drinking

Drinking games, keg parties, waking up in somebody else’s bed (somewhat you don’t recognize). Ahhh....adulthood? These images used to conjure up memories of those infamous college years, but according to a new study, it's people in the post-college years who are partying the hardest. Collectively, these young adults are called "Cyber Millennials" and they are generally affluent, highly educated, and live in urban areas. Perhaps most surprisingly, they’re also some of the most health-conscious people in the country.

In December 1920, feeling the agony of Prohibition, the Popular Science editors -- as resourceful then as now -- put together this handy list of alternate ways to get sauced. None of them seem wholly pleasant, but with alcohol off the table, necessity is the mother of invention.

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Introducing the PopSci Genius Guide: Home Entertainment

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Entertainment & Gaming, alcohol, drinking, future then, intoxication, workarounds

At the New York WhiskyFest this week, nobody wanted to talk much about technological innovations in the industry. Most of the whisky professionals I asked assured me that there was no such thing as innovation at their tradition-steeped distillery -- they were doing everything the same way it had been done for generations, thank you very much. Some distillers seemed put out that their companies had recently embraced such cutting-edge twentieth-century technology as labelling barrels with bar codes. The marketing side of the business is innovating to beat the band -- look for a new Irish whiskey called Feckin and a new rye called (rī)¹ coming soon to bars near you -- but the production side remains defiantly old-fangled.

Heres a quiz. Out of the jobs below, who do you think is most likely to have alcoholism issues? (Scroll to the bottom to see which industries ranked highest to lowest.)

Construction worker
Financier
Farmer
Truck driver
Cocktail server
Teacher
Shopgirl/guy

Need I state the obvious? A new study by The George Washington University Medical Center did. Their "Ensuring Solutions to Alcohol Problems" team reports this week that 15 percent of those who work in the hospitality industry—bartenders; waiters and waitresses; casino, nightclub, hotel workers—suffer from serious alcohol-related problems. This tops 12 other sectors of employment. Sounds like a problem of freely available booze and late work hours to me.

News flash! Scientists prove that swallowing magnets is bad for you. Stop the presses! Smoking hurts wealth as well as health. Eureka! Faraway objects can be hard to see.