This good-humoured book offers an antidote to the pretentious clap-trap that is written about wine today and a profound apology for the drink on which..

In my (2004), I argued that it is possible to drink any finite amount of alcohol without ever suffering a hangover by completing a certain kind of supertask. Assume that a drink causes drunkenness to ensue immediately and to last for a period proportional to the quantity of alcohol consumed; that a hangover begins immediately at the time the drunkenness ends and lasts for the same length of time as the drunkenness; and that at any time during which you are (...) drunk you do not suffer any hangover you might have at that time. Starting at a time at which you are not drunk and not hung over, drink a half pint of beer. Wait until you are just about to get a hangover (30 minutes, say), and then drink a quarter pint. Wait until you are just about to get a hangover again, and then drink an eighth, and so on.... After an hour you have drunk a pint, and you do not have a hangover. Every hangover you incurred happened within the hour you spent drinking; but you were drunk that whole time, so you didn’t suffer the hangovers. It seems that the old drunkard’s method of a “hair of the dog” can be effective in completely avoiding a hangover. (shrink)

We argue that the occurrence of puritanical norms cannot simply be explained by appealing to the need for cooperation. Anthropological and archaeological studies suggest that across history and cultures self-indulgent behaviours, such as excessive drinking, eating, and feasting, have been used to enhance cooperation by enforcing social and group identities.

In the coming decades, highly treated wastewater, known as reclaimed water, is slated to be a major element of municipal water supplies. In particular, planners propose supplementing drinking water with reclaimed water as a sustainable solution to the growing challenge of urban water scarcity. Public opposition is currently considered the primary barrier to implementing successful potable water reuse projects; nonetheless, public responses to reclaimed water are not well understood. Based on a survey of over 250 residents of Tucson, Arizona, (...) this article assesses the relationship between trust in the professional institutions responsible for municipal water development and willingness to drink reclaimed water. Results demonstrate that public acceptance of potable reuse is contingent on trust in the authorities who influence design of sociotechnical systems for water supply and reuse—including water and wastewater utilities, regulators, consultants, academics, and elected local officials. Findings emphasize the highly interdependent social and political factors that inform personal decisions to support or reject potable reuse. The authors suggest that achieving greater acceptance of potable reuse will require bringing local and regional water policy in line with public values, as well as finding ways to incorporate these values into the planning process. (shrink)

The scarcity of livers available for transplants forces tough choices upon us. Lives for those not receiving a transplant are likely to be short. One large group of potential recipients needs a new liver because of alcohol consumption, while others suffer for reasons unrelated to their own behaviour. Should the former group receive lower priority when scarce livers are allocated? This discussion connects with one of the most pertinent issues in contemporary political philosophy; the role of personal responsibility in distributive (...) justice. One prominent theory of distributive justice, luck egalitarianism, assesses distributions as just if, and only if, people's relative positions reflect their exercises of responsibility. There is a principled luck egalitarian case for giving lower priority to those who are responsible for their need. Compared to the existing literature favouring such differentiation, luck egalitarianism provides a clearer rationale of fairness, acknowledges the need for individual assessments of responsibility, and requires initiatives both inside and outside of the allocation systems aimed at mitigating the influence from social circumstances. Furthermore, the concrete policies that luck egalitarians can recommend are neither too harsh on those who make imprudent choices nor excessively intrusive towards those whose exercises of responsibility are assessed. (shrink)

The Architecture of the Mind is itself built on foundations that deserve probing. In this brief commentary I focus on these foundations—Carruthers’ conception of modularity, his arguments for thinking that the mind is massively modular in structure, and his view of human cognitive architecture.

Drinking water quality has drawn enormous attention from scientific communities, the industrial sector, and the common public in several countries during the last couple of decades. The scholarship in science and technology studies somehow overlooked this crucial domain. This article attempts to contribute to this gray area by exploring how drinking water quality is understood in Indian water policies, laws, and courtrooms. The article argues that water policies and laws in India were significantly shaped by international treaties and (...) global environmental stewardship. In the courtrooms, the Indian judiciary employed minimum science-based evidence in decision making in the context of drinking water–related cases; rather they used a rights-based approach and minimally engaged with the issue of drinking water quality/standards. Whatever little science used as valid science by the judges in the decision making was entirely expert-based. The reliance of the judges on the scientific expertise of the experts representing regulatory organizations and public institutions was another unique characteristic of the relationship between science and law in India. (shrink)

This study explored how social representations of food and health fit into the development of masculinities. In what ways does the transition into Higher Education impact on students’ eating and drinking behaviours? And where do representations of food and health fit into the development of masculinities? A total of thirty-five students from two separate higher education establishments in Ireland took part. Fourteen semi-structured individual interviews (7 males, 7 females) and four focus groups (6 males in one, 5 males in (...) two and 6 females in another) were conducted. A thematic analysis indicated that increasing unhealthy behaviour among young people is not just about their disinclination to engage with an active comprehension of the implications of their behaviour for their future. Rather, their choice of food and drink, and the quantity of alcohol they consume has more to do with attaining and maintaining their gendered identities within a community of students. (shrink)

The 18th century philosopher and Anglican bishop, George Berkeley, is chiefly known to posterity for advocating the radical thesis that there is no unthinking stuff in the world. According to Berkeley, bar stools, kegs, mugs and the all paraphernalia of ordinary life (plus everything else) are merely ideas and have no existence outside the mind of those seated on the stools, tapping the kegs, and drinking from the mugs. What is less well-known is that Berkeley devoted much of his (...) energy in later life to promoting the use of a concoction he called tar-water for the treatment of a wide variety of health ailments. Fortunately, Berkeley thought that many of the same virtues were found in some beers. It may seem paradoxical that one and the same man could both claim that beer only exists as an idea in the minds of those consuming it and that it could cure all known afflictions. Berkeley's resolution of this paradox will be explored and it will be seen that it is possible to both appreciate and benefit from beer even if it is only an idea. (shrink)

This essay examines the multifaceted roles of drinking parties in early Greece and in medieval China. It takes as paradigm examples descriptions of ritual intoxication in Plato’s Laws and in the poetry of Ouyang Xiu and Mei Yaochen, arguing that these divergent cultural and philosophical traditions can be both related and made distinct through concepts of pleasure, creativity, and social harmony.

In this paper, we analyse the recent rapid growth of ‘binge’ drinking in the UK. This means the rapid consumption of large amounts of alcohol, especially by young people, leading to serious anti-social and criminal behaviour in urban centres. British soccer fans have often exhibited this kind of behaviour abroad, but it has become widespread amongst young people within Britain itself. Vomiting, collapsing in the street, shouting and chanting loudly, intimidating passers-by and fighting are now regular night-time features of (...) many British towns and cities. A particularly disturbing aspect is the huge rise in drunken and anti-social behaviour amongst young females. Increasingly, policy makers in the West are concerned about how not just to regulate but to alter social behaviour. Smoking and obesity are obvious examples, and in the UK ‘binge’ drinking has become a focus of acute policy concern. We show how a simple agent based model approach, combined with a limited amount of easily acquired information, can provide useful insights for policy makers in the context of behavioural regulation. We show that the hypothesis that the rise in binge drinking is a fashion-related phenomenon, with imitative behaviour spreading across social networks, is sufficient to account for the empirically observed patterns of binge drinking behaviour. The results show that a small world network, rather than a scale-free or random one, offers the best description of the data. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Drinking Rules! Byron and BaudelaireJoshua Wilner (bio)This essay 1 takes up two nineteenth-century texts on the theme of intoxication in which the poetic word can no longer, if it ever could, stably figure itself as the metaphoric other of the drug, that is, as a legitimate means of imaginative transport, and in which the writer’s enthrallment by the transporting substance of words shows us its addictive and, one (...) might say, prosaic face.The first of these pieces is a pair of stanzas from Canto II of Byron’s Don Juan, the other, Baudelaire’s brief prose poem “Enivrez-vous,” pieces that Jean Pommier [341] and, following Pommier, Robert Kopp [314–15] have suggested may be connected, though neither reader enters into much more detail than to note that both bits of writing, in Kopp’s words, “chant[e] l’ivresse.” Now the praise of drunkenness is of course a poetic commonplace, and the mere fact of its appearance in these two bits of text argues about as intimate a bond of kinship as that involved in pointing out that you and I are both Noah’s children. But there are, I would argue, compelling reasons for looking at these pieces in relation to one another and to which I believe Pommier was responding.That Byron mattered to Baudelaire is attested to by a number of references scattered throughout the latter’s work and letters, references which, while faulting Byron for garrulousness, praise him for having the thing that makes poets: “une diabolique personnalité” [OC 2: 232]. Perhaps the most interesting of these references occurs in a well-known letter that Baudelaire wrote to his mother in July 1857, shortly after Les fleurs du mal had been published and while the storm of controversy that was to culminate in the prosecution and expurgation of the collection for obscenity was rapidly gathering:On me refuse tout, l’esprit d’invention et même la connaissance de la langue française. Je me moque de tous ces imbéciles, et je sais que ce volume, avec ses qualités et ses défauts, fera son chemin dans la mémoire du public lettré, à côté des meilleurs poésies de V. Hugo, de Th. Gautier et même de Byron.[CP 1: 411][They deny me everything, the spirit of invention and even knowledge of the French language. I could care less about all these imbeciles, and I know that this volume, with its qualities and its faults, will make its way in the memory of the [End Page 34] lettered public, along with the best poetry of V. Hugo, of Th. Gautier, and even of Byron.]The pride of place Baudelaire reserves for Byron in this list was somewhat dated even in its time 2 and odd in other ways, especially given the more qualified expressions of admiration we meet elsewhere in his writings. But it becomes more understandable if one considers that for Baudelaire’s mother, who was of Byron’s generation and had early ties to England 3 (in fact, she apparently taught Charles English during his childhood [E. Crépet 30], making it, strangely enough, part of his “mother tongue”), Byron’s would have been the emblematic case of a writer for whom a reputation for depravity was overtaken by poetic honor, perhaps at the cost of his death in a noble cause.Apart from this evidence of a felt affinity, there are specific formal grounds for associating the two pieces. Since they are fairly brief, allow me first of all to cite them both. Here are the stanzas from Canto II of Don Juan: 179 Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; The best of life is but intoxication: Glory, the grape, love, gold, in these are sunk The hopes of all men, and of every nation; Without their sap, how branchless were the trunk Of life’s strange tree, so fruitful on occasion! But to return, - Get very drunk; and when You wake with head-ache, you shall see what then. 180 Ring for your valet - bid him quickly bring Some hock and soda-water, then you’ll know A pleasure worthy Xerxes the... (shrink)

Simonet, Emanuel Nicolas Cortes The widespread over-consumption of alcohol in Australia has shaped its high tolerance to drinking culture. Australia has a complex socio-cultural relationship with alcohol and it is challenging to reduce high alcohol intake when it is so ingrained in our society. The substantial harms associated with over-consumption not only affect the drinker, but also impact upon the wider community. This article discusses the available evidence about the health and social harms for individuals that may result from (...) an over-consumption of alcohol and how these impact on society. More so, it discusses how effective alcohol policy strategies such as decreasing the availability of alcohol, increasing its price as well as promoting public awareness of the associated risks may help to reduce these harms. (shrink)

In this dialogue, I illustrate why moral arguments from analogy are a valuable part of moral reasoning by considering how texting while driving is, morally speaking, no different than drunk driving.

ArgumentFilm scholars have long posed the question of the specificity of the film medium and the apparatus of cinema, asking what is unique to cinema, how it constrains and enables filmmakers and audiences in particular ways that other media do not. This question has rarely been considered in relation to scientific film, and here it is posed within the specific context of cell biology: What does the use of time-based media such as film coupled with the microscope allow scientists to (...) experience that other visualization practices do not? Examining three episodes in the twentieth-century study of the cell, this article argues that the apparatus of microcinematography constitutes what might be thought of as a technical portal to another world, a door that determines the experience of the world that lies on the other side of it. In this case, the design of apparatuses to capture time-lapsed images enabled the acceleration of cellular time, bringing it into the realm of human perception and experience. Further, the experience of the cellular temporal world was part of a distinct kind of cell biology, one that was focused on behavior rather than structure, focused on the relation between cells, and between the cell and its milieu rather than on cell-intrinsic features such as chromosomes or organelles. As such, the instruments and technical design of the microcinematographic apparatus may be understood as a kind of materialized epistemology, the history of which can elucidate how cinema was and is used to produce scientific knowledge. (shrink)

The alarming rise in heavy drinking on college campuses has resulted in a new federal law allowing colleges to notify parents of infractions of alcohol related laws and policies. Before mandating such notifications a college should remember its “nurturing role” vis-a-vis students. Since no proffered reason is strong enough to justify mandatory notification, colleges should engage only in selective notification based on carefully established criteria. Finally, since “binge drinking” is the major new factor within the larger problem of (...) heavy drinking, efforts should be made at the legislative level to lower the legal age to eighteen. This change will lead to more responsible drinking on the part of students. (shrink)

In this paper I analyze Kant’s ideas about eating and drinking. First, I show that gluttony and drunkenness are considered ways to oppose to the duty to oneself as an animal being. Second, I claim that for Kant there is a healthy way of having meals, which consists in eating together with friends. Then I indicate that Kant accepts that one can drink at dinner parties but has to avoid drinks that lead to drunkenness and unsocial behavior. In this (...) sense, he draws a classification of the various kinds of alcoholic drinks, according to their potential harm. Afterwards, I illustrate how Kant’s own intimate life was a daily practice of his thoughts on dietetic conceptions and on what is better for digestion and health. To conclude, I mention the idea of a philosopher’s medicine of the body and why a strict diet should be avoided. (shrink)

In discussions of arts and culture, food and drink are often relegated to the realms of mere decoration or mere necessity. However, like the term taste, which begins as one of the five senses but comes to be understood as the most sweeping term for human sensibility, eating and drinking can also be fundamental aesthetic experiences. In this book, author Leonard Barkan covers millennia of Western aesthetic and cultural activity, tracing the history of eating and drinking across literature, (...) art, philosophy, statecraft, religion, and historiography. Drawing on a myriad of historical and analytic perspectives, Barkan demonstrates how the materials of the dining table, the flavor and pleasure of food, and hunger and satiety are central to life and culture. He explores what it means to "read for the food" in works of art, literature, and philosophy, and demonstrates the central role that food played in Roman civilization. He examines the deeply culinary qualities of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, the relationship between food and drink and the culture of the Renaissance, and the literal acts of consumption that are endowed with sacred significance. By uncovering the gastronomic underplot in cultural and artistic works, Barkan proposes an interdisciplinary approach to the relation between sense experience and aesthetic experience, and considers what it means to move from the margins to the center in a study of culture. (shrink)

Rooted in altruism theory, the purpose of the double-blind academic journal peer-review process is to: assess the quality of scientific research, minimize the potential for nepotism, and; advance the standards of research through high-quality, constructive feedback. However, considering the limited, if any, public recognition and monetary incentives that referees receive for reviewing manuscripts, academics are often reluctant to squander their limited time toward peer reviewing manuscripts. If they do accept such invitations, referees, at times, do not invest the appropriate time (...) needed and, as a result, scantily review manuscripts, which adversely affects the quality of the review. In addition, given that authors’ identities are not blind to journal editors, there is the potential for bias toward well-established academics from highly-ranked institutions. As a result of these issues, the aims of the academic journal review process are currently not being fulfilled. To rectify these issues, several recommendations, namely: single-blind the editors, pay reviewers, standardize the review process, increase the acceptance standards at academic conferences, and provide constructive feedback, are offered. (shrink)

Geoffrey Sayre-McCord puts before us an interesting and original line of thought. Here is its main structure: Naturalist semantics would bring important benefits to ethics. But it has very high costs. Fortunately, we can secure such benefits without the costs, by substituting, for the natural kinds of naturalist semantics, a set of moral kinds determined not by scientific but by moral theory. I find myself stumped by the preliminaries at , however, which need further support, or so I will argue (...) in section I. Section II will assume that the concerns of section I can be met, and will discuss the rest of the argument independently of that. (shrink)

Both for reasons of their own and because of congressionally mandated changes in the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act, many colleges and universities have changed the way they deal with alcohol abuse by their students. One of these changes has been to adopt a policy of “Parental Notification” according to which parents of an underaged student found guilty of consuming alcohol are notified after a first offense. I argue that this is a paternalistic policy in need of justification, and (...) that justifying it is made the more difficult because of barriers to its being successfully pursued. Nonetheless, I suggest that such a policy, if a weak paternalistic one, can be morally justified. (shrink)