Live to 90 With Booze

If you want to live into your 90s, booze actually beats exercise, according to a long-term study. The research, led by University of California (no surprise) neurologist Claudia Kawas, tracked 1,700 nonagenarians enrolled in the 90+ Study that began in 2003 to explore impacts of daily habits on longevity.
Researchers discovered that subjects who drank about two glasses of beer or wine a day were 18% less likely to experience a premature death. Meanwhile, participants who exercised 15 to 45 minutes a day, cut the same risk by 11%.
“I have no explanation for it, but I do firmly believe that modest drinking improves longevity,” Kawas stated at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual conference in Austin, Texas.

Other factors were found to boost longevity, including weight. Participants who were slightly overweight, but not obese, cut their odds of an early death by 3%. “It’s not bad to be skinny when you are young, but it is very bad to be skinny when you’re old,” Kawas noted in her address.

Also, subjects who kept busy with a daily hobby two hours a day were 21% less likely to die early, while those who drank two cups of coffee a day cut that risk by 10%.

Sunday Car Buying

In fourteen US states, car dealers are not legally allowed to be open on Sunday and many cities have similar laws. Even in states and cities where dealerships can be open on Sunday, there are sometimes restrictions on what time they can be open or that require a dealer to choose to be closed on either Saturday or Sunday. The reason is called a blue law and blue laws were enacted for religious reasons to allow people to practice their faith on Sunday, instead of buying liquor or automobiles.

Another Holiday Myth Debunked

Myth: Different types of alcohol make for different types of drunk. Can you imagine a person drunk on tequila and another person who is drunk on fancy red wine.  Do you imagine them acting the same? They conjure up an image of the tequila person running naked from the cops in Tijuana, while the second is getting sleepy and dialing his ex.
For a fun sports-related buzz, grab a beer. For telling sad stories or intellectual debates, go for gin. If you are feeling loose, but fancy and it is your one night off from the kids, order some red wine. If you want to burn your whole life to the ground, order a bunch of whiskey or tequila. You will be trying to fight a stranger in no time.
Researchers have not found any meaningful difference between types of liquors, in terms of affecting mood. If we do behave differently when we drink a certain type of booze, it is most likely all in our head. There is a  psychosocial effect of drinking -  we behave how we think we behave when consuming that type of alcohol. "I think tequila makes me awesome, therefore I am awesome when I drink tequila."
Many experiments have been conducted. In one experiment, patients were given either bourbon or vodka while living at an inpatient lab for nine days. Researchers noted an increase in hostility, anxiety, and depression across the board. Yet there was no discernible difference between the bourbon and vodka drinker moods.
Different alcohols have different ethanol and congener contents. Different alcohols have different alcohol content. Also, different alcohols are usually paired with different mixers. None of these factors explain or make for different types of drunkenness.

A 2010 analysis of more than 40 studies, differences often appear to be due to the individual attempting to compensate for the expected effects of the alcohol.

Bottom line, if you think to be true, your mind will help you make it be true.qw

Costco Liquor Facts

Costco is the US largest wine seller.

In many states, like Texas you do not need to have a membership to buy liquor.
It sells more bottles of Dom Perignon champagne than any other store in the country.

Costco brand wine, beer, and liquor is Kirkland.


Costco's Kirkland brand vodka scored higher than Grey Goose in blind tastings and its water comes from the same region in France.

Holiday and Booze Myths

Drink dark liquor and get a hangover, drink light and you are good all night. Congeners are in alcoholic beverages, mostly as a result of the processes used in fermenting and aging, or are leached from oak barrels. They are toxins such as acetone, histamines, and tannins. Although they are only slightly toxic in the small amounts found in booze, some believe congeners are to blame for typical hangover symptoms. Gin and vodka have the least congeners while bourbon and scotch have the most as dark liquors have more than clear ones in general. However, the biggest determinant of getting hung-over is alcohol intoxication, not dark vs. light drinks.

The old saying: “Beer before liquor, never been sicker. Liquor before beer, you’re in the clear.” People tend to down liquor but sip beer. As such, drinking liquor first might do more damage because of greater speed of drinking. The one truth in this adage is that if you drink much beer before drinking much liquor, you very well could get sick. The truth is that it is more about how much you drink than the order you drink it. If you drink enough, you will probably get sick either way.

Holiday Boozing

Many equate the holidays with drinking, so I looked up some of the common terms we use, beginning with 'crapulous' (a substitute for hangover), from the 18th century Greek kraipale (drunken headache or nausea). I love that word.

Booze first appeared in Middle Dutch as bûsen, which meant 'to drink to excess.' There was also the Old High German word bausen, which meant 'to bulge or billow.'" It took 200 years for English speakers to start using it as both a verb (to booze) and a noun (give me some booze). It is a common misconception that the word was borrowed from a brand of whiskey sold by E.S. Booz in the 1800s, but the word much older. The 1529 Oxford dictionary defined it as “affected by drinking.”

Hooch comes from Alaska. There was a native tribe there called the Hoochinoo that distilled rum made primarily from molasses and introduced it to soldiers from the lower 48.

Alcohol began as an Arabic word describing a fine metallic powder used as eye shadow (al-kuhul). The word was broadened to mean 'the pure spirit of anything'. Later it was expanded to include a distilled spirit or liquor. Alcoholic meaning 'caused by drunkenness' is attested by the 1800s and meaning 'habitually drunk' by 1910.

Liquor dates back to at least 1200, likur "any matter in a liquid state," and the Latin verb liquere, meaning "to be fluid", from Latin liquorem. The definition including a fermented or distilled drink followed about a hundred years later. In North America, the term hard liquor is used to distinguish distilled beverages from undistilled ones and does not include beverages such as beer, wine, and cider, which are fermented, but not distilled.

Spirits refers to a distilled beverage that contains no added sugar and has at least 20% alcohol by volume. It probably originated with ancient alchemists, who referred to the vapor given off and collected during an alchemical process (like the distillation of alcohol) as the 'spirit' of the original material. Early European Monks believed that the spirit was removed from the mash during the distilling process.

Cocktail refers to any beverage that contains two or more ingredients with at least one of them being alcohol. When a cocktail contains only a distilled spirit and a mixer, it is a highball. The Oxford English dictionary cites the word as originating in the US. The first recorded use of the word cocktail as a beverage was during the early 1800s. Of the many origins, two stand out: an old French recipe for mixed wines, called a coquetel, brought to America by General Lafayette’s soldiers in 1777; and New Orleans brandy drink in an egg-cup called a coquetier in French. The latter was a morning drink served at the time the tail of the evening met with the morning cock-a-doodle-do of a rooster.

Bar is an abbreviation of barrier, the counter that separates drinks from the drinkers. Toward the end of the 16th century it expanded to mean the building that housed the barrier. Barmaid didn’t appear in print until the mid 1700s and bartender arrived about fifty years later and barfly came about during the early 1900s. Bottom line, beer, wine, cider, hooch, and alcohol are booze, but only hooch, and alcohol are liquors. Spirits are alcohol and both are liquor. All highballs are cocktails, but not all cocktails are highballs.

Tequila

The clear white liquor with the unique taste that people either love or hate, tequila is thought to have been first produced around the second half of the 16th century in Mexico. It is made from the blue agave plant that grows so abundantly around the city of Tequila in the state of Jalisco. Tequila is said to have been a result of the Spaniards running out of their own brandy. Upon hearing the Aztecs had once used the blue agave plant to produce an alcoholic drink (known as octli or pulque), the conquistadors set about distilling the plant to produce a drink they could use to replace their beloved brandy.

Mexican law dictates that tequila can only be produced in this and a few other very select areas if it is to carry the name of tequila. Over 300 million agave plants are harvested each year for the production of tequila.

It is distilled after fermentation and the end product is usually 38% to 40% alcohol. That brings it in at 76% to 80% proof.

American Drinking

Sixty four percent of American adults drink alcohol. Of those who imbibe, 36% prefer wine, 35% beer and 23% hard liquor.