And now, the lighter side!

[SuperScout]

History 101: Political Leanings EXPLAINED

The division of the human family into its two distinct branches occurred some 10,000 years ago, a few hundred years after the Flood. Humans coexisted as members of small bands of nomadic hunter/gatherers. In the pivotal event of societal evolution, beer was invented. This epochal innovation was both the foundation of modern civilization and the occasion of the great bifurcation of humanity into its two distinct sub-groups: Liberals and Conservatives.

Once beer was discovered, it required grain, and that was the beginning of agriculture. Neither the glass bottle or aluminum can had yet been invented, so it was necessary to stick pretty close to the brewery. That's how villages were formed.

Some men spent their days killing animals to barbecue at night while they were drinking beer. This was the beginning of the conservative movement. Other men who were weaker and less skilled at hunting, learned how to live off conservatives by showing up for the BBQs every night and doing women's work like sewing, fetching and hair dressing. This was the beginning of the liberal movement. Later, some of the liberals actually became women.

Liberal achievements include the domestication of cats, invention of group therapy and democratic voting to see how to divide the beer and meat that the conservatives provided. Women were not interested in democracy at that time because most of them were still women back then, and the conservatives fed them.

The largest, most powerful land animal on earth symbolizes Conservatives. The jackass symbolizes Liberals.

Modern Liberals like imported beer (they add lime), but most prefer white wine or foreign water in a bottle. They eat raw fish but like their beef well done. Sushi, tofu, and French food are on liberal menus. Their women have more testosterone than the men. Liberals like deviant sex and want others to like it too. Their first successful city governments were Sodom and Gomorrah.

Most social workers, personal injury attorneys, journalists, and group therapists are Liberals. Liberals invented the designated hitter rule in baseball because it wasn't "fair" to make the pitcher also bat.

Conservatives drink domestic beer. They eat red meat, and still provide for their women. Conservatives are big-game hunters, rodeo cowboys, lumberjacks, construction workers, medical doctors, police officers, corporate executives, soldiers, athletes, and generally anyone who works productively outside government. Conservatives who own companies hire other conservatives who want to work for a living. Liberals do not produce anything. They like to "govern" the producers and decide what is to be done with the production. Liberals believe Europeans are more enlightened than Americans. That is why most of the liberals just stayed in Europe when conservatives were coming to America. Liberals do not have principles, except for their dedication to stealing production of conservatives.

The American cowboy, of course, is your basic, full-bore Conservative. A hundred years ago, an Englishman visiting Texas was attempting to find the owner of a huge cattle ranch. He rode up to one of the ranch hands, and inquired, "Pardon me, but could you perhaps tell me where I might locate your master?" To which the cowboy replied, "That sumbitch ain?t been born yet".

So, what'll it be? Wine or Beer? Domestic or Imported?

[39mto39g]

Beer, Red meat (just knock the MOOOO off) Mustangs, (both kinds) and he was right, the sumbitch ain't been born yet.

Ron

[reconeil]

Glad seeing that someone finally put things
in the RIGHT(both ways) perspective.

Been getting a little tired debatting so many
absurdly politically-purposeful and/or
anti-Freedom & Liberty foreign views.

Neil

[revwardoc]

[In the pivotal event of societal evolution, beer was invented. This epochal innovation was both the foundation of modern civilization and the occasion of the great bifurcation of humanity into its two distinct sub-groups: Liberals and Conservatives.

Once beer was discovered, it required grain, and that was the beginning of agriculture. Neither the glass bottle or aluminum can had yet been invented, so it was necessary to stick pretty close to the brewery. That's how villages were formed.]

http://www.winespectator.com/Wine/Da...5,2563,00.html

What Would Darwin Say About Drinking? Some Scientists Believe Humans Evolved to Enjoy Alcohol


If your mouth waters every time you think of that 1990 Bordeaux you've been waiting to open, consider that your desire to drink could be the result of an evolutionary hangover.


Humans may be hardwired with an instinctual attraction to alcohol, theorizes Robert Dudley, a biomechanics professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He and a small group of other scientists are exploring the possible evolutionary origins of drinking, hoping to shed light on the relationships between humans, alcohol and health. This Darwinian approach to medical science has fermented debate in the research community.


Ethanol is found widely in ripe wild fruit, Dudley explained. When wild yeast lands on the fruit and feeds on the sugars, fermentation occurs. The riper the fruit, the more alcohol it produces.


Many birds and mammals, including our primate ancestors, depend heavily on fruit, Dudley said, and they may have learned to find this food source quickly by following the scent of ethanol. Basically, the smell may act as a chow bell, signaling animals from afar that dinner's ready. (In turn, the plants benefit, as their seeds get to hitch a ride, spreading to new areas through the animals' waste.)


Primates appear to have a highly developed sensitivity to the smell of ethanol, Dudley said, which may give them an edge over other fruit-eating animals. And this sensitivity may have been passed on to humans. Today, we continue to be attracted to foods that benefited our ancestors.


Dudley first proposed the idea in 2000, in papers published in The Quarterly Review of Biology and the medical journal Addiction. He pulled together information from more than 100 other studies on topics such as the rate at which fruits ferment, the natural occurrence of yeast in the wild, gorilla behavior and genetic models of alcoholism in modern humans. The subject generated enough interest to be the focus of a symposium at the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology's conference earlier this year.


"Dudley's hypothesis helps us understand why, from an evolutionary standpoint, humans are so attracted to ethanol," said Doug Levey, an ecologist at the University of Florida and a speaker at the symposium. "There is often a big nutritional reward associated with being attracted to ethanol," Levey said, adding that this may help account for why "there are health benefits associated with low-to-moderate levels of ethanol consumption."


Dudley believes that because ethanol occurs naturally and existed before humans, "there must be a historical perspective on a modern disease such as alcoholism." If that relationship could be determined, it could help lead to a treatment. (With our culture of abundance, he suggested, we may overconsume foods that our body cues us to seek as nourishment.)


As an indicator that wild animals are attracted to ethanol, Levey said, there have been "rare but consistent accounts of birds and mammals consuming fermented fruits and becoming drunk."


Pigeons, fish and fruit-eating butterflies, among others, have been seen acting inebriated, said Dudley, who has spent years observing birds, butterflies and flying reptiles from Panama to Southeast Asia. "While no one has officially reported an animal drunk in the wild, there is lots of anecdotal evidence, such as a drunken warthog running on a rampage through a village." He even found a group of cedar waxwings that had died from alcohol poisoning after eating too much overripe fruit.


There are still gaps in the hypothesis, said Levey, such as how one makes the leap from low-level consumption of ethanol in wild fruits to the drinking habits of modern society to full-fledged alcoholism.


One of the missing links in the evolution argument is that there are no verifiable reports of drunken primates, said Katharine Milton, a primatologist at UC, Berkeley. Milton, who also spoke at the conference, has spent 30 years doing field research in the jungles of Central and South America, Africa and southeast Asia and never noticed an intoxicated primate. Nor have the more than 20 colleagues she asked.


Dudley suggests that the amount of ethanol in ripe fruit may generally be too low to get drunk, or perhaps some animals are better able to digest alcohol than humans. Next summer, one of Dudley's graduate students will test this by measuring the ethanol levels in fruits fed to chimpanzees in Uganda and monitoring their blood alcohol levels to see how well they metabolize the substance.


Milton was set to publish a contradiction of Dudley's ideas this month, in a paper (titled "Ferment in the Family Tree") in the journal Integrative and Comparative Biology. She believes that inebriation is a human luxury in which other primates can't indulge. "You can't afford to have even a mild sense of euphoria when you are a primate," Milton said, "because you will get eaten or fall out of a tree and onto your head."

[Drywall]

I gotta show this to my wife.

[SuperScout]

This may come as a complete surprise to some readers, but I was actually a lab rat for Prof. Robert Dudley's experimentations regarding instinctual attraction to alcohol. And in order to save vast amounts of taxpayer-funded research dollars, I volunteered to sacrifice myself in the interests of science, rather than have all that money and booze shipped overseas to experiment on primates in Africa. Alas, such waste and stupidity prevailed, the money was shipped overseas, I sobered up, and the rest is history, as they say!!

[reconeil]

Sorry to hear that, since led to believe that as a species we've become quite medically advanced?

Still, and just as to double-check, you're telling us that America's great medical minds opted to waste good Remy Martin and such on some monkeys,...rather than sharing same with you?
No doubt, must have gotten you pissed(?),...and rightfully so.

Neil

[SuperScout]

Roger you comments re: Remy Martin. At the time, I was prepared to set aside my Anti-French bias in the interest of science, but no more! Fact of the matter is I'd rather all the primates in Africa drink all the French wine they can, as the Froggies need the economic boost, and the apes can then get an idea of who not to emulate.

[Seascamp]

The fall, hic, of the Roman Empire has been laid at many doorways but the one that makes most sense comes in two parts. First off the Romans got all into that sissy wine drinking routine whilst the Barbarian hordes from the north were doing manly stuff like heavy mead and the like. No contest, sissy wine drinkers loose, not hard to figure out that one out. Really, like how do ya break a metal wine goblet on the table and defend against some Barbarian that has his broken Long Neck Bud bottle, has it in his hand and is charging? See, can?t be done, scratch one sissy Roman wine drinker.

Secondly, add that fact that the pansy-assed Romans couldn?t just settle for usual, common, fired ceramic wine jugs. Of course not, that wouldn?t be styling or way cool, would it now. So the up-town wine jug was lead-lined and of course everyone had to have leaded wine jugs lest they be considered much less than a cut above the common herd. Zo, then it turns out that the whole mob got a good dose of lead poisoning and that of course made most of them crazy as the Mad Hatter. In that the Romans did cremations more than burials, this lead poisoning wasn?t really understood until the excavation of Pompeii last century and huge concentrations of lead were found in the remains of the ruling gentry. This came about the same time as we in contemporary times began to really study and understand the effects of lead on the human body and mind. So, there it is, the rest of the story. The Barbarians were whacking really crazy people, easy deal.

Scamp

[SuperScout]

On a tour of Alaska, the Pope took a couple of days off to visit the mountains for some sight seeing. He was cruising along the camp-ground in the Pope-mobile when there was a frantic commotion just at the edge of the woods. A helpless Democrat, wearing sandals, shorts, a "Save the Whales" T-shirt, and a tree hugger hat, was struggling frantically, thrashing around trying to free himself from the jaws of a 10 foot grizzly.

As the Pope watched horrified, a group of Republican loggers came racing up. One quickly fired a .44 magnum into the bear's chest. The other two reached up and pulled the bleeding semiconscious Democrat from the bear. Then using long clubs, the three loggers beat the bear to death and hauled it to their truck.

Immediately the Pope summoned them to come over. "I give you my blessing for your brave actions!" he told them, "I heard there was a bitter hatred between loggers and environmental activists, but now I've seen with my own eyes that that is not true."

As the Pope drove off, one of the loggers asked his buddies, "Who was that?"

"It was the Pope," another replied. "He's in direct contact with God and has access to all God's wisdom."

"Well," the logger said, "he may have access to all God's wisdom, but he sure doesn't know anything about bear hunting..... By the way, is the bait holding up okay or do we need to go back to town and grab another one?"