Beer To Be Classified as Alcohol for First Time in Russia
Andrew Osborn writes in the Telegraph:
The beverage is technically classified as a foodstuff for now, an anomaly that has allowed producers to avoid a sweeping new crackdown on alcohol advertising and night-time sales.
But a new Kremlin-backed bill that passed its first reading in the lower house of the Russian parliament on Tuesday will abolish beer’s special status, dragging Russian alcohol regulation into the 21st century.
“Normalising the beer production market and classifying it as alcohol is totally the right thing to do and will boost the health of our population,” Yevgeny Bryun, the ministry of health’s chief specialist on alcohol and drug abuse, said.
“We have been talking about and have wanted such a measure for ages. I take my hat off to the parliament.”
The new law would restrict beer sales at night, ban its sale in or close to many public places such as schools, and limit cans and bottles to…
This Is What Global Alcohol Consumption Looks Like (Map)
Who knew? Moldovans are the heaviest drinkers in the world, downing more than 18 liters/person every year. And the United States is well behind Europe, with most Europeans drinking nearly double as much as Americans.
So you’re not #1 in this respect, USA. Americans, what are you going to do about this? Via the Economist:
Another “fun” fact: Moonshine accounts for almost 30% of the world’s drinking…
U.S. Government Proposes In-Car Alcohol Detection Device To Stop Drunk Driving
This is sure to divide opinion nationwide. Is it a great idea to stop potentially homicidal behavior, or Big Brother-like governmental restriction on personal freedom? The in-vehicle Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety (DADSS), prevents a car from moving if the driver is above the .08 legal limit and “may hold the promise for stopping drunk driving before it happens,” according to U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. AP reports on a prototype that uses automatic sensors to instantly gauge a driver’s fitness.
NYC’s Ilicit Four Loko Underground
Since the FDA outlawed the sickly-sweet, caffeinated, vomit-inducing alcoholic drink Four Loko, a brisk black market has sprung up on the internet. Twelve-packs readily available, at inflated prices that will only rise, NBC New York reports:
It may be banned from store shelves but Four Loko is one of the hottest products on Craigslist.
A 4NewYork hidden-camera investigation exposed just how easy it is to buy the alcoholic energy drink from private dealers who stocked up before the FDA forced Four Loko manufacturers to eliminate caffeine from their recipe.
After responding to posting from an Upper East Side Four Loko dealer, WNBC was able to purchase a case of twelve cans for $80, a mark-up of more than 300 percent. Since November, dozens of sellers have posted craigslist ads charging anywhere from $4 to $8 per can. When the drink was legal, buyers paid only $2 to $3 per can.
The controversial drink, nicknamed “Alcopop”…
Do Intelligent People Drink More?
Hunter S. Thompson
Here’s a recent story from Discovery News as Liz Day writes:
The next time you’re inclined to enjoy an extra glass of wine, consider that it may be a reflection of your intelligence.
That is one of the findings from data from the National Child Development Study in the United Kingdom and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health in the United States.
Childhood intelligence, measured before the age of 16, was categorized in five cognitive classes, ranging from “very dull,” “dull,” “normal,” “bright” and “very bright.”
The Americans were revisited seven years later. The British youths, on the other hand, were followed in their 20s, 30s and 40s. Researchers measured their drinking habits as the participants became older.
More intelligent children in both studies grew up to drink alcohol more frequently and in greater quantities than less intelligent children. In the Brits’ case, “very bright” children grew up to consume nearly eight-tenths of a standard…
Australian Search Engine ‘Groggle’ Gets Pushed Off The Wagon By Google
Groggle got its name from the word “grog,” Australian slang for booze. A search engine intended to help users compare alcohol prices in Australian stores easily lends itself to the “grog”-”Google” mash up, but Google didn’t seem to think it was clever. After a six-month legal battle, Google has had Groggle change it’s name. It is now Drinkle. Instead of spending the money and time on such a lawsuit, Google should have used the site to find itself a drink. BBC News reports:
An Australian hoping to quench his nation’s thirst via the web has agreed to change the name of his alcohol search site after protests from Google.
Cameron Collie set up Groggle to allow users to find the best-priced “grog” in nearby stores.
Search giant Google complained at his effort to trademark the name, prompting a six-month legal wrangle.
Now the name Groggle has been changed to a more conventional title, Drinkle, ahead of…
Outlaw Professor Confirms Alcohol ‘More Harmful Than Heroin’
[disinfo ed.'s note: although we ran a story about this report previously, we decided that Aaron's post had sufficient additional information to run it too.]
Not sure about the “harm score” reliability, but the chart is worth a gander nevertheless; the BBC reports:
Alcohol is more harmful than heroin or crack, according to a study published in medical journal the Lancet. The report is co-authored by Professor David Nutt, the former UK chief drugs adviser who was sacked by the government in October 2009. It ranks 20 drugs on 16 measures of harm to users and to wider society.
Booze More Deadly Than Smack Or Crack
"King Alcohol and his Prime Minister" circa 1820
Fuel for critics of the war on some drugs, from AP via Yahoo News:
Alcohol is more dangerous than illegal drugs like heroin and crack cocaine, according to a new study.
British experts evaluated substances including alcohol, cocaine, heroin, ecstasy and marijuana, ranking them based on how destructive they are to the individual who takes them and to society as a whole.
Researchers analyzed how addictive a drug is and how it harms the human body, in addition to other criteria like environmental damage caused by the drug, its role in breaking up families and its economic costs, such as health care, social services, and prison.
Heroin, crack cocaine and methamphetamine, or crystal meth, were the most lethal to individuals. When considering their wider social effects, alcohol, heroin and crack cocaine were the deadliest. But overall, alcohol outranked all other substances, followed by heroin and crack cocaine.…
Connection Between Genetics and Alcohol Tolerance Found
While science still hasn’t decided whether or not alcoholism is genetic, they have found a gene that may answer why some people have a higher tolerance. From BBC News:
Experts say they have found a “tipsy” gene that explains why some people feel alcohol’s effects quicker than others.
The US researchers believe 10% to 20% of people have a version of the gene that may offer some protection against alcoholism.
That is because people who react strongly to alcohol are less likely to become addicted, studies show.
The University of North Carolina said the study aims to help fight addiction, not pave the way for a cheap night out.
Ultimately, people could be given CYP2E1-like drugs to make them more sensitive to alcohol – not to get them drunk more quickly, but to put them off drinking to inebriation, the Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research journal reported.
Continues at BBC News …
…
Single Malt Whiskey Distilled From The Elderly’s Urine
Even if you put it in a fancy bottle, whiskey is more or less just old-people sugar-pee. The Independent reports:
Introducing Gilpin Family Whisky, a project of James Gilpin, a UK- based designer and researcher focusing on new biomedical technologies, who has created a “public engagement tool” distilling diabetic whiz into “single malt whisky.”
The public health concept of the whizky is based on the fact that “large amounts of sugar are excreted on a daily basis by type-two diabetic patients, especially amongst the upper end of our aging population.”
As for how it tastes, he added, “I don’t have the benefit of aging my whisky for 100 years in a barrel but I do have the benefit of my candidates having lived in some cases 90 years of a very full life which adds a great amount of depth to the flavor.
World’s Oldest Champagne Found In The Baltic Sea
Divers investigating a 200 year-old shipwreck in the Baltic Sea found what is thought to be the world’s oldest champagne. And it’s sill drinkable! From New Tang Dynasty Television:
Heavy Drinkers Outlive Nondrinkers
TIME reports on a finding that contradicts what we’ve been taught our entire lives regarding the perils of alcoholism: people who are heavy drinkers live longer than those who have always been nondrinkers. (And that’s after controlling for nearly all the variables one could think up.) Do teetotalers die early due to missing out on the stress release that alcohol provides so well?
A new paper in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research suggests that — for reasons that aren’t entirely clear — abstaining from alcohol does actually tend to increase one’s risk of dying even when you exclude former drinkers. The most shocking part? Abstainers’ mortality rates are higher than those of heavy drinkers.
Even after controlling for nearly all imaginable variables — socioeconomic status, level of physical activity, number of close friends, quality of social support and so on — the researchers (a six-member team led by psychologist Charles Holahan of…
Beer With Highest Alcohol Percentage Sold In Road Kill Taxidermy
It’s understandable that the strongest beer ever made would be sold-out within a few hours, but what’s with the road kill? Brewdog released The End of History as part of their experimental, highly-alcoholic, beers. With an alcohol content equivalent to liquor, the beer is eclectically unique with its own beer cozy. The Telegraph details:
The stunt has been condemned by animal rights groups as “cheap marketing tactics”.
Twelve bottles of The End Of History ale have been made and placed inside seven dead stoats, four squirrels and one hare.
And at 55 per cent volume, its makers claim it is the world’s strongest beer.
A taxidermist in Doncaster worked on the animals, which were not killed for bottling the new drink, with some having been killed on the roads.
Outfits featured on some of the animals include a kilt and a top hat.
BrewDog, of Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire, created the ale, which is stronger than whisky and vodka.
The brewer recommend…
Scientists To Map Ozzy Osbourne’s Genetic Code To Find Out Why He is Still Alive
Silly scientists, Ozzy’s still alive because he’s a werewolf. We’ve known this since the ’80s. Elizabeth Scott writes on Sky News:
Scientists are to map Ozzy Osbourne’s genetic code in a bid to find out how he is still alive after decades of drug and alcohol abuse.
The former Black Sabbath frontman is only one of a few people in the world to have his full genome analysed. It is hoped the results from the £27,000 test, which takes three months, will provide information on how drugs are absorbed in the body.
Ozzy, 61, has lived a life that would presumably kill any ordinary person. Even the singer himself cannot understand how he has survived this long, recently describing himself as a “medical miracle” after going on a “bender” for “40 years.”
Struggle and Substance: Convicted of High Revolution
From Jaguar Press:
We are made sick in this world. Fed on garbage and medicated on fear, our bodies are reaching their toxic limit physically and psychically. Who could tell us not to get fucked up, when we have to deal with genocide, factory slaughter, and the perpetual betrayal of our democracy and freedom. When the tortures of capitalist society circle our heads like a bloody carousel, where is there relief? This article will examine briefly the relationship between alcohol and marijuana and revolution.
We find solace in the effect of altering our perception and the routine of addiction. Alcohol is one of our favorites, of course, and we get drunk and act stupid and laws get put on the books and the drunks go to jail. It’s subject to absurd levels of social control and cultural stigma so that we have a hard time breaking from the mind numbing routine—drinking at…
Moonshine Is Back In A Big Way
Apparently not just because we’re in a never-ending crisis, either. Time reports on why Moonshine is the trendiest bottle on the shelf:
“They call it that old mountain dew, and thems that refuse it are few…” So goes the old song, and it gets truer every month. Yes, the distilled spirit known as moonshine, white lightning, white dog, or simply white whisky is the liquor of the moment, bringing together whiskey geeks, home distillers, and high-end mixologists, all of whom find in the formerly clandestine rotgut a new means of expression, both for their palates and their politics.
Why is moonshine making a comeback? For the same reason absinthe did a few years ago. Because it’s delicious. Because it’s illegal. And because it’s cool. Moonshine, both then and now, is whiskey as it comes out of the still: no oak barrels, no caramel color, no aging. It’s just straight liquor from fermented corn or…
Drunken Mugshots Are Nothing New: Here Are Some British DUIs From 1904
Caught drunk driving a steam engine? Via the Daily Mail:
James Doyle, a labourer, was convicted of being drunk and disorderly in a public house in 1904.
Angry, bewildered and shame-faced these Edwardian drunks stare into the lens of the police camera.
They were ‘habitual drunkards’ whose offences included being caught while in charge of a horse, carriage and even a steam engine.
Issued a century ago, the drunks were given the equivalent of modern-day Asbos in that they were banned from being served in pubs because of their past behaviour.
Information was compiled by the Watch Committee of the City of Birmingham, which was set up by the police to enforce the Licensing Act of 1902.
The act was passed in an attempt to deal with public drunks, giving police the power to apprehend those found drunk in any public place and unable to take care of themselves.
Read More and see lots of photos in the…
Ever Listen to the Full ‘Cheers’ Theme Song Lyrics?
If you grew up in the ’80s watching American television, this show was a staple of NBC’s “Must-See TV” line-up on Thursday nights. Little did I know how badly these folks needed to go to a neighbor bar “where everybody knows your name” after hearing these lyrics:
Roll out of bed, Mr. Coffee’s dead;
The morning’s looking bright;
And your shrink ran off to Europe,
And didn’t even write;
And your husband wants to be a girl;
Drunk History: Nikola Tesla vs. Thomas Edison
On the latest Funny Or Die Presents, this is Drunk History: Nikola Tesla. If you think this is purely a joke, I’m afraid not …
On January 7th, Duncan Trussell drank a six-pack of beer, then a half a bottle of absinthe … and then he discussed a historical event:
Scientists Have Discovered Booze That Won’t Give You A Hangover
Tim Barribeau writes on io9.com:
Booze, for all its magical wonder, still has big drawbacks: You can’t sober up quickly, and you often get a hangover. Now Korean researchers have found a way of tweaking booze to limit the fallout — without cutting its strength.
Doctors Kwang-il Kwon and Hye Gwang Jeong of Chungnam National University studied the properties of oxygenated alcohol — booze with oxygen bubbles added — which is a popular concoction in their country. In these drinks, oxygen is added the way carbonation is usually added to soda, and the scientists wanted to know if these oxygenated beverages affected people differently than non-oxygenated ones. The answer was a resounding yes.
They ran three experiments using 19.5% alcohol drinks, and measured the speed at which people’s blood alcohol dropped to 0.000%. In other words: How fast did they sober up?
Read More on io9.com
