Britain and Ireland argue over which is the Capital of Binge Drinking. Can’t these crazy kids just get along?

This comes under the category of Bad Ideas From Science We Really Could Have Done Without, like weaponized anthrax, human cloning, and those little microphone headsets that let Madonna and Britney Spears perform. Russian scientists (who else?) have allegedly perfected a method for turning alcohol into a powder.
No. Just, no.
I just can’t stop thinking of ways for this product to be used for ill, and I haven’t really come up with a good use for it yet. Simply put, speed is the enemy of responsible alcohol use. Yes, the world already has shots, chugging, and the simple directive that “a cocktail should be drunk quickly, while it is still laughing”. But the idea that you could pop a couple of gelcaps and get drunk does not bear thinking on.
Now, be of good cheer. I don’t think that this is real.
First off, it comes from The Times of India (where I’ve encountered other less than credible articles), in an piece so badly written that I about pulled a muscle restraining myself from red-penning my own computer screen. The second and third paragraphs both have one or more sentences that repeat themselves verbatim.
Second, their source is “a web portal”, presumably from Russia. An unnamed Russian web portal? Dan Rather has higher standards of proof than that! Have you seen what passes for web journalism in Russia these days?
I unleashed my Google-fu on this. Why? Because I could.

You are drunk-blogging,
aren’t you?

No I am not.
Anyway, there is a St. Petersburg State Polytechnical University. On-line search function returns no faculty named Moskalev. There is a guy named Evgeny Moskalev from Russia who is on Facebook, who looks like the sort of joker who would perpetrate this sort of thing on the the poor Times of India, though.
For now, I’m going to file this threat to civilization under the heading of “Hoax”. Good on you Evgeny, if it is a hoax. and what the Hell have you done, if it isn’t.
By the way, I got this story from the HotAir Headlines, where AP finds this stuff for me, so I don’t have to, so that I can find it for you, so you don’t have to…

I’ve gotten a few good comments already, so more thoughts (and a layout-breaking video) below the fold… (more…)

My snarky comments in my last post about scientific studies came back to me this afternoon, as I perused my iPhone at the park.
A week ago I read (and I bet a lot of you did too) an article in the New York Times, entitled Alcohol’s Good for You? Some Scientists Doubt It. The article addresses controversy over a recent discovered, but uncontested statistical fact: Moderate drinkers live longer than heavy drinkers, but they also live longer than Teetotalers.
If no one contests the fact, why is it controversial?
You don’t follow politics much, do you?
Here is what lots of scientists are saying to argue that the obvious advice that arises from this fact should not be given:

“The bottom line is there has not been a single study done on moderate alcohol consumption and mortality outcomes that is a ‘gold standard’ kind of study — the kind of randomized controlled clinical trial that we would be required to have in order to approve a new pharmaceutical agent in this country,” said Dr. Tim Naimi, an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This a completely valid scientific point, but also a terrible basis for debate. How’s it both? Well, the central assertion that correlation is not causation is critical to good science. And that critical rule is the most often ignored best practice in science, by both lay people and scientists themselves. So it certainly is reasonable to say that you should not take this statistical fact alone as advising moderate drinking.
But there are numerous other studies that show more direct causation between alcohol consumption and a variety of specific health benefits and risks. How do we balance them? Dr. Naimi’s suggestion that we employ a process similar to the FDA’s approval process for new drugs is flawed for various reasons. First, as the article notes, the only sponsor for such a test that might allow the results to be trusted by both sides would be the Feds. And they won’t pay for such a process because whichever side comes out behind will hate them. Further, I would suggest that using a process that would reject Aspirin or Penicillin as possessing too many risk factors to be allowed, would certainly find against alcohol. Which is more an indictment of the government’s process of approving drugs than it is of alcohol. The fact is, like everything else on Earth, alcohol has benefits and risks. If we want to know how those sides tend to balance, I’d suggest that we have a study already done, to the goldest of standards, about how those risks tend to balance. The sample size is humanity….
To be fair, the argument Dr. Naimi and some others (don’t you just love when reporters use the phrase some scientists say…?) make against my last point is this:

…the two groups are so different that they simply cannot be compared. Moderate drinkers are healthier, wealthier and more educated, and they get better health care, even though they are more likely to smoke. They are even more likely to have all of their teeth, a marker of well-being.

The problem I see with this distinction is that the scientists seem determined to believe that these sociological differences could have no causative relationship with alcohol consumption. This is of course ridiculous. No one claims that alcohol use can and does change people’s life circumstances, at least in the case of heavy use or abuse. Why should we reject out of hand the notion that moderate alcohol use might actually promote some of those social advantages the researchers say distinguish moderate drinkers?
I’m not saying this is certain, but I contend that the differences they are discussing can’t legitimately be used as control factors since income and education may also be affected by alcohol use. In fact, a Forbes article by Arthur Brooks cites a study that purports to show such a relationship.

Moderate drinkers are richer than teetotalers, too. In 2001 the University of Michigan’s Panel Study of Income Dynamics found that light drinkers (one to two drinks a day) had a mean income of $49,000, versus $36,000 among teetotalers. This is a nuanced statistic; drinking may be associated with other variables (like education) that influence income. So the researchers did their best to strip these other causes out. If two adults were identical with respect to education, age, family status, race and religion, except that the first had one or two drinks each night after work while the second was a teetotaler, the drinker would tend to enjoy a “drinker’s bonus” of about 10% higher income.

Is this correlation or causation? Again, who knows? Especially since in this area we are leaving medical science and entering sociology. And sociology ain’t science, guys. Sorry, but it isn’t.
Finally, another article in Forbes (the one I was reading in the park while my kids played on the swings) makes a logical argument that in many ways trumps the entire debate. The article, by Jeff Stier is entitled I Choose Risk. And no, the fact that the term bikini waxing is found in the subtitle is not why I was reading it. Stier’s article is a general condemnation of how we are becoming increasingly, riskily, adverse to… well… risk.
Most of his article is devoted to the fish pedicures, video games, and the aforementioned bikini waxing, but he ends with linking the Brooks article and saying this about the correlation/causation question.

I believe that moderate drinkers have the ability to accept risk (unlike teetotalers) and manage it (as opposed to alcoholics). This is a discipline that they can deploy both at the bar and at the office. The ability to engage judiciously with risk in all facets of life may be a predictor of success–whether it’s part of a career, daily routine or society in general.

So let’s wrap up this rambling post. It is a fact that moderate drinkers happen to live longer than those who drink more or less. There are specific, well established health benefits from alcohol consumption, with more being found all the time. The are specific risks associated with alcohol use as well. In addition to living longer, moderate drinkers make more money, are healthier, and are better educated. Moderate drinking is a skill, employing talents that are valuable for success in all walks of life. And I’ll add that drinking is enjoyable and can improve our quality of life.

I’ll close with a famous quote by Benjamin Franklin that apparently was not quite what is usually reported:

Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.

Via my favorite Guy Oriented Website You (probably) Won’t Get Busted For Browsing, Asylum.com, comes an article from the Telegraph. It proves once again that Britain is the land of interesting alcohol research. (All booze studies in the US come to either or usually both of the following conclusions: Alcohol is the Debbil, or We were unable to prove that alcohol is the Debbil, so we need more funding study to get the goods on it.) The valuable information recovered from this study is: Alcohol goes to the head in six minutes.
Here are the money grafs:

Scientists set out to test the well-known saying that just one drink can quickly go to your head.
Only six minutes after consuming an amount of alcohol equivalent to three glasses of beer or two glasses of wine, leading to a blood alcohol level of 0.05 to 0.06 percent, changes had already taken place in brain cells.

I’ll leave it to you to spot all the peripheral silliness in these two one sentence paragraphs. To me the big question I popped from this was, drinking three beers through a straw while lying on your back in an MRI only leads to a 0.05 BAC?!?!?
Really?
I can think of only three explanations for this:

1. Brits drink really low alcohol beer. Verdict: Not bloody likely.
2. Brits have a different metabolic process from Americans. Verdict: Even less likely.
3. Brits drink small beers. Verdict: Ummm, I dunno.
4. MRI machines inhibit drunkenness. Verdict: Who cares?

Any readers from across the Pond want to help me out on this?

Image does not depict BAC of 0.05.

Anyway, I am aware that the actual study probably was aimed at those chemical changes in the brain, not how fast you get your buzz on, but the scientists’ PR people clearly know how to craft a press release to attract the attention of newspapers (and your humble blogger, apparently).
But what are we to take from this information? What can we do with it? I’m not sure. But the first fact I can think of is that when you slam a shot of tequila or chilled vodka, the wobbly feeling you get instantly is not intoxication, it’s just shock to your tissues. Also, while there is a delay between intake and effect, it’s probably not long enough to accomplish anything useful, so don’t try.
When you combine this the first rule of cocktail wisdom, A cocktail should be drunk quickly, while it is still laughing at you, I think it means you need to wait a while between drinks if you want any meaningful gauge of where you are, drunkenness-wise. Beyond that, does anyone else have a use for this, beyond being a basis for a cool James Bond scene?

One of the posts I always look for and read each morning in my RSS reader is Jacob Grier’s Morning Links. For those of you who don’t know of Jacob, he’s a genuine, free-range Libertarian, as in former Washington Think Tank-type Libertarian. In additions to writing about cocktails and coffee, he has political thoughts available to puzzle, challenge and generally irritate and piss off both Republicans and Democrats alike. He recently moved from D.C. to the Pacific Northwest (further demonstrating his intelligence), but then exposed his Beltway background by changing his blog’s name (but not the number of the website thankfully) to Liquidity Preference. Jacob, why on Earth did you rename your blog to sound like a white paper from the Rand Corporation?
Anyway, among his other virtues, Jacob posts a selection of political, culinary, and downright odd links. They are always interesting and occasionally (as in this morning) thought-provoking. Check his daily post out; it’s like Fark without the unsolicited fingers or Instapundit without the blender-blogging.
Anyway, biography done. Let’s talk about what he linked today that got me thinking: An article in Scientific American about taste in space. The article is about how astronauts find flavors quite bland in microgravity, making them crave hot sauce and shrimp cocktail. Now, given who I am and where I read about this, my thoughts immediately turned to how this will affect the offerings to be served at early versions of Ten-Forward.
Of course for now there is (officially) no drinking booze in space. Which is too bad, as any reader of this blog can tell you, since there will clearly be no real progress toward living in space until we get the details of cocktail hour ironed out. At least the Russians (of course) are making the right noises. It is a sad comment on our political environment, IMHO, that for all the effort and money being spent studying how to get a number of astronauts from here to Mars and back in a confined space without killing each other, there has been virtually no discussion of the simple expedient of a nice Manhattan. Mark my words, when NASA hires Gary Regan and starts sponsoring symposia at Tales of the Cocktail, you’ll know that we are getting serious about successfully going to Mars or colonizing the Moon, and not until.

Mission Specialist Gary Regan (Astro-Mixologist)

Oh, and by the way Gary. Quit kvetching about the metric system. The Administration does not have time for another massively unpopular imposition of change on our chosen lifestyle right now. And NASA in particular needs no more worries on that front. You don’t want to be splattered all over the Martian landscape before you stir up your first Mons Olympus Martini, do you?
Alright, what will we need to do for space drinking?
First off, space missions will go with cocktails, not beer and wine. Yay! But why? Because beer and wine are inefficient uses of space and mass. They also do not last as long or store as well. We will have to sacrifice freshly squeezed juice of course, leaving men like Gabriel Szaszko ineligible for space travel, but is that such a bad thing, really?

Inefficient spaceship design.

I’d hope that we won’t just go with those plastic foil baggies like I showed above. Let’s mix the drinks on board. Space cocktails will be solely for therapeutic purposes after all, and part of the simple, refreshing pleasure of a good cocktail is mixing it, or watching it being crafted for you. Also, one good bartender could replace a whole staff of astro-shrinks. More mass savings!
However, microgravity does present some obvious difficulties with standard drink serving. Getting the drink out of the shaker would be hard, and getting it to stay in a cocktail glass even harder. I think we can all agree that having astronauts floating around the cabin while snorking up globules of Sidecar might produce dangerous levels of silly. And I think we can all imagine the mayhem that would result should you help yourself to some of Buzz Aldrin’s G&T as it floated by….
Fortunately, NASA appears to have some people on staff who have their minds in the right place. Witness the shape of the new spacesuit water container:

But to return to the generally serious nature of this post, astronaut and obvious master mixologist Don Pettit really has invented an open drinking vessel that actually works in microgravity. The following video is seriously worth a look.

Just add a stem or some kind of lanyard to keep your hand from warming the drink, and we have the drinking vessel that will carry man and broad into space. (Note to NASA, dudes and chicks do not good astronauts make.)
And finally what will be the recipe for the Martian Martini? What will we put in our Moonhattans? And what will be the secret ingredient in the someday to be famous Tiki drink, the Tycho Bowl? Well, the article that Jacob linked to start all this wretched silliness suggests that our taste buds are dulled the longer we stay in space. We can expect therefore that more potent, bitter and sour, even spicy flavored cocktails will be the norm. Cross Cosmopolitans, Nutty Irishmen, and Vodka Gimlets off the list.
When the new space craze hits, expect ads with chicks in skintight spacesuits for Angostura Bitters to be as common as Grey Goose ads today.

Astronauts will also be wanting drinks with enhanced sour components. So expect drinks that use lemons and limes to outstrip those with OJ or pineapple juice or sodas. And we should see scientific advances is storing and preserving fresh citrus. But the once exotic Screwdriver will fade further from the public consciousness.
And I’d expect that more flavorful spirits will also surge again to the fore. Sorry, vodka folks. Look to whiskeys and rums, and especially gin to be the choice of the extraterrestrial generation.
So what will be the really popular cocktails in space? Lets see….
(I swear on my father’s grave that I was not going here when I started this post!)
A gin cocktail, with potent sour elements like lime, and front stage featuring of Angustora Bitters…
You know it, baby!

Moderation. Such a simple word. I’m not sure which has come first in our society: People not believing anyone is capable of moderation, or people not expecting anyone to practice moderation. Either and both are a shame, and not just as it applies to drinking alcohol.
Here’s an interesting article that is sure to drive the Moderation is Impossible crowd wild with incoherrent rage. (H/T: Instapundit)
Money Quote:

In sum, moderate drinking has links to good health, fortune, humor and character. None of this is to argue that your Bacchanalian excesses over the holidays were advisable. But as you contemplate your sins, be careful not to overcorrect in 2009. You might not like the results.