Booze
sastyk | January 25, 2010We've all been down with colds this weekend, nothing really serious, just uncomfortable. Or rather, nothing really serious in my estimation. My husband, on the other hand, is always pretty sure he might be dying whenever any minor virus hits him. So far, though, he's still alive and seems to be more or less ok.
What Eric does inevitably get when he gets sick is the lingering cough. This is no fun, of course - but it does have its compensations. One of them is the homemade cough syrup. Most studies show that over-the-counter cough medicines are fairly ineffective - one found that a…
choofnagle | December 9, 2008If you're looking for some fun, family fighting, the place to go is Chuck E. Cheese's. Who knew? The Journal reports:
In Brookfield, Wis., no restaurant has triggered more calls to the police department since last year than Chuck E. Cheese's.
Officers have been called to break up 12 fights, some of them physical, at the child-oriented pizza parlor since January 2007. The biggest melee broke out in April, when an uninvited adult disrupted a child's birthday party. Seven officers arrived and found as many as 40 people knocking over chairs and yelling in front of the restaurant's music stage,…
sb admin | April 1, 2008According to a new study released today by the journal Euromed (Volume 1:3, April 1, 2008, pp 13-26), the so-called "French paradox" can be applied to other populations successfully. In an eight year, double-blind, randomized controlled trial, Americans from two major urban areas were fed either their usual diet, or a typical French diet, including, but not limited to, wine with all meals (except breakfast, if breakfast occurred before 8 am), foie gras at least three times weakly, butter-based sauces, and crusty bread. In another arm, an urban French population was given a "typical American…
denialism | March 20, 2008
The NYT reports on a this article by Tomas Grim of the Dept of Zoology at Palacky Univ purporting to show a negative effect on numbers of scientific publications for scientists correlated with increasing beer consumption.
According to the study, published in February in Oikos, a highly respected scientific journal, the more beer a scientist drinks, the less likely the scientist is to publish a paper or to have a paper cited by another researcher, a measure of a paper's quality and importance.
The results were not, however, a matter of a few scientists having had too many brews to be able to…
choofnagle | November 11, 2007Here's a fun one from the archives--Modern Drunkard Magazine's advice on how to beat an intervention. It includes this gem:
Counter Attack
Now that you've blunted their savage assault, it's high time to launch your own vengeful attack. The only people bold enough to conduct an intervention are those who consider themselves very close to you, so you most likely will know more than a little about their habits. And everyone, even Mother Theresa, has bad habits. Attack these flaws with a strident, yet deeply concerned tone.
denialism | September 4, 2007Also this weekend we also made beer. So it's time for another alcoholic photo-essay, this time on beer homebrewing and a brief history of beer in America.
It all starts with a beautiful mixture of malted barley. Here's about 20 lbs of barley, in Rick's recipe there is a mixture of light and dark grains, all imported from Germany, in a Rubbermaid cooler which homebrewers have found handles hot temperatures well. Beer is made from 4 ingredients, water, malted barley, hops and yeast (though not part of the final product - used for the fermentation).
In this country, before prohibition,…
denialism | September 3, 2007This was a good weekend spent making lots of different kinds of booze. A long hot summer led to some really nice chardonnay grapes at the parents' farm.
It wasn't a large yield, but the sugar, or brix were really high, hopefully yielding a nice end product. If you want to see how we make white wine, more pics are below the fold.
The first step is really easy. Starting early in the morning, before it gets too hot, you go out with clippers and start the harvest, chucking the grapes into containers called "lugs".
Then you get anyone willing to be helpful to start cleaning and sanitizing…
evolgen | August 30, 2007
A group of researchers from France and Italy have sequenced the genome of the finest grape varietal, Pinot Noir. The genome has hallmarks of ancient triploidization, shared by other dicotyledons, but there is no evidence for recent polyploidization. That meant sequencing and assembling this genome is easier than doing so for other agricultural plants that experienced genome doubling (and tripling) as a result of domestication.
Comparisons of gene content with Arabidopsis thaliana reveals an enrichment of various gene families responsible for protein products that produce favorable features…
evolgen | April 18, 2007
Two unemployed stem cell researchers have performed a pilot study indicating that the chief researcher's dog likes beer (reported here). They noticed that erratic behavior tended to increase with beer consumption, but his tolerance did increase over the course of the experiment. The dog also preferred certain beers over others, although the researchers did not have sufficient funds to test the dog's preference for anything better than Presidente. And they didn't see if he enjoyed salt in his beer either.
This research was partially funded by a New Jersey state research subsidy of $2.55 from…
evolgen | March 14, 2007This post is part of a series documenting Professor Steve Steve's recent visit to Philadelphia for the Drosophila Research Conference (aka, the Fly Meeting).
In the previous two installments of Steve Steve in Philly, we finally managed to meet up despite the best efforts of the staff at the Marriott to prevent our rendezvous, and we got Steve Steve up to date on the newest developments in fly pushing and Drosophila genetics. It had been quite a tiring day, so we ventured down to the hotel bar for a few drinks. Some of us were ready to hit the sack, but Steve Steve would have none if it; he…
evolgen | October 17, 2006Ben wants a house band, but he doesn't think it should be Phish. I agree. Phish sucks. A good house band should accompany a night of drinking. Let's just say Phish is the appropriate accompaniment for a mind altering substance not called alcohol. So who should be the ScienceBlogs house band? As much as I would love to nominate Sonic Youth (and I did in our back channel), I'm gonna have to nominate someone else. To find out who, click through to below the fold.
The Weakerthans (Les Plusfaibleque)
They're Canadian, which means they know how to drink. What else is there to do in Canada…
evolgen | September 26, 2006If it weren't for coffee, much of the research that gets done today wouldn't get done. Or so I am led to believe based on the reverence people seem to have for the sacred bean. Frankly, I'd trade a cup of coffee for a good night's sleep. Hell, I'd trade a cup of coffee for pretty much anything. That's because I don't drink coffee. That sound you hear is from all the coffee drinkers (yourself included, probably) letting out a gasp as they wonder how someone can function without a chugging liquid caffeine.
I don't really have a secret. I just never got addicted -- to coffee or caffeine. I've…
evolgen | September 17, 2006The Disgruntled Chemist was in Minnesota last week. He went out to a few local bars, and wrote about his encounters. Check out this one where met a girl who had martini olives in her beer. She claimed the olives were a substitute for the salt she normally put in her beer. Yeah, salt. SALT! In her beer. Salt. In. Beer. What's up with that?
I was intrigued. Now, this practice wasn't entirely new to me; one time when I went out to dinner with family I saw a guy pour salt in his Budweiser. I've been trying to figure out why he would do that ever since. So, I did some research*. Here's what the…
evolgen | July 31, 2006This week's Ask A Science Blogger deals with global warming and wine production:
I heard that within 15 years, global warming will have made Napa County too hot to grow good wine grapes. Is that true? What other changes are we going to see during our lifetimes because of global warming?...
I am not a climate scientist, and I don't know enough about viticulture to offer an informed response regarding the effects of temperature changes on grape production. I do know, however, that Napa Valley wines tend to be very generic stereotypes of the European varieties they're imitating. This wouldn't…
evolgen | June 19, 2006Humans have been genetically engineering agricultural crops ever since plants were domesticated. Notice the difference between maize and teosinte. Or how about what we have done to create modern
wheat. By either imposing an artificial selection pressure on a few important loci (in the case of maize) or encouraging larger, polyploid individuals (wheat), we have been manipulating the genome of plants for a long, long time. More genetic manipulation of agriculture below the fold.
The difference between the genetic engineers of yore and those of today are the tools at their disposal. The…
evolgen | June 13, 2006This one goes out to all the kids who don't drink. By kids, of course, I mean our wonderful readers -- spoken to in a condescending manner -- not minors. I would never encourage minors to drink. That's illegal, and everything that is illegal is bad. Real bad.
A paper in the pipeline at Cancer Letters reports that xanthohumol, a chemical found in Hops, possesses some anti-tumorigenic effects in prostate cells. Hops are one of the main ingredients in beer, so I will now be using the excuse that BEER CURES CANCER whenever I wake up in the morning with a nasty hangover. Take note beer drinkers,…
evolgen | June 9, 2006
A poll of 1,200 undergrads at 100 colleges in the United States found that 73% of the students think iPods are "in". One tenth of all old people know that "in" means "hip". Half of all old people think "hip" means "the thing I just got replaced". Drinking beer and stalking Facebook tied for second most "in" thing -- scoring affirmative amongst "71%" of the students. Sorry, got a little bit too aggressive with the quotes; I promise it won't happen again. Given my infatuation with alcohol, I figured this problem needed to be addressed. By problem, I mean the 29% who don't think beer is the…
evolgen | June 6, 2006I've learned that writing about alcohol is great for the ol' site meter. Even the teetotalers got active in the comments. Despite the rampant sobriety that seems to be spreading amongst sciency types, I still believe that alcohol is the lubricant that greases the scientific process.
But scientists -- being scientists -- aren't just interesting in drinking the alcohol; they also want to know where the critters that make it come from and how it gets produced. Of course, alcohol on its own isn't very enjoyable. That's why beer makers add things like hops to their brew, and wine makers try to…
evolgen | June 1, 2006Addendum: Older women who drink are smarter. Question is, are they MILFs or Cougars?
Scanning a few blogs that I rarely ever read, I came across a link to this post from this blog. The post is on Crooked Timber, and the link comes from the awesomely named Lawyers, Guns, and Money. The post starts out with some stuff about the falling birth rate in Europe, but then digresses into a discussion of drunkenness (which is carried on in the comments). It turns out there are people who have never been drunk. Ever. I do not know these people.
I'm wondering what fraction of my readership are members…
evolgen | May 9, 2006The NYTimes has an article on bartenders using some science tricks. I have a new favorite drink:
For the martini, they blend olive juice, vermouth and gin with xanthan gum and calcium chloride and drop it into a sodium alginate and water solution to form stable olive-shaped blobs. It is served as a lone olive in an empty glass; it reverts to a liquid state when popped into the mouth.