A survey by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development lists 2006’s top alcohol consuming countries as follows:
1) Luxembourg; 2) France; 3) Ireland; 4) Hungary; 5) Czech Republic; 6) Spain; 7) Denmark; 8) Portugal; 9) Switzerland; 10) Austria; 11) Germany; 12) United Kingdom; 13) Belgium; 14) Netherlands; 15) Australia.
The survey apparently accounts for per capita consumption of pure alcohol (as opposed to liters of beverage) from beer, wine, and spirits. In other words, despite appearances, simply having citizens that drink enormous steins of beer won’t land a country on the list.
What’s striking about this list is the absence of several notoriously hard-drinking countries of Eastern Europe. Forbes, which reports on the OECD survey, gives little clue as to the methodology used in gathering the data, but my sense that the “per capita” method is favoring (or damning, depending on how you look at it), countries with smaller, more homogenous populations in which men and women both imbibe regularly in social settings. The article also suggests that low alcohol taxes may help keep sales steady.
Russia, one of the countries not on the list, has high taxes on vodka and a younger generation that frequently favors beer over the hard stuff. This may in part be why Russia appears to have sobered up. (Indeed, while in Russia, I met many young people who were terrified of alcoholism and abstained from spirits all together.) However, the country also has a rollicking black market for those looking to enjoy a zapoi at a lower price. Among the under the table intoxicants not accounted for in the OECD study: samagon (moonshine), mouthwash, and cologne.
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| posted by: deborah jones
America may be the land of plenty, but thanks to their monstrous network of vending machines, the Japanese rarely go without.
Thirsty? Pop in a few yen and enjoy a mid-afternoon beer — or a bottle of whiskey. Is it raining? No worries; there’s sure to be an umbrella dispenser nearby. Pissed off the lady? Pick up some flowers. Hoping to get lucky with said lady? There are provisions for that as well, including last minute lingerie.
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Via Chow
| posted by: deborah jones
The 31 million member social networking site Facebook has angered nursing mothers from Montreal to Sydney by removing photos of breastfeeding children that users had posted, even going so far as to shut down the accounts of those who refused to comply with the ban. In many if not most cases, the slightly exposed breasts in the nursing photos belonged to none other than the account users themselves.
Facebook classifies all images of exposed breasts as obscene; it makes no distinction between erotic photography and family snapshots of mom feeding junior. Ironically, though, notes The Sydney Morning Herald, Facebook has at least once violated its own policy by accepting advertising from dating sites that feature topless models. (The ad has since been removed.)
Mother-members are seething, and some have organized a group, “Hey, Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!” in protest. The organization is now over 7,000 strong, thanks in part to publicity in Australia. One of the major topics of discussion is whether nipple “exposure constitutes grounds for photo removal, with some mothers reporting that their photos had been removed despite adequate ‘coverage,’ usually by the nursing infant him or herself.
“Where does the feeding stop and the boob begin?? A peek of nipple?,” The Sydney Morning Herald reports one “lactivist” commenting.
The Facebook quandry brings up a great freedom of speech issue, as well as a nice opportunity for cultural discussion: why are Westerners so squeamish about public nursing? And why shouldn’t women be able to nurse openly and proudly, especially when, according to medical experts advising UNICEF, “breastmilk alone is the ideal nourishment for infants for about the first six months of life, combining the three fundamentals of sound nutrition – food, health and care.” UNICEF further estimates that improved breastfeeding practices could save 1.5 million infants a year who suffer from malnutrition, diarrhea brought on by mixing baby formula mixed with unclean water, and diseases caused by lack of maternally transferred antibodies.
I’ll be interested to see where this discussion goes. In the meantime, I think I might try digging up some photos of the 100,000 bare-breasted women in Swaziland who are currently vying to become their king’s fourteenth wife. If I can find them, I’ll post them on Facebook and see whether the powers that be deem them obscene.
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| posted by: deborah jones
A Scottish woman became the first female to assume the celebrated position of “Beefeater” at the Tower of London. “Beefeaters,” so dubbed for their historic rations of meat, guard the crown jewels at the Tower of London. Moira Cameron, a decorated member of the military, beat out five men for the posh post. In addition to looking after royal treasures, Ms. Cameron will don the Yeoman Warders’ traditional tunic, ruffles, and stocking ensemble, and guide tourists through the Tower.
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| posted by: deborah jones
CNN has a heartbreaking story on families poisoned by radiation in Kazakhstan, which was for 50 years the USSR’s preferred testing ground for nuclear weapons. Four hundred fifty-six nuclear tests, 116 of them above ground, were carried out in the desolate eastern portion of the country. Remote though it might have seemed, as many as a million people lived in the vicinity of the testing facility, and yet no one made the effort to evacuate or even warn them.
Nearly twenty years after the last test, the effects of the radiation are easily seen in the villages. Children are born with horrific defects, and the older population suffers rare cancers.
The article is distressing to say the least, but important in its recognition that the legacy of the Cold War is — and will continue to be — faced on a daily basis by the Kazakh people.
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| posted by: deborah jones
Good to see that Soviet-inspired architecture is alive and well. Last year saw the completion of the new home of the National Library of Belarus, and wowza, it’s a stunner. It’s even more stunning when it goes into after-hours disco mode, as shown in this video (scroll down, and thank you English Russia!).
The behemoth of a bibliot’eka is the brainfart of President Lukashenko, who is not infrequently referred to as Europe’s last dictator. It has 22 floors, can house approximately 15 million books, and is rhombicuboctahedronical in shape. More importantly, its construction was funding through the generous “donations” of Belarusian teachers and school children. Who needs milk money when you can have a Death Star?
| posted by: deborah jones
More evidence that it’s not unreasonable to refer to obnoxious, sexist men as “baboons” or the like:
They look sweet, fuzzy and cuddly, but a troop of vervet monkeys has been harassing farmers in Nachu, Kenya, particularly the women who tend the fields. Apparently, the monkeys are fearful of men, but are quite forward with the ladies. While munching upon the maize, beans, and corn that make up the rural diet, the monkeys mock and make sexually explicit gestures toward female passerby, and are particularly aggressive towards the women who attempt to shoo them from the farms. The monkeys have even chased and thrown stones at women.
In an attempt to fool the monkeys, some female farmers have donned their husbands’ clothing when approaching the monkeys. However, the monkeys are not easily deceived.
“When we come to chase the monkeys away, we are dressed in trousers and hats, so that we look like men,” resident Lucy Njeri told the BBC News website
“But the monkeys can tell the difference and they don’t run away from us and point at our breasts. They just ignore us and continue to steal the crops.”
News of monkeys grabbing their chests and pointing to their nether regions might initially cause us to smirk and chuckle, but the monkey invasion has been a serious problem for the Nachu villagers. The community’s “monkey squad” has been unsuccessful in scaring off the rambunctious primates, and Kenyan law prohibits harming monkeys. Famine is a real prospect, and some farmers are harvesting their crops early in order to store what they can before the monkeys snatch it away. Other farmers have simply abandoned their land. Not surprisingly, when a local MP asked the Kenyan Wildlife Service for assistance in relocating the monkeys, his stories of the harassment suffered by the female farmers were met with laughter, because, you know, sexual humiliation is always funny.
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| posted by: deborah jones
I recently moved from San Francisco to Ann Arbor, Michigan, and although I’m not looking forward to the grey, bone chilling Midwestern winters, I have reason to believe that these winters won’t be dreary as the winters I experienced growing up outside of Chicago. The reason? Ann Arbor is on the Western edge of the Eastern time zone, meaning that the winter sunset will be a bit later. (As a graduate student, I’m less sensitive to the sunrise!) My poor parents, on the Western edge of the Central time zone, will be turning on their headlights at 4 p.m. It’s often seemed to me that time zones should go in half hour increments, creating more slender columns across the States rather than the chunky effect we have now.
It seems I’m not the only one thinking about ways to stretch out the sunshine. In an effort to create more equitable sunlight distribution, Hugo Chavez of the now-dubbed Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has decided to adjust his country’s time zone by half an hour.
Currently, Venezuelan clocks are set to GMT minus 4 hours, but as of next month, they will be set at GMT minus 4.5 hours. The effort seeks to provide a “more fair distribution of the sunrise,” which, according to the Reuters article linked below, “would particularly help poor children who wake up before dawn to go to school.”
If Bush can adjust daylight savings time, I see no reason why Chavez can’t bring redistribute the sunshine.
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| posted by: deborah jones
Via the always useful Chow, which got its link via the ever amusing Chez Pim (caution: food porn alert; salivary glands will be activated), comes a satirical video on sushi bar etiquette. The YouTube posting was apparently created by a Japanese comedy duo known as Ramenzu, who have created a series of Japanese culture lab spoof tutorials that address issues such as making apologies, dating, and yes, sushi eating. (UPDATE: these spoofs are apparently fairly old, but since they’re pretty funny — and new to enough of us — we’ll keep recommending ‘em.)
The sushi spoof gives advice such as how to look pathetic when dining alone, understand grades of tuna (from good catch to poor man’s junk food), appropriately dunk a perfectly nice piece of nigiri in soy sauce until it’s discolored and deformed, and of course, “honor” the chef.
For information on how to really eat sushi, try ABC’s interview with Trevor Corson, the author of The Zen of Fish: The Story of Sushi, from Samurai to Supermarket. Why we’re turning to a white dude to learn how to eat sushi, I don’t know, but he seems pretty darn informed.
Best tip in the interview: eat sushi with your hands, not with chopsticks.
Spoof Link…
| posted by: deborah jones
The gnarly road to Mideast peace is paved with…surfboards?
Dorian Paskowitz of Hawaii, a 75 year surfing veteran considered the “guru” of the Israeli waves, donated twelve surfboards to the Gaza Strip’s fledgling surfing community. The retired Jewish doctor, who first gained attention in Israel in 1956 when he took to the waves off of Tel Aviv — an unusual site at that time —, considered his mitzvah an expression of goodwill. “When a surfer sees another surfer with a board, he can’t help but say something that brings them together,” he noted.
Paskowitz’s gesture is part of a larger program called “Surfing for Peace,” which aims to to promote an end to hostilities between Israelis & Palestinians. Champ Kelly Slater, who is of Syrian decent, is also expected to participate.
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| posted by: deborah jones
The Anglican Church in Nigeria has implemented a policy requiring couples wishing to be married within the church to undergo HIV testing prior to nuptials. Approximately 4.4% of Nigerians are HIV positive. Church officials say that the goal of testing is to allow couples to make “informed choices” and not be “kept in the dark about their partner.” A positive HIV test would not preclude marriage within the Anglican Church; instead, officials hope to offer couples “care and support.” The BBC reports that other Christian churches impose similar tests on brides and grooms to be.
Nigeria’s state HIV control agency has condemned the Anglican Church’s proposal, saying that “Every Nigerian must be allowed to decide on their own whether they want to be tested or not,” and that the Anglican Church’s mission may very well backfire and “encourage denial.”
I tend to be of the belief that the decision to be tested for STDs should be a personal one, but my feminist instincts are telling me that it would be fantastic for the brides to be, who likely have had fewer — if any — sexual partners than their prospective husbands, to know what they’re getting into. On the other hand, a negative test at marriage doesn’t mean that the couple will always be testing negative. It seems to me that HIV testing is complement to, not a substitute for, safer sex education.
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| posted by: deborah jones
Bicycling is no longer in vogue in China:
Last year, China became the world’s second-largest market for new vehicles after the United States, with sales of 7.2 million, a rate that is rising by more than 20 percent annually. Meanwhile, the government is building a nationwide network of superhighways at a breakneck pace. About 15,000 miles, the equivalent of one-third the U.S. interstate system, have been built since 2000, and 30,000 more miles are planned by 2020.
The auto-buying surge has been spurred by the expanding middle class, and new drivers have been opting for larger vehicles rather than the minis favored by their Japanese neighbors. Beijing, the world’s most polluted capitol city and the home of the 2008 Olympics, has put in restrictions that will only allow motorists to drive every other day (depending on whether their license plate numbers are odd or even).
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| posted by: deborah jones
Harry Potter and religious values have come to loggerheads once again, but not in the way you might expect. In case you’ve been living under a rock, the eighth and final book was released at midnight, and Potter fans of all ages and nationalities are thronging stores to nab the final pages — just under 800 of them — of the saga. In Israel, the release has caused something of a stir, as the book’s launch is occurring on a Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. Shops and businesses are normally closed on the Sabbath, and some bookstores’ decision to open up for the boy wizard has called audacious and disrespectful. Israeli law forbids requiring employees to work on a Saturday, and some religious leaders have called making an exception for J.K. Rowling’s hugely popular series an inappropriate prioritizing of profit over religious values. Industry and Trade Minister Eli Yishai has gone so far as to threaten the Potter booksellers with fines. Still, the Potter-hawking booksellers have no plans to cancel or rein in their celebrations; after all, the alleged fine is nothing when compared with the wizard’s gold they’re sure to make from sales.
| posted by: deborah jones
Forget a bad hair day; let’s talk about a bad hair century. CNN.com has an amusing “history of bad hair styles” in which it documents not only the roots of the perpetually ridiculed mullet, but also those of other ‘dos such as the pompadour and the Manchu queue (shaved head with ponytail). The piece has a bit of “myth busters” quality about it; among the highlights is the revelation that at least one ancient Irishman sported a mohawk.
There’s also a bit of analysis of the heavily poofed and plasticized ‘dos worn by Western women in the ’60s. I was aware the beehive and the pompadour were actually toned down versions of the creations born by Marie Antoinette and posse. However, I hadn’t known that the 18th century beehive was actually used by women as a secret hiding place for trinkets and, apparently, pets such as little birds. Maybe Paris Hilton should don a beehive and carry her miniature pooch atop her head.
| posted by: deborah jones
Via Language Log comes the news that the Thai government has instituted a new television rating system that will tag shows “requiring parental guidance.” Such programming will only be allowed to air during school hours on weekdays and during the late evenings and small hours of the morning on weekends and holidays.
Sounds reasonable? One catch: a show can be marked as “requiring parental guidance” if it shows “people speaking with wrong grammar (except for humorous effects.” No word as to who gets to play grammar cop.
Now just imagine the chaos that would ensue if this sort of regulation were introduced in America. Given the diversity of this country and the various dialects spoken here, racial tensions would most definitely ensue. On the upside, the president’s speeches would have to come with warnings…
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| posted by: deborah jones
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