Grombles

In 1926 New York, during Prohibition, 1,200 people were poisoned by whiskey containing small quantities of wood alcohol (methanol). Around 400 died, the rest were blinded. The methanol they drank was in the moonshine they had bought illegally. In fact it had been added by law to industrial ethanol in order to make it undrinkable. Prohibition existed to protect everyone from the 'evils of the demon drink'. However, people still wanted to enjoy alcohol. So bootleggers bought cheap industrial alcohol and attempted to distill it to remove the impurities the state had added, but the process wasn't regulated. The state was inadvertently responsible for the suffering - although it was easy for them to blame the bootleggers and to justify escalating the war. This didn't stop the bootleggers. In fact it forced them to become more violent to protect their operations, and even less cautious about their production standards. Volumes of illicit alcohol, and therefore proportionat...

One of the excuses deists frequently throw at me for the value of having a deity is that a belief in an afterlife provides comfort, especially to the old, the terminally ill and their relatives. I don't have a problem with them believing this, incredible though it surely is, if it helps them to achieve a peace of mind. Of course I'd prefer it if they found that peace of mind from meditation or some more positive activity like mental challenges, music, arts, marveling at the complexity of the universe and our creeping comprehension of it etc. But if it works like a drug to ease stress and worry, then OK. Clearly the loss of a loved one and the approach of the 'grim reaper' are terrifying prospects, so relief of the stresses they cause is understandably valuable. Of course if this aspect of deity worship is then used to persuade otherwise open-minded children of some sort of 'truth' to explain the world, then it's very wrong. And unfortunately, as I type this ...

There can never be too many TV shows about Italian food and drink. Indeed Italy is the most perfect place in the world because it is so chaotic, so arrogant, so set in its ways of family-first, table-groaning, quality-not quantity, love, sex and above everything else, passion . So what has caught my attention to gromble about? Last night Antonio Carlucci, a well known, somewhat elderly, he'll pardon me for saying that, overweight, cuddly TV chef, famed for his mushroom risottos, visited N E Italy with an old friend, cooking as they go. You know the sort of thing. Personal reminiscences, slurps of fine wine, effervescing over a particularly smelly cheese or smouldering rabbit stew, more hand gestures than Simon Rattle, etc. Well forget all that (actually it was rather too 'its all about love' for me anyway). These portly chefs visited a place near Rimini called San Patrignano . Its a massive (2,000 'guests') community complete with hospital, vinery, cheese-factory, e...