How Beer Saved the World

I came across the above documentary. I know this should be right up my alley, but I'm actually not very impressed. I guess I'd say it's fun, just not factual. Among the many ludicrous claims:
(1) Beer brought about the agricultural revolution
(2) Beer kept people healthy from bad drinking water in the Middle Ages

Regarding (1) the evidence given is that analysis of clay pots from the agricultural revolution shows that the contained beer. This is before they have such evidence of bread. According to them, this means that beer pre-dates bread. But why would you put bread in a clay pot? If you put bread anywhere other than the table you'd store it in a bag of some kind. Bags like that would rot and archaeologists therefore couldn't test them. Clay pots are for storing liquids. So of course they find beer in it. Bread could have been around a lot longer (and probably was). All you need to make bread is a flat rock near a fire. Beer requires quite a few more steps.

It's also important to note that hunter-gatherers normally wouldn't use pottery. They're almost exclusively nomadic and pottery is too heavy. So they could have had (and probably did) many different kinds of fermented beverages before the advent of the agricultural revolution. They just would have stored it in a bag made of animal skin or somesuch. And therefore we have no evidence of it in the archaeological record. But does anyone really think that hunter-gatherers never accidentally let their fruit rot? We were drinking alcohol long before we were living in cities.

Regarding (2) they say that Europeans in the Middle Ages drank beer instead of the filthy water from ponds and streams, and that this kept them alive. Because beer is boiled as part of the process it will naturally be free of bacteria. But here's one statistic they give as evidence: "by the 16th century people got through 15 liters of beer per year". 15 liters is 80 gallons. They try to make this sound like a lot, but if you do the math that's only 2 bottles of beer per day. Bottom line - they were still drinking that nasty pond water. Or they were getting their liquids from soup, which would have also been safe. But no one wants to watch a documentary on how "soup saved the world."

And isn't it obvious that many people did die from bad water in the Middle Ages? Real anthropologists, (Jared Diamond for instance) say that Europeans did drink the dirty water. And that's why they were more resistant to the diseases that killed off many of the inhabitants of the new world.

There were a few things that struck me as possibly true. It makes sense that the research funding that brought us air-conditioning and refrigeration came from the beer industry. This is because you need cold temperatures to brew a lager. They also said that Louis Pasteur was researching beer when he developed pasteurization and the germ theory of disease. This could also be true.

On a side note, the documentary was obviously funded by Miller-Coors. Their products are almost exclusively shown throughout - to the exclusion of nearly every other brand. It was created for purposes of advertising. It shouldn't be surprising that it's all fluff and no substance. This would be okay if they were honest about it - but they pass it off as real information and I'm not sure it qualifies.

Just bought a macbook

My laptop went tits-up (thanks Dad for teaching me that apropos phrase). I've decided that I need to switch to mac. Yes, I'm one of those people. Or at least I will be. So, is there a secret handshake or something? Joel, Justin, anyone?

Cure for Hiccups

I was reading Plato's "Symposium" and came across a cure for Hiccups. In the dialogue it comes from the mouth of Eryximachus, a physician. This is from the 1993 Dover Thrift edition translation.

...let me recommend you to hold your breath, and if this fails, then to gargle with a little water; and if the hiccough still continues, tickle your nose with something and sneeze; and if you sneeze once or twice, even the most violent hiccough is sure to go.

I think I'll give it a shot next time I have hiccups. If you have a chance to try it, let me know how it works for you.