Excess all excess wrote:
I'm a freaking distance runner - I can't do anything in moderation. Everything I undertake has to be balls-to-the-wall or I just can't do it.
Boom goes the dynamite.
Excess all excess wrote:
I'm a freaking distance runner - I can't do anything in moderation. Everything I undertake has to be balls-to-the-wall or I just can't do it.
Boom goes the dynamite.
TLDNR
CGBatch wrote:
categorically wrote:Before prohibition the cer capita consumption of alcohol was 1.6-1.8 gallons of pure alcohol per year. If it was 4% beer that would be more than 15 beers per person per day!
Your math is wrong. Even at 1.8 gallons times 128 ounces you get 230.4 ounces per annum. A 4% beer at 12 ounces contains 0.48 ounces of alcohol. 230.4/0.48=480 beers. At 365 days thats roughly 1.315 beers per person per day.
Yes, yes. So sorry, I meant to say ounces of beer. It is 15 ounces of beer per day. The current level of consumption is less than half of the pre-prohibition high.
glorifically wrote:
categorically wrote:I think what you should be asking is - when did drinking alcohol become so passe?
Before prohibition the cer capita consumption of alcohol was 1.6-1.8 gallons of pure alcohol per year. If it was 4% beer that would be more than 15 beers per person per day! More than 2 liters of hard liquor for every man, woman, and child!
Did you ever wonder why we measure oil production in barrels? Well, in the early days of oil drilling they were looking for a cheap container to store the oil so they just grabbed what was available in abundance - empty whiskey barrels. Yes, there was a time when consumption of whiskey was so much higher than consumption of oil that they literally grabbed the empty whiskey barrels and filled them with oil. Soon it became part of the lexicon to ask how many barrels of oil a well was producing.
So... excessive drinking was acceptable when the greatest risk was only to yourself, but once the automobile became the transportation of choice the risk was transferred to everyone else and public drunkenness wasn't so cool anymore. That opened the door for a new type of rebellion through binge drinking. I don't know when that happened... maybe the 40s or 50s, maybe sooner.
At least that's how it seems in the US, where our culture and urban landscape has evolved around the automobile. In European countries people are introduced to alcohol at a much younger age, but they don't go on vomit-inducing benders like the youth of the USA. They also don't drive often (most don't own cars) or travel far from home to get wasted. They laugh at us for the fact that we have a drinking age. We're supposed to be the land of the free, but people take that for granted and now we have nanny-state shit like drinking ages because people can't control themselves and respect others. What's even more strange is that the so-called "glorification" of drinking is usually limited to the cheapest, lightest, grossest beer possible. It becomes quantity over quality. A couple dudes sitting around drinking a locally crated organic microbrew or a nice glass of wine isn't glorification, it's slamming crap beer and doing keg stands with your boys, hopefully until you pass out because that's hard-core and shows that you know how to party.
I have personally drank with non-Americans (I'm American myself), and they like to get drunk just as much as us.
I have personally drank with non-Americans (I'm American myself), and they like to get drunk just as much as us.
If not more! Asians make Americans look like lightweights.
In business in the US, at least there is an attempt to act responsible and promote drinking in moderation at work get togethers - unlike business in Asia, where you must guzzle whiskey after whiskey and if you miss downing your glass with your colleagues you bring shame upon yourself, bad luck to the company, and jeopardize closing the deal! The most extreme binge drinking events of my life were after age 35, in Asia.
Jesus didn't change wine into water
Jeffster!!! wrote:
Here's a little background on Johnny Appleseed who spread apple seeds around the country- so people could make alcohol.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2141/whats-the-story-with-johnny-appleseed"Here's something else you probably didn't know. In the 1700s and 1800s, most apples were grown not for eating but for making hard cider. Johnny Appleseed didn't just bring fresh fruit to the frontier, he brought the alcoholic drink of choice.
Cider was safer, tastier, and easier to make than corn liquor. You pressed the apples to produce juice, let the juice ferment in a barrel for a few weeks, and presto! you had a mildly alcoholic beverage, about half the strength of wine. For something stronger, the cider could be distilled into brandy or frozen into applejack (about 66 proof). In rural areas, cider took the place not only of wine and beer but also of coffee, juice, even water.
We stopped drinking apples and started eating them in the early 1900s. The Women's Christian Temperance Union publicized the evils of alcohol, the movement towards Prohibition was gaining momentum, and the apple industry saw the need to re-position the apple. "An apple a day keeps the doctor away" was an old adage, dating from the late 1800s, that was updated into an advertising slogan, promoted by apple growers fearful that prohibition would cut sales. We can thank prohibition for shifting the image of the apple to the healthy, wholesome, American-as-apple-pie fruit that it is today."
MMMM...Applejack. The drink of champions. Added plus is you can make it yourself without a still. Gives you something to do when the lake is frozen.
the swoon one wrote:
"While no one knows when beverage alcohol was first used, it was presumably the result of a fortuitous accident that occurred at least tens of thousands of years ago. However, the discovery of late Stone Age beer jugs has established the fact that intentionally fermented beverages existed at least as early as the Neolithic period (cir. 10,000 B.C.)"
So technically alcohol is ok for the Paleo diet.
I used to drink a lot, but don't drink anymore. January will be 4 years.
I drank because it made me feel like an adult, like I was cool, like I was fitting in with everyone else my age...and it gave me(and everyone else) an excuse to deviate from normal behavior to insane behavior, and said behavior was "hilarious" to everyone.
Once I left college and a college town, the dynamics changed, the purpose of alcohol became more of an escape from the hard work week, and a common ground for those I worked with, and just about everyone else I knew. I realized that I was drinking about 4 times a week, and it did some pretty disastrous stuff to my mind and body. Simply put, the cons far outweighed the pros.
When I was deciding whether or not give up drinking, the analysis revolved around "how am I ever going to celebrate anything, watch sports or hang out with friend XX(because our friendship is based on drinking)"...it was at the point, I realized how sad my life had become, and how empty everything was.
I a lot of people that drink and they are fine, respected individuals, and I would never hold their choice to consumer alcohol against them. However, I feel that I found plenty of good reasons not to glorify alcohol, and how much more frequently it can be detrimental, compared to innocent.
Always carry a flask of whiskey in case of snakebite and furthermore always carry a small snake.
I almost did my thesis on the history of alcohol consumption and production years ago(to note, I abstain). I feel like I could go on forever on this, but some quick points. Archaeologists found beer mug containers from cavemen, so it dates back long ago.
Beer/Wine/Alcohol have been linked to feretility gods/dieties throughout history and civilization. Osiris, Tezcatzontecatl, Dionysus(Bacchus), Liber, Silenus, Mbaba Mwana Waresa. Many had cult followings that promoted drunkeness, and were said to have created the first drinks on earth. Ancient Macedonians used drunkeness to define masculinity. Drunkeness became more common in Rome as politial figures fashioned themselves as casual drinkers. Also in Norse Mythology, mead is served in Valhalla by the Valkryies. Not even going to touch on the Middle Ages, and the ties to Christianity.
It has been around forever, despite numerous attempts to limit consumption. The culture isn't going anywhere.
Excess all excess wrote:
I'm a freaking distance runner - I can't do anything in moderation. Everything I undertake has to be balls-to-the-wall or I just can't do it.
Exactly this. I rarely go out for a couple of drinks or have a beer with dinner. But when i'm at a party or a club then it's time to DRINK. And the whole European's don't get drunk stuff is complete shit, i'm from the west of Scotland, drinking should be a national sport.
mwwwin wrote:
I dont drink wrote:Never had a sip of alchohol, never will.
One of the best moves you'll ever make - the $ you'll save, hangovers you'll miss, DUIs you won't get, health you'll have...nothing good comes out of drinking...
^^^^ All of the above are true. An article last year revealed that nobody who finished in the top ten at NCAAs in 2010 has ever even had a sip of alcohol. Google it.
I've personally drank with Ryan Hill from NC State (he didn't get drunk, but definitely drank a few), so if he can manage top 10 this year that will end that run.
Drinking in moderation for leisure and taste is consistent with the philosophy of Aristotle which posited that the sensual pleasure is good and that moderation is necessary and noble. There was a competing philosophy called hedonism that posited that we should do what feels good sensually as we determine it, regardless of any so-called "noble" values.
The Romans were known to feast to excess, including drink. This hedonistic mentality went so far that they took pleasure in the killing of Christians as sport in the Colliseum.
In modernity, Skinner and Pavlov, behavioralist psychologists, discovered that we can condition animals to respond to new stimuli by tying the stimuli to something that the animals already respond to. For example, Pavlov would ring a bell before feeding a dog. Then, after weeks of this training, he rang the bell and did not feed the dog and observed that the dog was now salivating. The dog was not salivating to food anymore, but the new stimulus, the bell.
It was after this that marketers decided to use this knowledge on humans. They started putting half naked or tight-clothed women in advertisements about unrelated products such as beer and cars. Men already had a natural pleasure response to the women. The animal part of man now responds with a pleasure response to this new stimuli of "car" or "beer."
In order to prevent being trained like an animal, a man would need to slow down his life and engage in earthly and spiritual contemplation. These marketers used these techniques after the Industrial Revolution. People were already busy, busy, busy because capitalism promises reward for work. People came to view duty and work as the be all and end all, as supported by philosophers Kant, Descartes, and Marx. People were no longer valued for simply being (existing) but now for what they "do." As people were being viewed as objects for use more and more, men were ready to think of women as objects for use. This occurred at the same time as men were to busy to engage in contemplation, the highest form of truly human activity, thus they fell to the marketers animal-focused marketing tactics.
The media also contributed to this. There has always been a slow trend to lower moral standards in media and to encourage acceptance of a hedonistic, anything goes mentality. What we have today are movies like American Pie, with main themes of "Let's compete to see who can get sex from these women by prom." In these movies, sex and drunkeness are glorified, akin to the mentality of the Ancient Romans.
The lowering of moral standards are not an accident. the media has always primarily been run by enemies of the Catholic Church because it is the Catholic Church's who has not wavered throughout history. One Doctor of the Church, Thomas Aquinas, was promoting the "all good things in moderation" philosophy along with the philosophy that emphasizes seeking "truth, goodness, and beauty," at the same time as Martin Luther gained popularity. Many other events occurred at this time, most importantly the French Revolution. The French Revolution was a Luther-like revolt against the Catholic Church. This was the beginning of the end of the people's trust in the Aristotelean and Catholic doctrine of "all good things in moderation" along with the quest to seek "truth, goodness, and beauty." Contemplation died. Industry became king. The people had no true moral compass anymore. Notice that Descartes was a French scholar. This is not a coincidence. It is at least indirectly related to the results of the French Revolution.
Basically, people who do not have our best interest in mind as human beings are in power. Hedonists control the media and are intentionally lowering our moral standards and numbing our consciences so that over time they can make more and more money through the marketing and selling of this or that to humans who have lost the ability to contemplate.
Even in old movies, a beautiful woman in a war film was whisteled at by a group of soldiers. This teaches those with a numbed mind to idealize a woman for her looks. The guy in the movie who gets the beautiful woman is glorified, idolized. This trains our numbed minds to want to do the same, like monkeys. If somehow, we can associate ourselves with or conquer this "thing" of beauty, then we become all-powerful too. Once this mentality has been set, then it is easy for marketers to associate alcohol with the "idol."
All that said. A fine wine for taste and leisure is a good thing. I advise not to miss out on it. All good things in moderation... even if you hate the Catholic Church.
Never had a sip of alchohol, never will.[/quote]
One of the best moves you'll ever make - the $ you'll save, hangovers you'll miss, DUIs you won't get, health you'll have...nothing good comes out of drinking...[/quote]
^^^^ All of the above are true. An article last year revealed that nobody who finished in the top ten at NCAAs in 2010 has ever even had a sip of alcohol. Google it.[/quote]
google it under 10 liars
One thing I should verify here. Catholic philosophy and theology would approve of appreciating the beauty of a woman, but would disapprove of thinking of her as an object for use, to lift oneself up over others. A woman's inherent dignity is beautiful and must be protected by men.
As an aside, think of how the marketers linked these events/objects... football (glorified violence), beer (glorified drunkeness), and using women as objects (glorifying oneself). Football, beer, and women are good. The way that media has linked them to numb our minds is diabolical.
"I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day."
Frank Sinatra
"Alcohol may be man's worst enemy, bible but the bible says love your enemy"
Frank Sinatra
Right after Pre drunkenly crashed his car into that rock. So chill, brah.
James R. Beam wrote:
I have personally drank with non-Americans (I'm American myself), and they like to get drunk just as much as us.
If not more! Asians make Americans look like lightweights.
In business in the US, at least there is an attempt to act responsible and promote drinking in moderation at work get togethers - unlike business in Asia, where you must guzzle whiskey after whiskey and if you miss downing your glass with your colleagues you bring shame upon yourself, bad luck to the company, and jeopardize closing the deal! The most extreme binge drinking events of my life were after age 35, in Asia.
The Asian businessmen are in a whole different leauge in getting hammered. It might stem from the fact that their whole upbringing was rigidly centered around eductational achievement and competition. That pressure is nothing like our educational system. We let are kids have fun and still have more fun in college.
I was drinking at a small bar near a hotel where a group of Japanese guys looking to potentiall invest or to purchase a local factory. All they wanted was American whiskey. Jack Daniels mainly. I talked them into trying Makers Mark. All guys in their 30's to 50's. All dressed in suits which stood out in a blue collar town. And all tearing it up and the goal seemed to get as drunk as possible at that point. It was pretty funny but interesting in a cultural stanpoint.