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.

Hallelujah Chorus

Take a minute to watch the attached video (for the technologically challenged just click on the title). Make sure to listen to the words.

I think it's a perfect example of the unity of music and life. The song is about (in part) Christ coming to earth and entering our life with us. And these folks live it out by bringing the story to a shopping mall during Christmas.

Merry Christmas

I just had a thought. I have a double-major in Political Science and Philosophy, yet I get all my news from The Daily Show and the Colbert Report.

Is this sick and wrong or just a sign of the times?

Organization

I was watching a customer fiddling with her money the other day and had a flashback to my childhood. I remember being at a toy store buying something. Dad was with me and I think this was probably one of the first times I had bought something with my own money - probably when Mom and Dad were initially trying to teach us good spending habits.

When I was putting away the change Dad told me that he likes to organize his bills by denomination - 20's behind 10's, 10's behind 5's, etc. He seemed to think that this was important, that it would save time in the long run. I remember thinking at the time,

I don't have time for that! Where are your priorities - there are Lego's to play with!

Well, I don't know how it happened, but years later I'm that guy holding up the line at Safeway putting my money away.

Thanks Dad. Now if I would just have the same attitude towards the rest of my life I could walk to my bed without stubbing my toes and tripping on stuff.

Truck smell

So most of you know I'm driving a new vehicle. Marv Rhodes, a close friend of the family, passed away and it used to be his. It was sad to see Marv go, but he's in a better place. I am pretty excited about the truck, however. It's been cool to be driving a vehicle that belonged to someone I knew - kind of a remembrance.

Anyway, though, the reason I'm writing this is because of a strange smell that I just noticed. I was driving it the other day and suddenly thought

"wow, it even smells like a truck".

A while later, when I wasn't in the truck I had another thought.

"wait a second, how does a truck smell any different than a car?"

What the heck was I identifying as that 'truck smell'? Do trucks really smell different from cars? How so?

So the next time I got in I paid more attention to exactly what I was smelling. I finally realized that what I was smelling was just Marv's old dog. Brandy or Oreo, I don't know which, had left their mark (so to speak) on the truck. And Gus, the dog my dad had while I was growing up, had left his mark on my subconscious feelings of what a truck should smell like.

Thanks guys, what would the world be like without dogs?

Edited on March 14th.