From the annals of questionable research

"Countries where people tend to value autonomy and harmony the most tend to drink more alcohol, our latest study shows. And countries where people are more likely to value hierarchy, security and obedience, tend to drink less alcohol."

Really? I guess it's time to pour myself a large vodka and drink a toast to Mother Russia, avatar of that famously harmonious society where everybody's too busy enjoying their world-beating levels of personal autonomy to get uptight about heavy stuff like hierarchy, security and obedience:

"Alcohol consumption in Russia stays among the highest in the world. According to the WHO in a 2011 report, annual per capita consumption was about 15.76 litres, fourth highest volume in Europe."

It's not too hard to guess where this study went wrong, just from skimming the article about it. This, for example, looks like a clue:

"We found that countries with populations that valued autonomy and harmony, such as France and Germany, tended to have higher average levels of alcohol consumption. However, countries such as Iran and Senegal, where people hold more traditional values dear, such as hierarchy and being part of a collective, drank less alcohol."

So people in rich countries like France and Germany are drinking more than people in theocracies where alcohol is banned, and/or poor countries where many people couldn't afford to drink as much, even if they wanted to? This doesn't exactly convince me that where a nation sits on the liberal/authoritarian spectrum is likely to be the most useful predictor of how much booze the people there are drinking.

"One regular black, thick, nasty, bitter, stinking, nauseous puddle-water to go, please."

Wake up and smell the coffee? No thanks, mine's a beer...

Certainly our Countrymens pallates are become as Fantastical as their Brains; how ellse is't possible they should Apostatize from the good old primitve way of Ale-drinking, to run a whoring after such variety of distructive Foreign Liquors, to trifle away their time, scald their Chops, and spend their Money, all for a little base, black, thick, nasty, bitter, stinking, nauseous Puddle-water: Yet (as all Witches have their Charms) so this ugly Turskish Enchantress by certain Invisible Wyres attracts both Rich and Poor; so that those that have scarece Twopence to buy their Children Bread, must spend a penny each evening in this Insipid Stuff: Nor can we send one of our Husbands to Call a Midwife, or borrow a Glister-pipe, but he must stay an hour by the way drinking his two Dishes, and two Pipes. 

From The Womens Petition Against Coffee (1674)

A "glister pipe" was apparently a tube used for administering enemas.* If you think that millennials oversharing on the Internet is a problem, just consider that sharing photos of your smashed avacado on Instagram, although seemingly pointless, is at least a more hygienic form of networking than swapping enema pipes with your besties.

Talking of oversharing, The Womens Petition wasn't just a complaint about spouses frittering away the family money at the coffee shop, then coming back wired and super late. The anonymous pamphleteer was also worried that this suspicious foreign beverage was sapping husbandly libidos and wasn't shy about describing the supposed effects of:

...the Excessive use of that Newfangled, Abominable, Heathenish Liquor called COFFEE, which Riffling Nature of her Choicest Treasures, and Drying up the Radical Moisture, has so Eunucht our Husbands, and Cripple our more kind Gallants, that they are become as Impotent as Age, and as unfruitful as those Desarts whence that unhappy Berry is said to be brought.

For the continual flipping of this pitiful drink is enough to bewitch Men of two and twenty, and tie up the Codpiece-points without a Charm. It renders them that use it as Lean as Famine, as Rivvel'd as Envy, or an old meager Hagg over-ridden by an Incubus. They come from it with nothing moist but their snotty Noses, nothing stiffe but their Joints, nor standing but their Ears: They pretend 'twill keep them Waking, but we find by scurvy Experience, they sleep quietly enough after it. A Betrothed Queen might trust her self a bed with one of them, without the nice Caution of a sword between them: nor can call all the Art we use revive them from this Lethargy, so unfit they are for Action, that like young Train-band-men when called upon Duty, their Ammunition is wanting; peradventure they Present, but cannot give Fire, or at least do but flash in the Pan, instead of doing executions.

Whether this Seventeenth Century tweetstorm actually  persuaded any of London's coffee shop hipsters to kick their caffeine habit, I don’t know, but someone was eventually bound to question the dubious assertion that potency was best achieved by abstaining from coffee and having a few jars of ale, instead.

Nobody knows the true identity of the Restoration Twitter egg behind The Womens Petition. The author presented as female, but some people think it was written by an angrily anonymous male troll. Me, I think it was probably written by a hacked-off brewer, (most likely a bloke, as this was well after the medieval heyday of the alewife).

There's some interesting background on The Womens Petition, along with the full text of the pamphlet, here.


*and also for the Seventeenth Century wellness fad of blowing tobacco smoke up a patient's bottom.

I'll have what she's having

Most mornings, I like a cup of coffee. Even a cup of generic instant makes the world seem a bit brighter and brings things into focus. It's a modest improvement, but welcome. But if I really want the day to go with a swing, maybe I should trade up to real coffee, specifically the stuff being advertised here (after all, why would you not trust an advert as a reliable source of information?):
If you want a bit of pep in your cup, this is clearly the stuff to buy. The weird thing about this advert wasn't that it's full of foreigners being amusingly strange, but how familiar it all looked. The advertisement may be Lebanese but, to me, the kitsch, the costumes, the scenery, the look and feel seem quintessentially British. How so? Because all you need to do is change the soundtrack and the whole thing is pure pantomime - your local theatre does Aladdin. Never mind the coffee, lady - he's behind you!

Well, I'm impressed enough to consider changing my morning brew - or at the very least, donning a fez to add a bit more pizazz to my morning coffee ritual.

via

The minotaur cyclops...

... is a faintly disturbing corkscrew that I just found when clearing out a drawer. Somebody probably brought it back from a holiday in Spain way back in the mists of time. Quite striking in its own starkly sinister way, no?

Supping with the Devil

Don't drink fake vodka that could kill you or make you go blind and if you know of anybody who's supplying this illegal, toxic muck, shop them to the police; it might save somebody's life and being nicked is no more than these criminal entrepreneurs deserve.

It's quite a simple good guys / bad guys story. Think about into the legal, but scarcely less harmful, tobacco industry and things get a lot more complicated. The industry continues to invest the profits from harming its customers into advertising, where it's still legal, lobbying, misinformation, moving to less regulated markets, sockpuppetry and fighting any form of restriction every inch of the way, with just the occasional tactical retreat. Operating on the right side of the law, the industry has a lot more freedom to market its product, to openly (if discreetly) influence movers and to shakers and recruit potential consumers than a criminal enterprise producing dangerous knock-off booze or selling illicit drugs.

On the whole, I think it's best to have regulated drug production on the right side of the law. The tobacco barons might be worse than socially useless, but at least they don't generally add the victims of turf war shoot-outs to their tally of avoidable casualties, or create violent, lawless ghettos where society can't protect ordinary citizens, or generate armies of desperate addicts, reduced to robbery, mugging or prostitution to feed their habit.

Looking at the reality of big tobacco is still a sobering experience for people like me who favour a relatively liberal harm reduction approach to drugs over that good versus evil fairy tale called The War Against Drugs. To make licencing and control work, policymakers would have to deal with people who don't mind harming their fellow creatures for profit. And somehow, restrict and tax their activities to the extent that they do the minimum amount of harm, yet not so much that it's not worth trading legally and substantial numbers of suppliers are driven back underground and trade illegally, like the knock-off vodka merchants.

That, I think, is why we're stuck with so much inefficient and punitive anti-drug legislation. Introducing a controlled market in drugs, calibrated to cause the minimum harm seems like the best way to go, but a portion of the benefits would inevitably be neutralised by the drug suppliers bending every rule in the book to translate some of their profits into barely legal ways of promoting their product and growing their market.  People would die, making the policymakers who did deals with ruthless and socially irresponsible suppliers look weak and compromised. And saying what you're for and against in stark black and white terms, rather than dealing in the precise shade of grey that yields the least worst solution in the real world, just sounds so much more sincere and satisfying.

It's easy to be angry at the irrationality and injustice of it all, but damn near impossible to imagine how to effectively sell harm reduction in a way that will trump the emotional appeal of going after the bad guys.

A pint of plain is your only man

Well, President Obama finally downed the proffered pint of Guinness with good grace and seemed to enjoy it. How unlike our own dear Queen who greeted the offer of a glass of stout with a 'what the hell am I supposed to do with this?' look, like a cat bemused by a Rubik's Cube, before stalking off. Given that her job consists entirely of waving, looking regal and being pleasant, she really ought to have done better than a guy with his mind on the fraught job running a not-insignificant country. So much for the effortless grace of the Royals outshining the lumpen efforts of all those grubby little elected presidents. Republic 1, Monarchy 0.

At least she didn't ruin the pint by mixing it with sparkling wine. Which reminds me of my favourite joke from Samuel Beckett:

Why did the barmaid sham pain?

Because the Because the stout porter bit her.

There's no one as Irish as Otto von Bismark

President Obama's visit to Ireland brought to mind a piece of General Ignorance that's been knocking around my head ever since I didn't pay proper attention in a school history lesson. I've spent the past thirty-odd years under the quaint misapprehension that the Black Velvet cocktail, traditionally made from a mixture of Guinness and champagne, was invented by Otto von Bismark. Fortunately, the Internet is on hand to correct my youthful inattention:

The drink was first created by the bartender of the Brooks's Club of London in 1861, to mourn the passing of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's Prince Consort.

So, nothing to do with the Iron Chancellor, then? Well, there is a slight connection:

In Germany, a version of this mixed beer drink made with schwarzbier (a dark lager) and served in a beer stein or beer mug is called a "Bismarck". According to Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, the "Iron Chancellor" supposedly drank it by the gallon.

Wikipedia

The other thing I remember about Bismark from school is that he suffered from terrible indigestion, and no wonder, if that was his tipple of choice. I've never tried a Black Velvet myself, although it sounds to me like a waste of both the black stuff and champagne, fit only for posh student parties. Anyway, you're welcome to join me in raising a glass of the black stuff (without added sparkling wine) to Barack and Otto. Sláinte!