Politics & Law

The Absurdity Of Binge Drinking Statistics

January 11, 2012

This is one of those things that’s increasingly pissing me off, because it avoids real problems that some people have with alcohol in favor of trying to turn individual problems into an epidemic. It’s not. If anything, overall consumption of alcohol is decreasing. But it’s hard to get funding, finance addiction clinics and raise money [...]

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Hammurabi: First King Of Beer

December 23, 2011

I kept forgetting to post this nice piece about King Hammurabi, the Babylonian ruler responsible for mankind’s first set of laws, known as the Hammurabi Code. It ran in the San Francisco magazine Drink Me, in their October 2011 issue. The article, Hammurabi: The King Of Beers, goes into some deatil about the laws in [...]

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David vs. Goliath: Jester King Wins Partial Victory

December 20, 2011

You may recall that in late October Jester King Sued Texas Over Antiquated Beer Regulations. I just got a press release from Jester King Craft Brewery that the judge in the case has ruled in their favor on their first amendment claims, though he did reject their claims under the Equal Protection Clause and the [...]

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Occupy Pubs: A Glass Roots Movement

December 16, 2011

My good friend and colleague, Lisa Morrison — a.k.a. The Beer Goddess — just let me know about her latest project, and just in time for Christmas. She’s created a line of t-shirts, hats, stickers, iPhone cases, and so much more with a humorous nod to the Occupy Wall Street movement to show support for [...]

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Snacking Between Meals Leads to Alcoholism & Death

December 14, 2011

Before Prohibition became a reality, the prohibitionists used shameless propaganda to advance their cause, and it became increasingly absurd as time went on. When the temperance movement began in the 1830s, it was primarily against hard liquor, and beer was thought of as a drink of moderation, which by comparison it was. But over time, [...]

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Ken Burns Discusses Prohibition

December 13, 2011

I suspect many of you watched the Ken Burns documentary series Prohibition, based on the Daniel Okrent book Last Call, when it aired a few months ago on PBS. In the latest issue of Reason magazine there is an interview with Ken Burns, discussing the documentary. Since they mentioned that there was a filmed version [...]

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Christmas Beer Bans

December 12, 2011

With Christmas falling on a Sunday this year, apparently more than half of the states still have antiquated blue laws on their books, restricting alcohol sales on Sundays, Christmas or both. As of about a year ago, at least fourteen states still enforced some kind of Sunday restriction. But according to a report today on [...]

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St. Nicholas: Patron Saint of Brewers

December 6, 2011

While St. Nicholas is best known — in America, at least — for wearing red and white and giving presents to Children each December 25, he’s actually the patron saint for a number of professions, places and afflictions. His feast day is not actually Christmas Day, but almost three weeks earlier on December 6. That’s [...]

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Declines Of The British Pub Slowing?

November 20, 2011

In September, the British Beer & Pub Association released information regarding pub closures in the UK. Back in the 1970s more than 90% of all beer consumed in Britain was bought from the “on trade” — pubs and clubs. According to the British Beer & Pub Association this ratio had fallen to 51% from pubs [...]

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MADD Rates The States

November 17, 2011

According to a press release sent out by the neo-prohibitionist organization MADD yesterday, it’s the five-year anniversary of the launching of their Campaign to Eliminate Drunk Driving® program, which you can tell is all about the results since they went to the trouble to get a “registered trademark” on the name. I also find it [...]

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Fomenting Female Fear

November 16, 2011

The purported scientific journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research has just published another doozy, this one entitled The Legacy of Minimum Legal Drinking Age Law Changes: Long-Term Effects on Suicide and Homicide Deaths Among Women. The idea was to compare people drinking before the age was raised to 21 with when 18-year olds could still [...]

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Pink Beer … You Know, For The Girls

November 8, 2011

Apparently there’s yet another misguided attempt to reach women with the aim of tempting them to try beer by making the color of the beer pink. This time it’s a group of young South African women attending Durban University of Technology who came up with the idea for the beer, which they’re calling Pink Fantasy, [...]

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El Cerrito Brewpub Owner Injured By Police During Occupy Oakland

November 7, 2011

I was really hoping to avoid writing about the Occupy Oakland horrors currently going on in the city I used to call home. But last Thursday, Oakland Police apparently injured yet another war veteran — two tours, one each in Iraq and Afghanistan — simply trying to walk to his home, rupturing his spleen in [...]

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Societal Costs vs. Personal Costs For Alcohol

November 3, 2011

At first glance I thought my pals at Alcohol Justice (AJ) got their hooks in the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), because I don’t know anyone better at making up behaviors that cry out for personal responsibility that are ascribed to society (for the cost) and business (for the fault). Their absurd “charge [...]

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Drinking & Cultural Anthropology

October 28, 2011

BBC Magazine published online a couple of weeks ago an interesting piece on cultural anthropology as it relates to drinking patterns, entitled Viewpoint: Is the Alcohol Message All Wrong?. While the article itself I found compelling on its on, the way in which it was attacked in the voluminous number of comments is at least [...]

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Stop A Mate Driving Drunk: Legend

October 27, 2011

Monday, I posted some PSA’s aiming to prevent drunk driving in rural Australia — Prevent Mate Morphosis. They used something we’re not used to seeing here in the U.S.: humor. Now here’s another great PSA, this time from New Zealand, that uses a sense of humor to get its message across without pandering or using [...]

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