Stories of beer's medicinal effects go back as far as recorded history - in fact, beer is central in the earliest recorded prescription, as a counteragent to a worm imagined by ancient Mesopotamians to cause toothache:
For treatment, one would mix beer, a lump of malt, and oil together, then repeat the following incantation three times:
After Anu [had created the sky],/
The sky had created [the earth],/
The earth had created the rivers./
The rivers had created canals,/
The canals had created the marsh,/
The marsh created the worm./
The worm went forth weeping, before Shamash,/
Before Ea in tears (saying),/
"What will you give me to eat?/
What will you give me to suck on?"/
"I will give you ripe figs, armannu fruit, and apples."/
"Of what use to me are ripe figs, armannu fruit, apples?/
(instead), raise me up and let me live between the teeth and the jaw!/
I will suck the blood from the teeth!/
I will chew upon the food in the jaw!"/
"Because you have spoken thus, O worm,/
May Ea strike you with all the strength of his hand!"/
The doctor/priest (or 'asu') would then actually pull the tooth, a procedure that could only be facilitated by the application of beer. Later in history, ancient Egyptian women relied on beer to keep their skin clear. Hippocrates used beer as a diuretic (you have to admit, it's good for that!), and the Greeks generally relied on it as a fever reducer. Aretus of Capadocia recommended it for diabetes and migraine. It was used throughout the Middle Ages to calm the nerves and stimulate the appetite, and pillows stuffed with aromatic hops were used to address sleeping disorders until about a hundred years ago.
Of course, most of beer's reputation as a healthy beverage derives from simple observation: people who drank beer did not get sick as often as those who drank water. Thus, by the time the Mayflower made landfall on the New England coast (because their beer supplies were running low), your average European male drank upwards of a quart of the stuff a day, and it may have constituted a third of his daily caloric intake.
Of course, the reason beer was safer was because it was boiled, whereas the teetotaller's water, drawn direct from groundwater or the same stream everyone's sewers emptied into, was not. It's no coincidence that widespread 'temperance' movements gained popularity in the West at about the same time as municipal sewage and water systems gained a certain level of sophistication, and clean air and water standards began to be enacted and enforced. Along with these things came a sudden awakening to the dangers of alcoholism and the disagreeable side-effects of alcohol consumption - as if nobody had noticed in the last 5000 years that drinking too much beer could be bad for you! However, the risks involved with not drinking beer had been decreased, and the risks involved in drinking it came into pre-eminance.
In modern times, it seems we have come full circle, and the health benefits of moderate alcohol consumption are more widely appreciated. (We've also started using leeches in medicine again, so who knows - maybe dentists will start the incantations again soon..) People who drink alcohol in moderation have fewer heart attacks and strokes, lower blood pressure, are at decreased risk of Alzheimers, and even tend not to catch colds as often. Their bones are stronger, their memories are sharper, their eyesight is improved, they are snazzier dressers, and all genders find them irresistable. In the time I've taken to write this, I've greatly decreased my personal risk of diabetes, arthritis, depression, pancreatic cancer, gallstones, hepatitis A, erectile dysfunction, and black lung disease (only one of those things was made up).
It's.. enheartening, to see the general response the crowd here is making. For contrast, however, there's also a discussion of these events on http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink =1709288fark.
Now, of course Mr. Spitzer is campaigning for re-election - see www.spitzer2006.com - and is cynically pulling voters in by the 'We must think of the children!' leash.
I confess here - I'm missing something. I don't understand why this tactic works. It's the parent's responsibility to safeguard his children. Is that a role we want to turn over to an Attorney General? Between this, Terry Schaivo, a rash of child brides making news - I've seen more intrusion by government into family affairs in recent years than in preceeding decades. It couldn't possibly be happening if some people didn't welcome, applaud, and approve of it - and they do; they turn out to support and re-elect the politicians who use this tactic.
So, again, I'm at a loss, and genuinely I'm looking for someone to fill in the gaps for me - why does this work so well?
www.spitzer2006.com
Of course he's just a slimebag opportunist trying to pull voters around by the 'protect the children' leash - but given that 99% of 'people' in Yahoo's chat rooms are ad-spamming robots it's hard to work up that much outrage..
Yes, of course, nothing says 'respect for your players' like nerfing http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=&N umber=3276567140 seperate abilities in one whack. WoW reads more like an interactive version of Blizzard's previous games than a high-concept evolving world - responding to their players has never been a strong suit. That could be contrasted with CoH in the few months post-release, before the massive war of egos between the developers and the players commenced. As it stands, now, the developers no longer bother to hide their contempt for their players - in the wake of the most recent issue, all the developer threads carried the warning that no developer would respond to anything posted in them, and for the next 'issue' even this hollow practice is being abandoned.
Nearly everyone is a fanboy of something, but devotion to MMO's seems particularly self-defeating. (Needless to say, I speak from some experience here.) An evolving world is under too much pressure from too many sources to change in too many ways - it's a certainty that whatever drew you to the game in the first place will eventually be done away with, if only by the simple practice of leveling. And then you find the next game, and start all over again.
In a sense, Blizzard's hyper-Hollywood approach - they present a sleek, streamlined entertainment package in a very one-directional stream, from the developers to the players - works to their advantage. As with mass-market beer, you're assured that the experience of the game won't change too terribly much over months or years of 'consuming' it. There is simply too much money involved for anyone at Blizzard to be comfortable with any degree of risk.
Or to put it all in a few words, and come back to the original article - what do you expect? That's Hollywood.
Leaving aside the fact that no non-code based lifeforms use Yahoo's mail service anymore, why not write up an adequate POP/SMTP gateway and let people actually use their desktop email clients?
You know, like that other free email service that recently came along and ate Yahoo's lunch...
Aesthetically, I prefer wood. The whole industrial steel-and-blue-LED's thing is just too cold.
But realistically, it doesn't matter. My case is always open. The minute I button it up, I know I'll just have to go in there and change something. So it could be made out of FedEx boxes; all anyone would ever see of it would be the front.
"I walked over to where he now lay on the ground, both my gun and my still full erection jutting out menacingly. I wondered which was the most scary to him. The notion of making him talk under the threat of perverse sexual acts danced amusingly across my mind to be discarded very rapidly."
Seriously, I'm still half-convinced that "James Morris" is a pseudonym for "Lowtax". This guy has his style in spades.
Slashdot Mirror
For treatment, one would mix beer, a lump of malt, and oil together, then repeat the following incantation three times:
After Anu [had created the sky],/ The sky had created [the earth],/ The earth had created the rivers./ The rivers had created canals,/ The canals had created the marsh,/ The marsh created the worm./ The worm went forth weeping, before Shamash,/ Before Ea in tears (saying),/ "What will you give me to eat?/ What will you give me to suck on?"/ "I will give you ripe figs, armannu fruit, and apples."/ "Of what use to me are ripe figs, armannu fruit, apples?/ (instead), raise me up and let me live between the teeth and the jaw!/ I will suck the blood from the teeth!/ I will chew upon the food in the jaw!"/ "Because you have spoken thus, O worm,/ May Ea strike you with all the strength of his hand!"/
The doctor/priest (or 'asu') would then actually pull the tooth, a procedure that could only be facilitated by the application of beer. Later in history, ancient Egyptian women relied on beer to keep their skin clear. Hippocrates used beer as a diuretic (you have to admit, it's good for that!), and the Greeks generally relied on it as a fever reducer. Aretus of Capadocia recommended it for diabetes and migraine. It was used throughout the Middle Ages to calm the nerves and stimulate the appetite, and pillows stuffed with aromatic hops were used to address sleeping disorders until about a hundred years ago.
Of course, most of beer's reputation as a healthy beverage derives from simple observation: people who drank beer did not get sick as often as those who drank water. Thus, by the time the Mayflower made landfall on the New England coast (because their beer supplies were running low), your average European male drank upwards of a quart of the stuff a day, and it may have constituted a third of his daily caloric intake.
Of course, the reason beer was safer was because it was boiled, whereas the teetotaller's water, drawn direct from groundwater or the same stream everyone's sewers emptied into, was not. It's no coincidence that widespread 'temperance' movements gained popularity in the West at about the same time as municipal sewage and water systems gained a certain level of sophistication, and clean air and water standards began to be enacted and enforced. Along with these things came a sudden awakening to the dangers of alcoholism and the disagreeable side-effects of alcohol consumption - as if nobody had noticed in the last 5000 years that drinking too much beer could be bad for you! However, the risks involved with not drinking beer had been decreased, and the risks involved in drinking it came into pre-eminance.
In modern times, it seems we have come full circle, and the health benefits of moderate alcohol consumption are more widely appreciated. (We've also started using leeches in medicine again, so who knows - maybe dentists will start the incantations again soon..) People who drink alcohol in moderation have fewer heart attacks and strokes, lower blood pressure, are at decreased risk of Alzheimers, and even tend not to catch colds as often. Their bones are stronger, their memories are sharper, their eyesight is improved, they are snazzier dressers, and all genders find them irresistable. In the time I've taken to write this, I've greatly decreased my personal risk of diabetes, arthritis, depression, pancreatic cancer, gallstones, hepatitis A, erectile dysfunction, and black lung disease (only one of those things was made up).
Slainte! Now, drink up.
Also - what do you suppose Blobmouse thinks of all this? Some mice get all the good mutations..
.. given that he's also pressuring vendors like EBay not to sell stun guns and Tasers to people living in the Empire State - see http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000570062864/. You have to wonder what he's trying to accomplish, banning non-lethal weapons and closing down fantasy chatrooms - see http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/10/12/D8D6IBDO0 .html. Are there no more pressing matters demanding a state AG's attention?
Oh, right - there's re-election. http://www.spitzer2006.com/ That trumps all other issues..
I confess here - I'm missing something. I don't understand why this tactic works. It's the parent's responsibility to safeguard his children. Is that a role we want to turn over to an Attorney General? Between this, Terry Schaivo, a rash of child brides making news - I've seen more intrusion by government into family affairs in recent years than in preceeding decades. It couldn't possibly be happening if some people didn't welcome, applaud, and approve of it - and they do; they turn out to support and re-elect the politicians who use this tactic. So, again, I'm at a loss, and genuinely I'm looking for someone to fill in the gaps for me - why does this work so well?
www.spitzer2006.com Of course he's just a slimebag opportunist trying to pull voters around by the 'protect the children' leash - but given that 99% of 'people' in Yahoo's chat rooms are ad-spamming robots it's hard to work up that much outrage..
Nearly everyone is a fanboy of something, but devotion to MMO's seems particularly self-defeating. (Needless to say, I speak from some experience here.) An evolving world is under too much pressure from too many sources to change in too many ways - it's a certainty that whatever drew you to the game in the first place will eventually be done away with, if only by the simple practice of leveling. And then you find the next game, and start all over again.
In a sense, Blizzard's hyper-Hollywood approach - they present a sleek, streamlined entertainment package in a very one-directional stream, from the developers to the players - works to their advantage. As with mass-market beer, you're assured that the experience of the game won't change too terribly much over months or years of 'consuming' it. There is simply too much money involved for anyone at Blizzard to be comfortable with any degree of risk.
Or to put it all in a few words, and come back to the original article - what do you expect? That's Hollywood.
*ahem* The average age of the *PERSON WHOSE NAME IS ON THE CREDIT CARD* is 32. I might believe that..
Leaving aside the fact that no non-code based lifeforms use Yahoo's mail service anymore, why not write up an adequate POP/SMTP gateway and let people actually use their desktop email clients? You know, like that other free email service that recently came along and ate Yahoo's lunch...
Aesthetically, I prefer wood. The whole industrial steel-and-blue-LED's thing is just too cold. But realistically, it doesn't matter. My case is always open. The minute I button it up, I know I'll just have to go in there and change something. So it could be made out of FedEx boxes; all anyone would ever see of it would be the front.
No worries. I'm doing that myself, right now. I wonder who's at the door?
What amount of editing would have helped this?
"I walked over to where he now lay on the ground, both my gun and my still full erection jutting out menacingly. I wondered which was the most scary to him. The notion of making him talk under the threat of perverse sexual acts danced amusingly across my mind to be discarded very rapidly."
Seriously, I'm still half-convinced that "James Morris" is a pseudonym for "Lowtax". This guy has his style in spades.