(A Biologist’s) St. Patrick’s Day Song

Of course, you should only be enjoying the excretions of Saccharomyces cerevisiae should you be of legal imbibing age in your particular home country/state/anarcho-syndicalist commune. Right? RIGHT?! ;-)

Everything you ever wanted to know, and lots you didn’t about the science of drinking.

 Lá Fhéile Pádraig Sona Daoibh!

(Song by cadamole, tip of the pint glass to The Science Llama for the video!)

Source: youtube.com

Three quarks for Muster Mark!
Sure he has not got much of a bark
And sure any he has it’s all beside the mark.

James Joyce, Finnegan’s Wake

This poem provided co-discoverer of the quark, Murray Gell-Mann, with a clue of how to spell the name for the subatomic particle whose existence he had theorized in 1964. But he had picked out the name, originally pronounced “kwork”, some time before picking up Joyce. The drink-heavy imagery of Finnegan’s Wake made a pub scene of an after-the-lab “three quarts” too appealing of a link for Gell-Mann, and the pronunciation “quark” stuck.

Alcohol, Retinol and a 50-Year Quest for the Male Pill

50 years ago, an effective male contraceptive was developed using inmates from the Oregon State Penitentiary. But when it was given to men outside the prison walls, its combination with alcohol led to violent nausea and shortness of breath.

But did that reaction teach us something about how a male pill might work, five decades later?

Of course if it weren’t for alcohol, you wouldn’t need a male pill. *rimshot

“Alcohol, like caffeine, has an enormous reputation but loose understanding in popular culture. Learn how it’s absorbed and how fast, why it’s essential to reality TV altercations, its paradoxical sexual effects, and its life-lengthening potential, whether red wine or Bud Light.” Lifehacker debunks some booze myths and lists some alcohol science.  Know your buzz, folks! (via What Alcohol Actually Does to Your Brain and Body)
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“Alcohol, like caffeine, has an enormous reputation but loose understanding in popular culture. Learn how it’s absorbed and how fast, why it’s essential to reality TV altercations, its paradoxical sexual effects, and its life-lengthening potential, whether red wine or Bud Light.”

Lifehacker debunks some booze myths and lists some alcohol science.  Know your buzz, folks!

(via What Alcohol Actually Does to Your Brain and Body)

Source: Lifehacker