to see her. If she doesn’t have anything to work with??! Keep that in mind before you get on that big bird to Thailand. D★D READ MORE