Alcohol and health

originally posted by robert ames:
originally posted by Yule Kim:
Do I believe alcohol has any health benefits? No.

Do I believe alcohol is increasing my risk of cancer and heart disease? Yes.

Will I continue drinking wine? Abso-fucking-lutely!
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do i believe that alcohol has any social benefits? yep. any questions, watch babette's feast.
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"The general wants more of the Clos Jouvoet!"

"Leave the bottle."
 
originally posted by fatboy:
originally posted by Yule Kim:
Do I believe alcohol has any health benefits? No.
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for teh individualz, or for teh species?

fb. (channeling darwin, and teh memory of teh youth)
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Since drinking alcohol was hardly common before agriculture, which began to be practiced widely only 10-20,000 years ago, and homo sapiens have existed about 300,000 years (a pretty good run by the way, better than the average life of species, though certainly not the longest so far) with roughly their current genome, how do you calculate that alcohol could have affected the species?
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
originally posted by fatboy:
originally posted by Yule Kim:
Do I believe alcohol has any health benefits? No.
Click to expand...

for teh individualz, or for teh species?

fb. (channeling darwin, and teh memory of teh youth)
Click to expand...

Since drinking alcohol was hardly common before agriculture, which began to be practiced widely only 10-20,000 years ago, and homo sapiens have existed about 300,000 years (a pretty good run by the way, better than the average life of species, though certainly not the longest so far) with roughly their current genome, how do you calculate that alcohol could have affected the species?
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And if you hypothetically obtained the data, there'd be massive confounding factors of shift in diet, activity, population concentrations, etc. Is 300k years a good run for a mammalian species? I've never even thought about it.

To add to the conversation, here's the URL for an interesting rebuttal to Stockwell. It's too sweeping and polemical IMHO, but has some good citations.

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snowdon.substack.com
 
originally posted by Christian Miller (CMM):
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
originally posted by fatboy:
originally posted by Yule Kim:
Do I believe alcohol has any health benefits? No.
Click to expand...

for teh individualz, or for teh species?

fb. (channeling darwin, and teh memory of teh youth)
Click to expand...

Since drinking alcohol was hardly common before agriculture, which began to be practiced widely only 10-20,000 years ago, and homo sapiens have existed about 300,000 years (a pretty good run by the way, better than the average life of species, though certainly not the longest so far) with roughly their current genome, how do you calculate that alcohol could have affected the species?
Click to expand...

And if you hypothetically obtained the data, there'd be massive confounding factors of shift in diet, activity, population concentrations, etc. Is 300k years a good run for a mammalian species? I've never even thought about it.

To add to the conversation, here's the URL for an interesting rebuttal to Stockwell. It's too sweeping and polemical IMHO, but has some good citations.

Loading…

snowdon.substack.com
Click to expand...

I remember reading that the average life span of a species (I don't know if mammals exceed this average or not) is about 100,000 years. I don't vouch either for the accuracy of my memory or the reliability of the source.
 
I just googled this and it turns out that my memory is off by ten. The average lifespan of a species is a million years. Mammals in general are 1 to 2 million. Trees and ants, though, can go for ten million.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
I just googled this and it turns out that my memory is off by ten. The average lifespan of a species is a million years. Mammals in general are 1 to 2 million. Trees and ants, though, can for for ten million.
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Check out the horseshoe crab: 445 million years!
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Really, fabular fiction isn't a great basis for empirical conclusions. Art doesn't work that way. I'm with Yule on this issue.
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no, but the movie wouldn't be so well loved if it was found to be unbelievable. it doesn't have to be a documentary to demonstrate a truth.
 
The point of both story and film was that great art is its own reward and only then could it have great effect. The one person who recognized what was being served, the general who was not a member of the community, got no social benefit from it. The other guests knew that they were tasting was wonderful and making them happy, but, not recognizing the meal for what it was, transposed the mood it created to their feelings for each other. Meanwhile, Babette, who has spent all of her new found fortune in recreating the meal she used to cook in a famous restaurant, when asked about it--and she felt no particular recognition of what she had done except from the general--answers that, yes, the amount of money she had spent is what such a meal costs. She had not done it for the community, butg for herself. Wine was a part of it, but, really, a small part. There was a reason Dinesen called her fiction Tales and Fables. Like her other stories, Babette's Feast, the film as well as the fiction, was pointedly and in your face unrealistic. And as much as I loved both story and movie, I don't really find either remotely probable. Believable as a word applied to literature has its own, complicated history, starting with Aristotle calling it the probable impossible.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
originally posted by fatboy:
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for teh individualz, or for teh species?

Since drinking alcohol was hardly common before agriculture, which began to be practiced widely only 10-20,000 years ago, and homo sapiens have existed about 300,000 years (a pretty good run by the way, better than the average life of species, though certainly not the longest so far) with roughly their current genome, how do you calculate that alcohol could have affected the species?
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i was thinking about the future rather than the past. at least in my corner of teh species, teh booze seems to play in important facilitatory role in reproduction.

fb.
 
originally posted by fatboy:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
originally posted by fatboy:
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for teh individualz, or for teh species?

Since drinking alcohol was hardly common before agriculture, which began to be practiced widely only 10-20,000 years ago, and homo sapiens have existed about 300,000 years (a pretty good run by the way, better than the average life of species, though certainly not the longest so far) with roughly their current genome, how do you calculate that alcohol could have affected the species?
Click to expand...

i was thinking about the future rather than the past. at least in my corner of teh species, teh booze seems to play in important facilitatory role in reproduction.

fb.
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Well, our son *was* conceived in Paso Robles after a day spent visiting Tablas Creek, so mebbe you're on to sumfin, O Corpulent One.

Mark Lipton
 
Troubled Times for French Wine

Causes of the crisis

Wine consumption in France has been slowly but steadily declining for many years, but the latest crisis is more marked, and is caused by a number of factors.

France is now the world's largest wine producer, according to International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) figures released in 2023, with an estimated production figure 3% above its last five-year average. This was despite some regions recording negative variations compared to 2022; Bordeaux and the South West were hit by downy mildew, and Languedoc-Roussillon suffered heatwaves and drought, for example.

A combination of high inflation rates and reduced spending power, post-pandemic lifestyle changes, global unrest, and a lack of consumer confidence has led to a decrease in demand for wine. The resulting surplus has caused prices to fall, putting growers in a precarious economic position and sparking angry protests.
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Troubled Times for French Wine

. . . . Pete
 
". . .the French gov. . .simply conducting another war against the Germans. . ."

come-on, they're a bunch of cheese eating surrender monkeys. everybody knows that.
 
Well, they didn't exactly conduct the war against Germany in WWII. It was more conducted by the Germans. WWI is a closer question. But part of what makes it closer is whether it can be said that any of the participants can be described as sufficiently aware of what they were doing to be said to conduct anything.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Well, they didn't exactly conduct the war against Germany in WWII. It was more conducted by the Germans. WWI is a closer question. But part of what makes it closer is whether it can be said that any of the participants can be described as sufficiently aware of what they were doing to be said to conduct anything.
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the germans took WWI to france, via belgium, which they laid waste to for having the impunity of being in the bleedin' way. all spelled out in barbara tuchman's 'the guns of august'. which covers the first five months of WWI.
 
originally posted by robert ames:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Well, they didn't exactly conduct the war against Germany in WWII. It was more conducted by the Germans. WWI is a closer question. But part of what makes it closer is whether it can be said that any of the participants can be described as sufficiently aware of what they were doing to be said to conduct anything.
Click to expand...

the germans took WWI to france, via belgium, which they laid waste to for having the impunity of being in the bleedin' way. all spelled out in barbara tuchman's 'the guns of august'. which covers the first five months of WWI.
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This description is partial to the point of inaccuracy. The French did have a defense treaty with the Russians that called for them to declare war on anyone at war with the French. But the French were champing at the bit to honor the treaty. When Germany decided to support the Austro-Hungarian Empire in its declaration of war against Serbia, it warned France not to enter. France mobilized its troops and Germany then declared war and invaded first. It was not remotely analogous to Hitler's Blitzkrieg. Tuchman's book is an enduring achievement, but it is also focused almost entirely on Western Europe, although I think her analysis was essentially, also, that the war was caused by a course of diplomatic and armament choices made by all of the Western European countries since the turn of the century and not the result German initiative. At any rate, Christopher Clark's recent book, The Sleepwalkers, is a necessary addition to Tuchman.
 
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