Thursday’s ad is again for Pabst, from 1940. It’s one of a series from around that time period that were all inside of a blue ribbon. I love the slogan at the bottom: “It’s Blended … It’s Splendid!” The opening tagline is priceless, too. “Order it with Confidence … Serve it with Pride.” I love that smirk on the waiter. But how about the elaborate sandwich — 4 fancy toothpicks! And why is there no beer glass on that tray, just the bottle?
Wednesday’s ad is for Rheingold from 1969 and uses baseball and the signs of a good player, showing a few of the qualities one might look for in a good ballplayer. Then it applies the same idea to beer, saying “Look for the sign of a great beer! The Rheingold 10 minute head.” Look at that mug, it’s all head. A generous head, yes, but one that takes 10 minutes to subside (which is my presumption as to what they mean) seems like suspect advice to me. Two fingers is pretty much ideal for most beers, but more than that and you’ll lose too much carbonation and flavors, and Rheingold at that time probably didn’t have much to spare.
As the Round of 16 is now over and there’s a couple of days break until the quarter-finals of the World Cup, I though I’d share some pretty cool artwork involving beer and the World Cup. A new design firm in Toronto, Moxy Creative House, has created a series of seventeen posters called Cheers! For the 2010 World Cup.
They design sixteen beer bottles to reflect each of the sixteen countries that made it to the semi-finals, including one showing all sixteen teams.
Then there’s one each for every nation, like this one for the U.S.A.
And here’s the Netherlands.
I asked Moxy president Danial Eckler why they used beer for the posters, and here’s what he told me. “The reason we chose beers is obvious, everyone loves to sip on one for soccer.” Also, they chose the retro look “because of soccer’s and the respective countries rich history” and the “minimalist style is a trademark of our creative company.” I just think they’re pretty cool.
Each of the posters is for sale, 11.75″ x 15.5″, for $25. Or you can get your favorite team plus the poster with all of them for $40, plus $5 shipping and handling.
Embedding is still not working, but you can see all 17 posters in my Flickr Gallery.
Often times, science conducts studies that test theories that most of us pretty much take for granted. A few recent examples include the fact that too many meetings cause stress and unproductive employees (Group Dynamics, March 2005), objects are harder to see when they’re farther away (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, Feb. 2005) and it’s harder to remember stuff and concentrate when you’re older (Journal of Experimental Psychology, May 2005). [From PopSci’s Science Confirms the Obvious.] I’ve always referred to such studies as “d’uh” studies, because the results are often so head-smackingly obvious. But they do have value since they do confirm and quantify things we take for granted and even occasionally disprove cherished beliefs.
A new d’uh study has just been published by the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. The study, entitled Parenting Style, Religiosity, Peers, and Adolescent Heavy Drinking, was conducted by two sociology professors, Steve Bahr and John Hoffmann, at Brigham Young University.
Here’s part of the press release they sent out:
Parents may be surprised, even disappointed, to find out they don’t influence whether their teen tries alcohol.
But now for some good news: Parenting style strongly and directly affects teens when it comes to heavy drinking — defined as having five or more drinks in a row — according to a new Brigham Young University study.
The researchers surveyed nearly 5,000 adolescents between the ages of 12 and 19 about their drinking habits and their relationship with their parents. Specifically, they examined parents’ levels of accountability — knowing where they spend their time and with whom — and the warmth they share with their kids. Here’s what they found:
- The teens least prone to heavy drinking had parents who scored high on both accountability and warmth.
- So-called “indulgent” parents, those low on accountability and high on warmth, nearly tripled the risk of their teen participating in heavy drinking.
- “Strict” parents – high on account ability and low on warmth — more than doubled their teen’s risk of heavy drinking.
About.com’s Alcoholism page added the handy chart below.
Researchers at Brigham Young University asked 4,983 adolescents between age 12 and 19 about their drinking habits and their relationship with their parents. As a result, the researchers identified four parenting styles:
It’s apparently only the first parenting type — Authoritative — that is effective in reducing binge drinking in teens. And that’s where the d’uh comes in. I’m going to guess that the authoritative style of parenting is more effective in a wide range of behaviors, because we’ve all seen or experienced the effects of other kinds of parents. Extremes are rarely a good idea. Too strict is bad, and so is too lenient. What a revelation! Goldilocks had it right after all.
But I would also suggest that such parents would teach their children about alcohol, possibly sampling them on it it a controlled environment, such as at dinner, teaching them about it, and modeling the behavior of moderate and responsible alcohol use. And these are exactly the kinds of steps that so many anti-alcohol groups are dead set against and have even made illegal in some states.
Anti-alcohol groups instead use fear and scare tactics to keep kids from drinking, a notoriously ineffective method. They preach abstinence and just saying “no.” MADD runs a program, with local law enforcement, where schools pretend a popular kid has been killed by a drunk driver and then use the grief (which is real to the kids) to scare them into pledging not to drink, causing all manner of emotional harm. These are not the actions of parents who are “supportive” and show “warmth” toward their children.
Curiously, while most news sources that picked up the press release titled their piece something along the lines of Parenting Style Influences Teen Binge Drinking, Parenting Style Can Prevent Teen Binge Drinking , Parenting style can prevent heavy drinking or Teens and Alcohol Study: After a Few Drinks, Parenting Style Kicks in, anti-alcohol groups ran a very different headline. For example the Mormon Times used the headline BYU study finds indulgent parents may aid binge drinking, ignoring entirely the fact that the study also showed that strict parents were similarly ineffective. In fact, not once in the entire article does the author ever even mention that “strict” parents — high on accountability and low on warmth — more than doubled their teen’s risk of heavy drinking.” Draw your own conclusions.
Likewise, the neo-prohibitionist organization Join Together titled their take on the study Being a Strict Parent Doesn’t Protect Against Youth Drinking, Study Says. As one commenter on their website points out, “shouldn’t the headline of this article REALLY read: ‘Kids with loving, engaged parents less likely to drink’? In other words, the STRICT-NESS of parents is not where fault lies. The headline is a bit misleading.”
But it makes sense in terms of such anti-alcohol policy and rhetoric, where the emphasis is always on the negative. Their whole focus was on what parenting styles didn’t work in keeping kids from binge drinking, ignoring entirely what was effective, at least according to the study. Why does that matter? I think it matters because it shows where the priorities lie with such organizations. They’re not interested in kids becoming responsible adult drinkers of alcoholic beverages. They want everyone to stop drinking, by force, coercion and whatever means necessary.
In the study’s abstract, the authors conclude as follows:
Authoritative parenting appears to have both direct and indirect associations with the risk of heavy drinking among adolescents. Authoritative parenting, where monitoring and support are above average, might help deter adolescents from heavy alcohol use, even when adolescents have friends who drink. In addition, the data suggest that the adolescent’s choice of friends may be an intervening variable that helps explain the negative association between authoritative parenting and adolescent heavy drinking.
In other words, it’s an upbeat attempt to figure out how to stop kids from binge drinking, suggesting what parental behaviors might be employed effectively. But having known my fair share of authoritarian parents (as well as overly indulgent), this is not something such people would respond to and it’s unlikely that many could change their behavior accordingly. As George Lasker explored in his book Don’t Think of an Elephant?, such parenting styles are fundamental to the values of various political groups and he believes a majority of conservatives follow the “strict father model,” which often (though no always) includes a lack of warmth — essentially what Bahr and Hoffmann describe as the authoritarian parent. Is there a connection? I would say “yes,” though I hasten to add that it’s probably not cut and dried. But in my own experience I would argue that many people who are politically and especially socially conservative are often the same people who are against drinking and are most likely to belong to a neo-prohibitionist group or at least be susceptible to their rhetoric, and that such group members disproportionately fall into that category.
So perhaps the real takeaway from all of this is that we should all be nicer to our kids, while not ignoring the obvious firm disciplines that are often necessary to teach important life lessons. If the findings in the ground-breaking NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children, by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, teach us anything, it’s that many of our cherished beliefs about how kids develop and learn are wrong. So it’s not a stretch to suggest that the conventional wisdom being used to stop kids from drinking is not working either. Kids are drinking and, if anything, are drinking more because they’re drinking underground and unsupervised. What we need to do is both model responsible drinking behavior and proactively teach our kids about alcohol in a warm and loving environment. D’uh.
It’s been all over the series of tubes that is the interwebs all morning, but in case you missed it, Sam Calagione from Dogfish Head Craft Brewery in Delaware, will be starring, along with Patrick McGovern from the University of Pennsylvania, in a new series on the Discovery Channel this fall. The show will be called BREWED.
Below is a portion of the press release.
Beer is the drink of the masses. If you look into a glass of beer you can see the past, present and future of mankind. Cicero lauded it, Genghis Khan fought for it and now Discovery Channel celebrates it with a world premiere series, BREWED, exploring the culture, history and variety of beer.
Meet Sam Calagione: maverick entrepreneur, family man and owner of Dogfish Head Brewery in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. As an ambassador to the world of craft beer, Sam travels the world to experience what every culture brings to its own special brew.
In BREWED, Sam shows viewers the other side of the bottle, sharing the stories of beer sub-cultures as well as exploring life inside The Dogfish Head Brewery. BREWED goes behind the scenes at Dogfish Head as Sam’s merry band of creative brewmasters concoct new taste varieties.
“BREWED taps more than just kegs and barrels, it unlocks a fascinating history of beer making, showcasing the ingenuity and passion behind our love affair with those alluring suds and how it played a role in building civilizations,” said Clark Bunting, President and General Manager of Discovery Channel.
Running a successful business also requires inspiration, so BREWED hits the road for the ultimate beer tasting road trip. Along with archeologist and beer expert Pat McGovern, Sam sets out to recreate “ancient ales” that have been discovered at sites around the world from Egypt to Peru. He travels to Rome to research old world Italian beers as inspiration for a new site in New York with Mario Batali. A visit to New Zealand introduces the idea of making the “first tomato based beer.” And back home, Sam is tasked to come up with a commemorative beer called “Bitches Brew” to celebrate the 40th anniversary release of Miles Davis’ famous recording.
“Beer has always been my passion. It is so much more than what you see in the glass. I’m excited to share the diligence, daring and creativity that we pour into our work,” said Calagione.
The show is being produced by Zero Point Zero Production, the company responsible for Anthony Bourdain No Reservations and Diary of a Foodie. I like the fact that Pat McGovern is involved. His book, Uncorking the Past: The Quest for Wine, Beer, and Other Alcoholic Beverages, is fascinating and he has a very interesting take on the history of beer. It’s certainly great to see beer finally getting a high profile television show.
Sam Calagione in the back room of the Toronado when I interviewed him for an Uncorked piece I wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle two years ago, and I also posted some questions that didn’t make the newspaper article.
Tuesday’s ad is for Pabst, from 1947. It’s one of a series from around that time period that were all inside of a blue ribbon. I love the slogan at the bottom: “It’s Blended … It’s Splendid!” Also, check out the expression on the guy’s face as he’s about to bit into that fried chicken leg. Is it the beer he’s leering at, or could it be the gal in the tight red dress? Take a look. What do you think he’s looking at?
This isn’t exactly news, the effect known as “beer goggles” — where after a few pints people appear more attractive — was confirmed in 2002 and the mathematical formula was announced in 2005. Whether Matt Damon wrote it out on a hallway blackboard one late night is still not known. But How Stuff Works (under the TLC Cooking imprimatur) has a nice summary of the formula.
The first study I recall seeing was in 2002, and was conducted by the University of Glasgow. Both the BBC and the Daily Collegian had the story. Then, in 2005, researchers at the University of Manchester stumbled upon the formula for how it all works. They also discovered that “alcohol is not really the only factor affecting the drunken perception of beauty. Other factors, according to their research, include:
The formula is laid out below.
Here’s how to decode the formula:
The formula works out a “beer goggle” score ranging from 1 to 100+. When ø = 1, the observer is perceiving the same degree of beauty he or she would perceive in a sober state. At 100+, everybody in the room is a perfect 10.
And one last odd finding of the second study. “A nearsighted, sober person who isn’t wearing his or her glasses can experience a beer-goggle effect equivalent to drinking eight pints of beer.”
I got confirmation last night on how exactly the proposed San Francisco alcohol fees will be applied. The actual language in the ordinance is incredibly vague and open to interpretation (and misinterpretation). My source has either spoken to several city supervisors or talked to others who have, a combination of the two, I believe. And here’s what we’ve learned. There’s good news and bad news, so to speak.
Despite the change in language — apparently an “ethanol ounce” is common European parlance — the proposed ordinance will still be applying the tax “per fluid ounce of alcohol,” forcing a lot of math and administrative headaches, to say the least. So every single bottle containing alcohol, even changing vintages, will require a formula be applied to it. For example, take a 12 oz. bottle of beer that’s 6% a.b.v. Here’s how it will work.
To say the least, it will be an administrative nightmare — primarily for wholesalers, brewpubs and self-distributing breweries who will be filing the reports and paying the fee.
Here’s a few more examples of what the fee would be for various alcoholic beverages.
And let’s not forget that the fee will be imposed at the wholesale level, meaning that it will be marked up and the fee passed along to consumers at a much higher rate, and then marked up again by the retailer or bar, whoever sells it to you and me.
Monday’s ad is presumably supposed to be funny in that time when most women were housewives incapable of much else, and certainly putting up wallpaper was beyond their expertise. She has that “I guess I can’t do it” look on her face, but I’m sure the beer will make it all better. It’s from 1958. In my household the opposite is true. I’m all thumbs but my wife is the handy one.
Zymurgy magazine, which is published by the American Homebrewers Association for its members, today released the results of their latest poll, asking their readers to “readers to send us a list of their 20 favorite beers. The only rule [was] that the beer [had] to be commercially available somewhere in the United States. A record number of votes were cast this year, with 1,192 different beers from 450 breweries represented in the poll.” So while the name of the poll is 2010 Zymurgy Best Beers In America, the list does include a few imported beers that are sold in the U.S.
For the second year in a row, Russian River’s Pliny the Elder took the top spot.
That’s the top 25, but the top 50 can bee seen at Zymurgy’s press release.
They also picked the top 25 favorite breweries, of which Rahr & Sons Brewing Co. of Fort Worth, Texas was number one and they “tabulated which breweries had the most brands in the voting. That honor went to Boston Beer Co. with 22 of its Samuel Adams brews getting votes. Dogfish Head was close behind with 20 brands.” You can also see the full list of Beer Portfolios and Favorite Breweries at the American Homebrewers Association website.