I had no idea I was acting Finnish all these years: The name says it all, or most of it, anyway; päntsdrunk means to drink an alcoholic beverage in your pants — specifically your underpants, and it’s picking up interest in the U.S. There’s even a new book out called “Päntsdrunk: Kalsarikanni: The Finnish Path to Relaxation” by Miska Rantanen, indicating that this seemingly...
Data on Churchill’s drinking
He died 50 years ago this month – the anniversary of his funeral will be marked later this week — at the ripe age of 90. A miracle, considering he had drunk an estimated 42,000 bottles of Pol Roger champagne through his life; he thought nothing of starting the morning with cold game and a glass of hock and ending it at 3am with the best part of a bottle of cognac. […] After...
I have no choice but to reject the validity of the scientific method
Are the benefits of moderate drinking a myth? A full review of the relevant epidemiological literature on moderate drinking is beyond the scope of this document. However, an initial scan leaves me reasonably confident that tax increases save lives in the long run too. The reasons: No randomized trials have checked on the benefits of moderate drinking (Holmes et al. 2014, p. 4). The belief in such...
More alcohol data: consumption over the life cycle
More alcohol data: don’t drink Hennessy or Everclear
I am disappointed that my beverage of choice, box wine, did not make the list.
1,800 college students die each year from alcohol is a myth
And pretty crappy science as well: But there is another problem with the data. The research appears to assume that alcohol-related motor-vehicle crashes were caused by the presence of alcohol. But since at least 2003, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has emphatically warned that the data do not mean that alcohol consumption caused the crashes … In other words, an accident...
How to cure campus binge drinking: lower the drinking age
As someone who went to college when Texas raised the drinking ago from 18 to 21 (with a corresponding crackdown on public drinking by my university), I remember how student behavior changed: students began chugging beers in the privacy of their dorm rooms to get drunk before they headed out to that night’s party. Activists, administrators, and national policymakers concerned about a...
Number of drinks per week in the U.S., annals of the top ten percent
The top 10 percent of American drinkers – 24 million adults over age 18 – consume, on average, 74 alcoholic drinks per week. That works out to a little more than four-and-a-half 750 ml bottles of Jack Daniels, 18 bottles of wine, or three 24-can cases of beer. In one week.
No comment on where I fall on this distribution.
You can’t argue with science: drinking is healthy
The U.S. public health establishment buries overwhelming evidence that abstinence is a cause of heart disease and early death. People deserve to know that alcohol gives most of us a higher life expectancy—even if consumed above recommended limits.