Crime in America has really gotten out of hand

A tractor trailer full of Corona beer was stolen, just in time for Cinco de Mayo, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.  I mean, I can only take so much about the downward spiral of the moral fabric in our society.  Of course, all they need to do to catch the culprits is to keep watch for the next heist, this time of a thousand pounds of limes.

The Interplay between Protein L-Isoaspartyl Methyltransferase Activity and Insulin-Like Signaling to Extend Lifespan in Caenorhabditis elegans

Let me translate: ANOTHER REASON TO DRINK BEER!!!!

Yet another peer reviewed scientific study by a real scientist (Steven Clarke in PLoS) found a link between alcohol and living longer.  He used these little worms called  Caenorhabditis elegans nematodes (see image below):

He basically boozed them up.  Normally, these tiny worms have a lifespan of 15 days.  After he put them on a beer diet, they lived for 40 days!  Heck, that means I should live past 200 years.  One draw back was the tiny amount of alcohol he gave them.  It turns out he diluted it to about the equivalent of a tablespoon of beer in a bathtub of water.  However, I figure if a little is that good for you, a lot must be a whole lot better.  So with my rate of beer consumption factored in, I am damned near going to live forever.

I knew it!



Not that it would cause me to stop drinking beer, but it is always nice to be vindicated.  I suspect my body instinctively knew how good beer was for me.  It is just nice to have the medical community catch up with me.  Beer has been determined to have some great health benefits (I'm talking about the physical benefits, the mental ones are obvious).

1. Strong bones.  Beer has silicon which is important for building bone density.  Better still, a 2010 study showed that the rich, hoppy micro brew type beers were the best for you and the light lagers and the non-alcoholic beers were the least good for you.
2. Stronger heart.  A study last year aggregated the data from 16 previous studies which meant they ended up with 200,000 subjects.  And the evidence of the heart health benefits was startling.  People who quaffed a pint of beer daily had a thirty one percent lower risk of heart disease.  We will just skip over the part about how those benefits declined and went the other way if you drank too much...
3. Healthy Kidneys. A recent scandanavian study showed that people who drank a beer a day had a forty percent lower chance of developing a kidney stone.  They postulated that the beer helped lessen leaching of calcium from the bones and also flushed out the kidneys.
4. My personal favorite-increased brain capacity.  A 2005 study found that daily beer drinkers had up to a 20% lower risk of dementia or Alzheimer's.  They also scored 18 months mentally younger than non-drinkers.  I know the scientific reason why beer makes you smarter, too.  So I am not accused of academic plagiarism, I first saw it postulated by Cliff Claven on Cheers.  Everyone knows that beer kills brain cells.  And everyone knows that's nature's way is for the weakest to die off first and for the strong to survive.  Ergo, the more you drink the more you kill of the weak brain cells so only your strong ones thrive.
5. Lower caner risk.  Apparently it must be haute cuisine to marinade steak in beer in Portugal.  That is the only reason I can come up with as to why they would do a study about the effects of such marinating, but they did.  And the miracle fluid that is beer once again came through with shining colors.  It showed that a 70% reductions in the carcinogens known as heterocyclic amines or HCAs.  Maybe it was the antioxidants or the sugars that blocked formation of HCAs, or maybe just a Divine protection from Bacchus, but it works.
6. More vitamins.  Beer drinkers had a 30% higher level of B6 in their blood than non-drinkers or wine drinkers according to a study in the Netherlands.  It also found higher levels of folic acid and B12.
7. Stroke preventor.  No less than the Harvard School of Public Health found that moderate beer intake lowered the incidence of strokes.  The theory is that it literally thins your blood and helps to prevent the formation of clots.
8. Lower risk of diabetes.  Staying with Harvard, another study of 38,000 middle aged men (no, I wasn't asked to participate) revealed a 25% lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes.  Apparently beer increases the body's insulin sensitivity which in turn reduces the risk of diabetes.
9. Lower blood pressure.  Maybe I should have gone to Harvard because they seem to drink a lot of beer there.  In yet another study they did, this time of 25-40 year olds, there was a twenty five percent lower risk of high blood pressure if you were a moderate beer drinker.
10. Live longer.  Here is the really cool thing.  A paper published by the US Department of Agriculture that looked at 50 previous studies in 2005 showed that beer drinkers lived longer than non-imbibers.  So you get to drink more beer!!

Big deal. I have a LOT of stories about how a beer cooler saved me

Now, there had been sharks involved, I might give this one the nod...

When friends Scott Smiles and Rick Matthews set out on a fishing trip with their 11-year-old sons off the coast of Sydney, Australia yesterday, they had no idea the cooler used to carry their drinks, along with quick thinking, would save their lives.
The group was five miles offshore when the men noticed black smoke in their 40-foot cruiser.  The boat was on fire and sinking fast.
Matthews woke the boys who’d been napping, strapped them into their life jackets and all three leapt into the water.  With no time left, and no life jacket on, Smiles grabbed a GPS emergency beacon, threw the cooler overboard and jumped.   “Just something to float on.  I knew we would be in the water…the boat was almost vertical,” Smiles said.
Within minutes, their boat disappeared from the surface of the sea.  With no life jackets, the cooler was all Matthews and Smiles had to keep their heads above water.  The four had been clinging to the bobbing cooler for 45 minutes, in waters 200 feet deep, when a rescue helicopter spotted them and dropped an emergency life raft.   ”I’d seen the helicopter, then there was a big bang, the thing hit the water and this big raft almost hit me,” said Smiles’ son Riley.
All four were taken back to shore aboard a police rescue boat.  Matthews was treated for chemical burns on his legs from leaking marine fuel.  Smiles and the two boys were unharmed.
Emergency officials say if Smiles hadn’t grabbed the emergency beacon, which told rescuers precisely where to find them, the four likely would have drowned.