Texas Progressives go for a ride with Allen West

Just as long as his wife ain't driving!

Ahh, wingnut Twitter. When this news broke, one MAGA Tweeter claimed she'd passed a breathalyzer. I told him that the Trib story, linked above, didn't mention a breathalyzer. It DID say she refused a blood draw but the cop got a warrant. It also did say that she failed a field sobriety test. (Update: New stories mention, in order, the officer smelling alcohol, one of three field sobriety tests being failed and two being borderline/inconclusive, a breathalyzer that wasn't done correctly or didn't have usable results, then Angela Graham-West first consenting to a blood draw and then changing her mind and asking for a lawyer. That last is within her legal and constitutional rights, but people like her hubby don't want the general public to know that. What we have is CLASSISM. On the matter at hand, she was also reportedly talking on a cellphone when stopped and presumably beforehand. That, in turn is why Tex-ass is so weak on cellphone laws. Talking and driving with a 3-month-old grandson? Too bad she can't get a ticket for just that. As for what happened? I venture she had one-three drinks ... probably no more than that. Her blood draw will probably come back right around 0.08 but no higher. But, by law, Mr. Law and Order GOP ex-chairman, cops, and courts, can use more than BAC results.)

Havana Ted / Cancun Ted Cruz doesn't want to be a disloyal jackass, so he's public now on saying he'll vote for Abbott rather than West or Huffines. (Talk is cheap; on election night 2016, after claiming he would vote for Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson, Jesse Ventura ("The Body," or "The Rug," as in "lies like one") admitted he didn't. Cruz will still be a jackass, just a loyal one, at least for public consumption.

A federal judge, whose president of nomination the Trib doesn't identify and is so underground that Google doesn't show me, has ordered an injunction on the Biden Admin's ending of the Trump Admin's renegotiated extension of Texas' 1115 Medicaid waiver.

Stace honors journalist, poet, playwright, and cultural critic Gregg Barrios , who passed away suddenly last week.

Insurrectionist real estate agent Jenna Ryan has pled guilty over her role Jan. 6. She supposably says she won't go to jail, but that's for a judge to say in November, as no official news of that has been announced. Given her straight lies plus schwaffles from the day she was arrested, she is of course not credible.

The REPUBLICAN controlled Maricopa County, Arizona, Board of Supervisors, wants the GOP controlled state senate to pay $2.8 million for election equipment damaged during the #Fraudit.

Biden did fuck up the Afghanistan withdrawal, starting from the premise that he should have known Trump's original withdrawal timetable and plan had no actual plan. Nonetheless, we needed to withdraw and it was right. Why doesn't the MSM interview people like me, Popular Info asks. Besides, we knew a whole decade ago how corrupt Afghan officialdom was, Mondoweiss reports.

When neoliberals fellate their own.

Beyond Bones assures us that dinosaurs loved their children too.

The St. Louis #Cardinals face some backlash on their #OT18 patch

Oscar Taveras — should Cards
have a commemorative patch?

All St. Louis Cardinal fans, and many dedicated baseball fans, are aware that the St. Louis Cardinals' young outfield call-up, Oscar Taveras, was killed in the offseason. Paul Lukas, who does ESPN's UniWatch, talks about the patch the team will wear — and the controversy behind it, which is getting further discussion at Hardball Talk. (That said, if blogs amplify pre-Internet 'controversy" tenfold, social media does that a hundredfold.)

The controversy is that, if you want to look at it bluntly, Taveras killed himself, as well as his girlfriend, Edilia Arvero, because he was driving with a blood-alcohol content 5 times over the legal limit in the Dominican Republic. (Note that I said "killed," which I know puts it starkly, but did not say "murdered," which puts it wrongly.)

At the same time, Alcoholics Anonymous calls alcohol "cunning, baffling and powerful." If we modify that somewhat, to "the irrational drive for too much alcohol is cunning, baffling and powerful," we're just about right. I've blogged before about the irrationality of drunkenness and college campus sexual behavior and issues of consent, among other things.  These issues aren't "easy."

(This is NOT an endorsement of AA as "the solution" to alcoholism, nor is it claiming that Taveras was an alcoholic.)

Of course, this isn't a first for the Birds. Josh Hancock killed himself (but nobody else) in a DWI before the 2007 season. And, as the Hall of Fame informs us with this link, the team wore a patch for him.

And, it's nowhere near a first for Cardinals driving while intoxicated.

Yahoo reminds us that David Freese had two DUIs, in 2002 and 2009. And, ESPN's take on his second DUI notes that Scott Spiezio got one in late 2007, before the start of the 2008 season, and that, even though he'd had a decent year in 2007 as a role player, the Cards immediately cut him.

And, of course, we can't forget long-time manager Tony La Russa and his own DUI arrest, which came less than two months before Hancock's fatal crash.

The patch, illustrated at left, is iffy. I wouldn't do it, if I were the Cardinals, without PSA announcements connected to it.

That could start with videos on the Jumbotron, urging people to not drink and drive. An obvious first one would come from Carlos Martinez, who tried to stop Taveras that night.

We would also then have fliers — if not mandatory with beer sales, at least at beer booths. Stamp beer cups with Mothers Against Drunk Driving's logo or something, too.

That might not be perfect, and I don't claim my ideas are great. But, rather than simply castigating the team, some constructive criticism may work better.

I sent this Tweet:

@Cardinals In addition to #OT18 patch, take this as opening to promote alcohol safety awareness w/beer sales. Using his death as an example.
— SocraticGadfly (@SocraticGadfly) February 12, 2015

A more generic one,

Then this one:

@Cardinals You could get Taveras testimonials from teammates as part of Don't Drink and Drive and Designated Driver campaigns, too.
— SocraticGadfly (@SocraticGadfly) February 12, 2015

To the team's official account.

Let's see if anything happens. (Since sending them, another HBT commenter suggested putting "MADD" below the original patch to make a new one.)

Oh, and Tony La Russa, to the degree at all that your DUI reflects a "culture" during your years as Cards' manager, why don't YOU cut a Don't Drink and Drive video for MLB as well as your own personal animal rescue work?

I don't mean that in terms of punishment; you're years past that. Besides, I don't claim to have an innocent past on this issue.

But, if you truly care about the Cardinals of today, many of whom you managed, and if MLB with a new commissioner in Rob Manfred, and you formerly working in the commish's office under Bud Selig, this would be a way of making an effort to fight this problem, as well as any part you may have had in it, if you did.

The idea is that the Cardinals should work to make this so that this is not an issue they're facing every few years.

Beyond that, in today's Net world, it's de rigeur PR to do something like I suggested above. If the Cards had, they probably wouldn't be getting flamed so much.

This all said, back to the patch, or to patches in general.

Paul Lukas raises one other issue, too, and in the age of social media, especially, I think it’s a very good one:

In addition, the bar for being uni-memorialized seems to have gotten much lower. Memorial patches used to be reserved for former players and major figures related to the team. Nowadays, for better or worse (as with most things, it's probably a bit of both), we see memorials for the owner's wife, the minority stakeholder who nobody even realized was connected to the team, the assistant trainer's brother-in-law, and so on. According to a breakdown on the Baseball Hall of Fame's website, there have been 49 uniform memorials over the past five seasons. To put that in perspective, that's more than the total that appeared in the five decades from 1931 to 1981. Moreover, players on some MLB teams have even worn other teams' memorial patches.

Have we distanced ourselves from death too much? Do people need to hear Bach’s beautiful “Komm süsser Tod,” or the “Dies Irae”?

Like this?

Come, sweet death, come, blessed rest!

Come lead me to peace ...

Oh, and I have a dozen or more requiems in my CD library; semi-regular readers should think it not at all strange for a secularist to listen to religious music about death and the afterlife. I can appreciate such things, and the spirit behind them even while not accepting the belief systems.

Race, addiction, science, public policy: Carl Hart writes an oversold book

I just got done reading a pretty new addiction-related book, and no, it's not (yet) that hot new book by Dr. Dodes, profiled on Salon, The Atlantic and NPR. Rather, this is "High Price," by Ph.D. neuroscientist Carl Hart.

Carl Hart is good on the basics of what we know, and don't know, about addiction and neuroscience. He's decent on telling the story of his life, and on public policy, minorities and the "War on Drugs." However, where parts 1 and 2 intersect, he sometimes seems to soft-pedal part 1 for the sake of part 2.

Basic point 1 is that he is African-American, and grew up in lower-class neighborhoods in greater Miami, and therefore in a unique position to talk about race and addiction, race and other races' beliefs about addiction, etc.

But, that's not my first primary point. Rather, per ideas I've heard from people who think that AA is unscientific, it's about "following the science" on addiction. More specifically, it's about updating one's scientific knowledge of what may cause addiction, the little knowledge we have, being updated rather than being 20 years old. More specifically yet, that involves moving beyond simple, or simplistic, ideas that we can reduce addiction to a matter of brain neurotransmitters.

Neurotransmitters and neuroscience

And, specifically, addiction is NOT "All about the dopamine," or anything similar. I quote from his book:

When dopamine's prominent role in reward was first proposed, there were only about six known neurotransmitters: dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, acetylcholine, glutamate and GABA. Now there are more than a hundred. Furthermore, we now know that there are specific receptors -- or specialized structures that recognize and respond to a particular neurotransmitter -- for each neurotransmitter, and most neurotransmitters have more than one type of receptor. For example, dopamine has at least five receptor subtypes -- D1-D5. We also now know that hormones like oxytocin and testosterone can act as neurotransmitters.

But despite these ever-intensifying complexities, our theory about dopamine's role in reward has not been appreciably revised since it was first proposed [in the early 1990s]. And, as you will see later, a growing body of evidence casts doubt on this simplistic view of reward.

I knew a fair amount of this before I read Hart's book. But, his directly applying it to addiction, combined with his ethnicity and sociological background, gave me the perfect excuse, or reason, to blog about it more directly.

For more on neurotransmitters, which may, depending on how widely the term is defined, include a variety of peptides and even minerals like zinc, see Wikipedia. I mean, histamine and products related to several amino acids are neurotransmitters. It's much more than the few neurotransmitters that health-food stores, and Big Pharma, try to pitch us on. More on that in a minute

And, folks, that's why addiction isn't all about the dopamine. And why truly understanding addiction will proved to be more complex than current ideas.

Related to this is why an anti-craving drug like Naltrexone doesn’t work equally well for different addicts with different addictions and never will.

And bingo on who might be behind the “cravings” idea. Per Wikipedia, anti-craving drug Naltrexone's first clinical trials? 1992. And, also per Wiki, all the different addictions it's now possibly supposed to help on cravings? I think we've struck Big Pharma gold, or at least silver.

Also, while Naltrexone is an opiate receptor antagonist, Campral, also marketed as an anti-craving drug for alcoholics, works, or “works,” as a GABA receptor agonist. Different mechanism entirely than Naltrexone. Campral was first approved, in Europe, in 1989. That’s a bit earlier than the 1990s, but still in the same framework. Don’t let the European start fool  you, though; Western Europe is at least as Big Pharma friendly as the US. And Wellbutrin, marketed to help smoking cravings as well as being a non-SSRI antidepressant? It targets, in various ways, dopamine, norepinephrine, and acetylcholine. And, its actions on dopamine don’t seem  to be enough to explain its alleged effectiveness. (All three of these may target neurotransmitters beyond members of the “original six,” which Big Pharma hasn’t looked for. Material on Campral and Wellbutrin is also from Wiki.)

There’s more, just from basic browsing of Wiki. We’ve long known that nicotine is an agonist for certain acetylcholine receptors and triggers the release of sever al “old” and “new” neurotransmitters; why would we focus on dopamine?

And, even if dopamine has a fair role to play in addiction, Wellbutrin alone shows that it’s not a primary role.

Oh, and substitute "serotonin" for "dopamine," and what's said above about addiction is just as true for depression. And, the "serotonin deficiency causes depression" idea was proposed at the same time as the "dopamine shortage causes addiction" idea. Yet, despite early hype, we still don't know a lot about depression, other than knowing SSRIs often don't work a lot better than older anti-depressants.

Beyond that, other neurotransmitters, like acetylcholine, have various types of receptors, too.

Hart himself addresses the issue of “craving” near the end of the book. He says that for apparently non-addicted but regular users of various drugs, as tested in laboratory settings, “craving” did not seem to be a significant concern, on average. I question that. Also, given some libertarian-type political "connectedness" the book and Hart apparently have, I also "question" that he did not spell out how much of the "low dopamine = addiction" idea, like "low serotonin = depression," was pushed by Big Pharma. And, that may be why he doesn't talk about anti-craving drugs that much, and minimizes the issue of craving.

Unfortunately, Nora Volkow, head of the US government's National Institute on Drug Abuse, is one of the biggest pushers of the dopamine theory. I'm not sure if I would go so far as to claim this is a new version of the "disease theory" of addiction, though, as Stanton Peele does. Especially given that Peele is one of the most tireless promoters of theories of addiction that largely deny the existence of addiction, one can usually depend on him to overswing, and therefore, take what he says with a 1/3 off grain of salt.

Now, public policy issues in the book

Hart, as noted, is a black male, of about the same age as I am, who grew up in greater Miami in the late 1970s and 1980s. As such, he remembers the Reagan-era paranoia about crack cocaine vs. powder, which he covers in detail, including showing no difference in addictiveness levels, just as other researchers have done.

From there, he looks at what he sees in many ways as being a very similar alarm over methamphetamine, or “meth,” in the past decade. He notes that the number of meth users is much lower than cocaine users, first. Second, most stories about superhuman strength, etc. of alleged meth addicts are anecdotal, he adds. Third, and to the point, he notes how there is little chemical difference between amphetamine, the main ingredient in Adderall and other anti-hyperactivity drugs, and methamphetamine. After all, per basic chemistry, methamphetamine is just a methylated version of amphetamine, with a single methyl radical added. Or, in other words, it’s like Celexa and Lexapro. But, both of them are legal and heavily prescribed. On stimulants, Adderall and Ritalin are legal and heavily prescribed; meth isn’t.

Skepticism of some of his claims

I don’t totally agree with Hart. I think he tilts the scale toward “abuse” rather than “addiction” at times, and doesn’t allow for even people who are addicts, not just abusers, still having enough self-control to moderate their behavior in lab settings. I mean, the stories of alcoholics and addicts trying to pull one over on people are legion, and at some point, per the old cliche, "anecdotes" become "data." Hart talks about how some of his test subjects appeared intimidated about getting to the lab, but doesn't ask if any were still intimidated later.

Nor does he seem to ask himself if he’s over-reacting to some of his own personal, and his larger background as an African-American’s, take on things like the “crack menace” or “reefer madness” long before that.

Related to both points, he doesn't ask, as a very rare minority Ph.D. neuroscientist, if some of his test subjects are "trying to help a brother out." I hate to stereotype, and I'm not a minority, but, I've been around a boatload of drinkers and users. I'm liberal enough to know the War on Drugs is a crock, but I've been plenty a person be sober or clean for years, even a decade or more, "slip," and not be able to get back on track.

Nonetheless, he’s right indeed, in my opinion, that addiction is a complex issue. And why should this surprise us?

Some “purely physiological” issues are far more complex than originally claimed and even than some claim today. Cancer immediately comes to mind. Fifty years on, we’re not close to “winning” a “War on Cancer.”

At the same time? His wanting to make it look like addiction isn't that common approaches simplicity itself. I gave this three stars on book review sites. It's barely that, I think.

Political issues, of his own

Finally, I raise at least a partial eyebrow at his crediting Maia Szalavitz for helping get the book done. Szalavitz at least has a few of her toes in the pool of right-wing funded journalism, or "journalism," or is at minimum a "fellow traveler." Her association with places like STATS.org, which, per Wiki, has connections with Scaife money, American Enterprise Institute, etc., and is affiliated with George Mason University, is a red alert right there. That would probably explain, per some Amazon reviewers, Hart visiting Fox News, and ... more than once! I suspect, per those Amazon reviewers who would be clueless as to why, this was to get "in" with libertarian Fox watchers, not the religious right. Hart explicitly calls for decriminalization, which is neither neuroscience nor memoir.

Related to that, I'm tired of libertarians, starting with Glenn Greenwald, talk about what a success drug decriminalization is in a place like Portugal when most of them know that Portugal has a better "safety net" than we do and spends more government money on it than we do now, and than many libertarians here are willing to pay.

Greenwald, and Hart here, if they want to propose this, then fine ... be honest with how much this costs. And, if you're either too lazy to have researched that, or are afraid to tell people that, or else are a committed enough economic libertarian that you don't want the government paying that price, then shut up about the "Portugal solution."

Summation

You can find the neuroscience work, including on neurotransmitters and related issues, from other neuroscientists, or else from psychiatrists doing research work. In many cases, it won't be explicitly tied to the decriminalization issues, and possible peddling of harm reduction over abstinence, which reportedly Hart has done on some of his TV appearances.

This is a book that has more froth than substance, after a first look.

There is a sort of political silver lining. Maybe the US needs a few more black libertarians of prominence, if that's what Hart is becoming, as well as black social conservatives.

Bulimic alcoholics coming soon from drugs as salvific technologism

That phrase "salvific technologism" is one I invented a long time ago as a blog tag.

A longer explanation? It's the belief, usually associated with avowed futurists, that technology will always be the cavalry riding over the hill with the "salvation" of improvement for the future life, lifestyle and flourishing of homo sapiens.

It's a belief I reject.

And, here's the latest nuttery in this area, courtesy of this new story in Britain's The Independent newspaper.

Let's start here:

Scientists are developing a drug which mimics all the positive effects of being drunk without any of the health risks, addiction – or hangovers.

And then ask how realistic that is. In my opinion, as the rest of the story demonstrates, not a lot. And, it leads to the rhetorical question of my headline.

We go next to this:

The “serious revolution in health” is being pioneered by the former Government drugs advisor Professor David Nutt, and has been described as doing for alcohol what the e-cigarette has done for tobacco use.

Uhh, wrong right there! As far as his claims about this new drug, the analogy is wrong, because the verdict is still out, to a fair extent, on the e-cig. (Apologies to any e-cig users reading this.) A Google search of "e-cigarette" + "dangers" gets more than 7 million hits. Those include the fact that e-cigs have their own toxic vapors and have not been proven to help people quit cigarettes, as noted in this story.

I think the story of the e-cigarette's alleged benefits is even more bullshitting than Big Tobacco's pre-1964 stance on the alleged benefits of cigarettes themselves. I'll stop there before I get even more wound up.

Meanwhile, back to our story at hand, now that we know our good professor is wrong about e-cigs and we know to be skeptical.

Here's where my "bulimic alcoholics" angle comes in:

It targets neurotransmitters in the brain directly, giving the taker feelings of pleasure and disinhibition that are in some cases “indistinguishable” from the effects of drinking. Yet because it acts directly, it can also be immediately blocked by taking an antidote – with “drinkers” potentially able to then drive or return to work straight away.

So, get "drunk" for an hour, take the "antidote" (interesting that its called that), then get "drunk" again. Lather, rinse, repeat!

Beyond that, this is a simplistic, 20th-century view of neurotransmitters. The "one neurotransmitter creates one constellation of results" idea is almost as simplistic as "one gene codes for one protein" in molecular biology.

Finally, the good ex-drugs adviser has not a clue, it seems, about the mental and psychological components of addiction. His whole conception of why alcoholics drink to addiction totally ignores that, so the idea that this will stop alcohol addiction is pure nonsense. Per the "bulimic alcoholic" comment, so, someone gets drunk for four hours, takes a pill, and starts getting drunk again. Like one of Nero's vomitoriums for food bulimics. With "friends" like this, alcoholics sure don't need more enemies, I wouldn't think. In short, I don't think this will prevent people who are subconsciously determined to do so from going down the road of addiction. I'm no fan of AA in general, but currently, there isn't an "easier, softer road" to get out of addiction, and especially for people who are predisposed by prior life history and psychology toward becoming addicted to alcohol, or other drugs, this won't stop that, either.

Next, along the line of him misrating the health value of e-cigs, what if he's misrating the health value of this? If somebody finds out, "Hey, if I grind and snort these babies, I can hallucinate" or something, then even minimal health value is out the window.

But, wait. Maybe if it can't help alcoholics get sober, can it at least do harm reduction for them? Or prevent a non-alcoholic drunk from an auto accident or something?

I'll agree with accepting whatever "harm reduction" it can do. That said, at at least the current level of pharmaceuticals capability AND the current level of what we actually know about the brain, vs what Pop Neuroscience tells us, no pill is going to instantly "un-drunk" anybody. Nor will it produce the exact effects of alcohol otherwise. And, I'll venture it can't come close to that without causing some psychological dependency effects. Beyond that, even current anti-craving drugs like naltrexone are nowhere near a sure shot for stopping cravings.

If you've been drinking too much, and don't want to have a wreck, call a cab. That's your best advice for today, and for 20 years from now.

And, for that reason, he's also spinning a conspiracy theory, I think. After all, Big Tobacco's given a cautious eye at investing in e-cigarette makers, even while their market remains tiny. And, that's the flip side. The market for a pill like this, for all the reasons I mentioned above and more (hard to put this pill in a college beer bong, especially an anal one) will remain tiny.

What is it with Travis County prosecutors?

Has Rosemary Lehmberg, through some sort of history of drinking that led up to her DWI arrest, set a bad attitude? Assistant prosecutor Brandon Grunewald's facing the same problem; no report yet on just how drunk he may have been, per BAC.

And, we now have "complications." Two people hurt in the Grunewald crash, one of them talking to lawyers. Brandon, you may become "chum" for Rosemary to feed to the sharks instead of himself.

Were Tricky Ricky Perry and his take no prisoners, make no agreements stance not in place, Lehmberg would be outta there already. And, probably, Grunewald would be joining her.

That said, per KXAN's reporting, Lehmberg herself appears to need a PR person. One who would have told her not to say this:

"It's a first offense DWI and I don't know what will happen until I have all the facts," explained Lehmberg. "I have never terminated an employee for a first offense DWI and we have had employees with first offense DWI up and down the ranks."

Yikes. "Up and down the ranks?"

What's needed? In all cases like this, only allowing the governor to appoint a replacement until the next available election date, not for the remainder of the term, perhaps.

For instance, if Tricky Ricky only had the power to replace her until January, 2014, with the replacement to fill out her term being selected in a special election in November along with constitutional amendment voting, there we would go.

Kuff has the latest news: A special prosecutor is investigating whether Perry's threat to veto Public Integrity Unit funding if Lehmberg wouldn't resign amounts to coercion, legally defined.

Perry was the one who started playing politics with this, not local or state democrats. So, unless he would agree to a state law to depoliticize such situations with this position, there's nothing else to do but back a flawed DA, even if flawed staff are riding on her coattails.

That also said, some Austin Democratic attorney had sure as hell better "primary" Lehmberg next election.

And, given that Grunewald's been with the Travis DA's office about 5 years, or when Lehmberg started as DA, and given just how drunk she was at the time of her arrest, yeah, it's fair to ask about cultural attitudes in that office.

Did beer give us civilization? I doubt it.

Beer — was grain domesticated for it to actually help create civilization?
Photo from National Post

The idea that man first decided to domesticate grain for some forerunner of today's beer, rather than food, sounds intriguing, and just enough against conventional wisdom for somebody to trot out "paradigm shift" ideas, quotes from famous dead scientists taken out of context, and more.

Here's a study about the research claims, coming from (you hosers, eh?) Canada! And, here's a New York Times column by a psychiatrist, making the social psychology claims for why this would be true.

But, in reality?

I think it's all foamy froth, punning idea highly intended.

Let me dissect the idea in general, then specifics of both links.

I've read reviews and commentary on the idea in general. I find it interesting, at best, and almost SEO-hypish. If it had been about wine, or "wine" from other fruits, I'd be more likely to believe it. Humans would have seen drunk elephants or whatever, known something about the intoxication of rotten fruit, and gone from there. But, the only way they'd know about rotten grain becoming intoxicating is from that grain having first been stored. And, that storage would have been for food purposes.

First, those crazy Canadians:

While the SFU researchers say they haven’t found a “smoking brew pot” providing absolute proof that a thirst for beer drove the Natufian people to become farmers, they “conclude that feasting and brewing very likely provided a key link between increasing ‘complexity’ and the adoption of cereal cultivation.”

In other words, they haven't found anything. Certainly not anything new.

In fact, their study is that old bugaboo of research in the social sciences. It's ... wait for it ... it's ... metadata, or metaresearch, if you will!

The three Simon Fraser University researchers, led by SFU emeritus professor Brian Hayden, synthesized dozens of studies on the “Natufian” culture that, 10,000 years ago, occupied the region immediately east of the Mediterranean Sea, today’s Middle East.

Run like hell from hyped claims based on metadata. You don't believe me? Ask Bob Carroll at Skeptic's Dictionary.

The Canadians go on to talk about what they see as the importance of their unsubstantiated ideas:

Hayden told Postmedia News that “there are lots of implications” of the team’s findings, and that “brewing was just part of the picture” during humanity’s pivotal shift to settled, stable communities with enough food supplies to foster more complex cultural developments.

But beer-making, he added, was one factor “that we think was important in making feasts such powerful tools for attracting people and getting them committed to producing surpluses.”

In short, beer was the original opiate of the masses.

This, in turn, is based on the idea, powerful still in many left-liberal circles and claiming some weight with me, about the dark side of the agricultural revolution, namely, the development of class-based societies and the possession of private property.

That said, you'd really have to really want to get drunk to drink the ancient swill:

“Beers made in traditional tribal or village societies generally are quite different from modern industrial beers,” they state in the paper. “Traditional beers often have quite low alcohol contents (2 to 4 per cent) include lactic acid fermentation giving them a tangy and sour taste, contain various additives such as honey or fruits, and vary in viscosity from clear liquids, to soupy mixtures with suspended solids, to pastes.”

That, then, gets back to what I mentioned up top. Why not eat some semi-rotten, fermenting apples or peaches instead? Or, better yet, experiment with using cloth to filter solids out, and then fire for mild distillation?

Add in the fact that the authors talk about the addition of fruits, but fail to talk about fermented fruits, and it seems like an oversell.

At the NYT, Jeffrey Kahn picks up the social leveling idea and runs with it:

Once the effects of these early brews were discovered, the value of beer (as well as wine and other fermented potions) must have become immediately apparent. With the help of the new psychopharmacological brew, humans could quell the angst of defying those herd instincts. Conversations around the campfire, no doubt, took on a new dimension: the painfully shy, their angst suddenly quelled, could now speak their minds. 

But the alcohol would have had more far-ranging effects, too, reducing the strong herd instincts to maintain a rigid social structure. In time, humans became more expansive in their thinking, as well as more collaborative and creative. A night of modest tippling may have ushered in these feelings of freedom — though, the morning after, instincts to conform and submit would have kicked back in to restore the social order. 

But, if grain DID have any mind-altering effects, maybe it wasn't even from distillation.

Especially when colder and wetter periods hit the Fertile Crescent, can anybody say ergot fungus? St. Anthony's fire or ergotism as a result?

Many people think of medieval Europe and rye ergot. However, the fungus also grows fairly well on barley and wheat, the two common grains of the Middle East.

In short, if Neolithic Middle Easterners were getting wasted at the dawn of civilization, they may have been taking acid trips, not getting drunk.

So, for right now, my perspective? File this under Wolfgang Paul's "not even wrong."

Binge drinking ... or denialism?

I'm not a prude about alcohol ... but, I know that denial ain't just a river in Egypt, and that "justifying" binge drinking in the face of a CDC report when you don't have to write a column about it could be seen as "protesting too much."

Seven drinks in four hours, even as part of a wine-and-food pairing at a restaurant, seems a bit much.
Even if the CDC does, I don't think most people would consider my gastronomic evening to be binge drinking. Or, if they do, it's unlikely that they would assign it as problem drinking.
That's probably part of the problem; but, it can be countered by the old ... "If somebody else jumped off a cliff, would you?

That said, just because it was all drinking with friends doesn't guarantee it's benign, either.

Alcoholic drinking usually is drinking alone, at least a fair amount of the time; I suspect similar is true for illicit drugs. So, I'll give Brown half a point. That said, the story seems to reverse cart and horse a bit. The person who *wants* to "check out" or whatever knows what they're doing, to at least a degree, in most cases, whether the drinking or using starts alone or not There's not a "powerlessness" of the 12-step movement, at least not until after one crosses that ... invisible line.

Plus, the column is "anecdotal evidence," of course. And, if you're drinking seven drinks once a week, which four times a month is ... well .... maybe you are protesting too much.

And, my understanding of the CDC, NIH, NIAAA, etc. is that part of the definition of binge drinking is how often one drinks to the amount he does.

And, the guy owns bars; he's got financial reasons to protest the government definitions.

Plus, most people overestimate what govt/medical guidelines are for "normal" drinking, which is why, even before Das' faking of red wine studies became public, the AMA never has, and never will, tout alcohol as "heart healthy."

And, some stereotypes just aren't true, and they're not true in a way opposite to the book to whom

For example, the "moderate," "wine focused" French have a higher cirrhosis rate than the U.S. does.

I'm not a prude ... and, I know that the 12-step approach to recovery has many problems.

That said, especially through things such as noting the level of problem drinking among senior citizens, the CDC report has a lot of insight. Unfortunately, , someone like Brown reinforces stereotypes that aren't true.

Time for MLB to get serious about DWI

Ken Rosenthal nails this one.

Sadly, we shouldn't have Shin-Soo Choo already the sixth MLB player to be arrested this year for allegedly driving under the influence of alcohol.

The arrest and problems of Miguel Cabrera should have been a 120-decibel wake-up call to BOTH Commissioner Bud Selig AND the players' union to get more serious on this issue.

Bud's lack of seriousness, Rosenthal notes, goes back to doing nothing after St. Louis Cardinal manager Tony La Russa's arrest.

Jeff Passan's on the same page as Rosenthal, arguing baseball needs to start suspending players for this.

OD-ing on sugar?

Possibly. One well-known endocrinologist, Robert Lustig, compares its effects to alcohol. Not just the addictive effects, it can,like alcohol, cause fatty liver.

That means that Type 2 Diabetes (and, for the days when we called it "adult-onset diabetes," which it ain't) isn't the only problem.

That said, Lustig both notes that high-fructose corn syrup has about the same fructose percentage as table sugar, and that fructose is the culprit. Sounds like we need people to get used to less sweet drinks AND to force ADM and Cargill to produce HGCS - high GLUCOSE corn syrup.

Hey, when you're on an IV drip in the hospital, it's glucose, not fructose.

The appropriate DWI punishment for Donte Stallworth?

Reading about the Cleveland Browns’ receiver getting just 30 days of jail time for DWI manslaughter made me think of a more appropriate punishment.

Then I got it.

Thinking of how many NFL players “praise Jesus” after each touchdown, make Stallworth take off his helmet and say, “I drove while drunk and killed somebody” each touchdown he scores during his two years of house arrest.

And yes, there are some extenuating circumstances, like the victim, technically, jaywalking. Still, this is pretty much a free pass to get 30 days, plus two years house arrest that still let you play in the NFL.

That said, I am waiting to hear MADD weigh in.

Not so fast on ‘alcohol is good for you’

Most those highly hyped studies that claim that? They don’t meat the scientific smell test, and, shades of Big Tobacco, they’re financed by the alcohol industry. That’s complete with paid-off scientists denying the research subsidies had any effect.

Biggest NFL drug problem

Not powder coke. Not crack. Not pot.

It’s called alcohol, just as it is in society in general. The NFL is working with Mothers Against Drunk Drivers.

Of course, MADD in recent years has done what about any national advocacy group of large and growing size does. To raise additional funds from the public, it’s expanded its range. In MADD’s case, that means getting close to becoming neo-prohibitionist.

And, the NFL ain’t gonna do that. As the story notes, in 2005, Coors paid the league $500 million to remain the NFL’s official beer through 2010. That alone would pay the salary of 100 Donté Stallworths over that time.

I recommend instead that the NFL work with a non-12 step recovery organization called Lifering Secular Recovery.

Staying sober in college – at infamous Animal House

Owen Jennings, a Dartmouth student, pledged to the Alpha Delta fraternity two years ago, the inspiration for the movie “Animal House.”

One slight problem. Owen’s not alcoholic, but he has liver disease and therefore cannot drink. Read about his take on college binge drunkenness.

I won’t drink to that!

More Americans than in the past, even younger Americans, are becoming moderate drinkers rather than bingers. And, the number of non-drinkers is increasing as well.

Flip side? No decrease in the rate of alcohol addiction or alcohol-related disorders, such as alcoholic cardiomyopathy or alcoholic cirrhosis.

Parents: What songs are your teens drinking in?

No, not listening to, drinking in. One of three songs teens here has drug or alcohol references. One quarter were about the legal drug of ethanol.