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Bearded Drinkers Lose Guinness 179

Posted by emmett from the must-shave-now dept.
Dr. Winston L. O'Boogie writes "According to this BBC report, bearded drinkers in Northern Ireland lose up to £23 of Guinness annually in their facial hair. It is also estimated that 162,719 pints are wasted each year. Where does the beer actually go?"
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Bearded Drinkers Lose Guinness More

Bearded Drinkers Lose Guinness

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  • nah (Score:1)

    by revnight ( 8980 )
    we aren't losing it. we're just savoring it longer
  • lose money on shaving equip. or lose beer. you just can't win.
  • So does your beard get drunk?
    Does the beer climb up the hair and enter the bloodstream through facial pores?

  • I lost hot grits in my pants (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    163,954 pounds last year alone. thank you.

  • not lost ; stored (Score:4)

    by Max von H. ( 19283 ) on Saturday February 26, 2000 @03:08AM (#1244845)
    We bearded people do not ever lose a single drop of the nectar. We just store some for later, for when the misus is menacing us with some hard object if our feet move pubwise.

    Cheers,

    m.
  • And potentially false, too. The article doesn't mention anything about the method followed in the "research". How were those missing pints measured? Has there been any "peer review"?

  • Hair goes, beer goes (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 26, 2000 @03:14AM (#1244847)
    A novice monk approached the Master and said:
    "Bearded drinkers in Northern Ireland lose up to £9 of Guinness annually in their facial hair. It is also estimated that 162,719 pints are wasted each year. Where does the beer actually go?"

    Without saying a word, the Master beat the novice monk to death with a bamboo stick.

    What's next: the conspiracy behind piling dust balls and disappearing socks? Fear and loathin' with number 42? Experimental apocalyctism within confined spaces reserved for mass transport machinery?

  • Why? (Score:1)

    by 348 ( 124012 )
    First off I think Guinness tastes like liquid asphalt, why anyone would want to drink that stuff is beyond me. Also two questions, one, someone seems to have an awful lot of spare time on their hands to perform such a study, wasting time on /. is a much better way to go.

    Finally, out of all the folks with facial hair, why did they pick George Michael to reference? Didn't he have sort of a fall from grace in the public eye? They could have used one of the guys from ZZ Top, Dom Deloise, C. Everett Coupe or possibly even Bea Arthur.

  • Has anyone ever tried mixing it with jim beam?? mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm yummy you'll be puking ur guts out all night :\

    ---
    # iptables -A INPUT -s 0/0 -j DROP
  • my moustaches have, on occasion, developed a mind of their own after i've i've spent a little too much time at the bar, yes. the rest of my beard is pretty well behaved most of the time, however.

  • Personally, I think Cousin It would have been an astute example. That dude loved to party. He must have lost a few guinness' in his day.

    "Either leave an impact on the world, or leave the world on impact." -- Jeffrey Trompeter
  • In answer to "Where does the beer actually go", I will use my standard answer. To Microsoft. Stupid Microsoft is stealing our beer now and putting it in Windows. Although this is bad for the system and the users, it is addictive. DO NOT LET YOUNG CHILDREN USE NT, THE RESULTS CAN BE DISASTROUS! I would have thought that they should give us beer instead of taking it so that we would be too drunk to see the bugs or complain about the GPFs, etc.

    Ralph Furmaniak
    The Great AIP [sourceforge.net]

  • Why is this tagged as a troll? The whole thread is just a humorus troll. The relationship of losing beer in your beard IS directly related to the parent post referencing losing grits in ones pants. Quite on-topic for this article, although at the same time somewhat disturbing.
  • I can just picture a group of fleas/mites getting drunk on Guinness ;)

  • hrmmmm (Score:1)

    by Judg3 ( 88435 )
    "A genuine moustache has been proven to contribute to a significant Guinness wastage, as a result of inter-fibre retention at every sip," the company said in a statement.

    This is why England should allow everyone to have a gun. More crime == Less stories on the beer absorption of facial hair. In America, we have stories about the absorption rate of blood; cotton versus polyester - which helps clotting?
    Ok, so its just my 2 cents - and please dont take me seriously on this one folks.

    ----------------------------------
  • What rated Moderation? You replied to a joke post with a running joke and funny comment. Your moderator has a large stick shoved squarely and firmly up his ass. Meta will go: WTF? Thousands of worthy posts on /. and this moderator bothered with this? I guess its better this guy wastes his points on stupid shit than moderating important stuff like John Carmack Enforcing the GPL on Quake Source.

  • The world,
    the world just isn't what it used to be.
    What it used to be,
    back in the good ole days
    The good ol' days,
    Of Nineteen umpty two
    Back then, we didn't have any cars
    We didn't even have any shoes
    Course, we didn't need them cause, we had no legs
    We did not see this as a problem because towns were much smaller back then
    You could just reach to the left
    and you'reat the grocery store
    Reach to the right
    And you're at the book store
    Now with all uv these cars
    and ships
    and legs
    you have to travel all the way to the moon to get a good meal
    Av been hearing good things about the moon
    I haven't been there, but I have been hearing good things about it
    Of course,
    I should know since
    I built the moon
    I started it quite late because first I had to invent oxygen
    It was not a very good life before I invented oxygen,
    people were not living long
    Actually it was I who got the first fish to come out of the sea
    But no dinosaurs
    I don't like dinosaurs
    That's why I got rid of them
    As I was sayi

    Transfer Interrupted: Message Limit Reached

    Ralph Furmaniak
    The Great AIP (Artificial Intelligence Project) [sourceforge.net]

    I'm not senile, I'm just creative.

  • Re:mmmmmmm (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Mixing what? Some fat guys facial hair?

    Clip, clip, snip, snip, stir, stir. . . Yuk.

  • Oops, my signature should be:

    Ralph Furmaniak
    The Great AIP (Artificial Intelligence Project) [sourceforge.net]

  • CmdrTaco changes E theme

    Posted by CmdrTaco on 10:56 PM February 31th, 2000
    from the Eye-candy-for-X dept.

    Dr. Rast D. E'Rman writes "According to this ftp.enlightenment.org log, CmdrTaco in the Geek Compound downloaded up to 9meg of Ethemes. It is also estimated that 162.719 bytes are wasted each download. Where do the packets actually go?"
  • Peer review? Are you suggesting that the missing pints are lost by people peeing?

  • Being an avid drinker of guiness, I'm pretty sure those nine pounds didn's go far

    ...damn shrinking pants...

  • Where does the beer actually go?

    Isn't Guinness technically stout, not beer?
  • i really wonder how those people from the guinness brewery carried out these experiments to be able to tell the amount of beer being lost in the beards. they'd probably have to wash off the beer with a known amount of water and measure in how much more liquid it would result after ten times or so.
  • Amazon.com has just patented the process of extracting Guinness from facial hair. Anyone hand-wringing Guinness from their beard will be charged $13.50 plus treble damages for each year of said offence.
  • its terrible that people are losing beer/money but maybe it isn't really that bad.
    If memory serves me correctly than for every time you drink 3 liters of you urinate 4 liters of fluid.
    So you are not paying for lost beer but for less trips to the mens room (or womens room in some cases ; ) )

    its a feature, not a bug : )
  • for one, i believe in the culivating effects of alcohol on facial hair... as an extension to this theory : the expression " It'll make you grow hair on your chest" is all spill from ppl too drunk too keep their mouths shut and consequently they spill on their chest
    mvg,
    Kris "dJOEK" Vandecruys

  • Obligatory pedantic reply (Score:4)

    by Arker ( 91948 ) on Saturday February 26, 2000 @04:18AM (#1244875) Homepage

    Isn't Guinness technically stout, not beer?

    Stout is a type (or style) of beer. There are many types of beer. For more on the subject click here. [beerhunter.com]

  • Use a straw while drinking beer.

    That way, not only will you keep the precious nectar away from any facial hair, but you'll also be able to slurp up any leftover foam on the bottom.

    Cheers,
    Bart

  • My favorite quote (Score:3)

    by dattaway ( 3088 ) on Saturday February 26, 2000 @04:21AM (#1244878) Homepage Journal
    I like this guy:

    "I'd like to become a Guinness researcher," said actor Tim McGarry.
  • Ups, that should beer 3 liters of Beer ofcourse

    sorry

  • The problems with statistical research ... (Score:5)

    by threaded ( 89367 ) on Saturday February 26, 2000 @04:22AM (#1244880) Homepage
    There was a study to discover if people who wear glasses have more car accidents. So as not to skew the results towards the glasses; (in that if you ask someone who has just had a car accident, 'Do you wear glasses?', they will obviously answer yes, for fear of being prosecuted for driving without eyesight correction,) they instead asked a broader question of the investigator to describe the facial features of the people driving. Again to avoid asking the question, they asked if things obstructing the drivers vision were apparent.

    Well, they got the results back and did some number crunching on them and found, that surprisingly, the more facial hair the driver had the more likely they were to have an accident. They also found that the smaller the 'view circle', i.e. how thick and close the 'pillars' are to the driver, the more accidents they had, also the more stickers they had in the windows, again increased the chances of an accident.

    All in all, they discovered that if you were on a motorbike about to cross at a T junction, and there was a driver you had a full moustache and beard, was driving a certain make of car with a certain religious sticker in the window, you just might as well put the bike down there and then, because, like it or not, the odds were that they were going to pull out on you.

    So, to bring me to my point: this stuff about the beard soaking up the pint whilst in the act of supping is laughable. It is quite obvious to me that they are missing their mouths in the first place and spilling it. This is not due to the fact they have a beard, but is in the nature of people who want to wear a beard. None is apparent on their clothing because, yes, the beard does in fact soak it up. So the researcher has, by the nature of the questioning got the answer they want.

  • At least by your use of the word 'Asphalt' I'd guess you're not in Ireland. So I understand that you've not experienced proper guinness..... or proper beer for that matter.
  • You drink Bud Light don't you?
  • I know that in this age of the global community that geographical locations means less & less (as long as you can get internet access!) but what's the geographical breakdown of /. readers like ? How many readers here are actually from Northern Irealnd (or originally from)? I am...
  • I can believe this, I'll have to stop growing my beard immediately, btw I wonder if this is just specific to us Northern Irish drinkers or does it affect the worlds drinkers? If so that's a lot og the black stuff going to waste.

  • No way, Guinness is the best... racehorse owners in Ireland feed it to their horses, so I figure it has to help me code. Plus, it's like an entire meal in a glass.
  • No, not quite.
    Next up will be the revealing of the underpants-gnomes.
    They think stealing underpants is big business.

    Phase 1, steal underpants...
    Phase 2, ....... ?? ......
    Phase 3, big profit.

  • There must be some significant loss of beer caused by the amount wasted from getting totally shitfaced, dribbling brown chunks and corn down your shirt, and using a toilet as a pillow.
  • "sort of a fall from grace in the public eye?"
    Has the media taken hold of your mind?
    Getting caught wanking is something funny to be happily shared with the world aint it?
    It's not like any of us hasn't been in a place where getting caught would be embarrassing.
    Perhaps they should have worked out how much spunk gets lost in your pubes.

    .oO0Oo.

  • Re:Funny, but irrelevant (Score:3)

    by Bazman ( 4849 ) on Saturday February 26, 2000 @05:30AM (#1244894) Journal
    The UK newspaper The Guardian had an article on this - here [newsunlimited.co.uk] - with some details on the method - basically work out the average amount of beer taken up by the tache per sip, the average amount of sips per pint, and the average number of pints per year. Hence the way to minimise the loss is either:
    • Take fewer sips. Encourage your bearded friends to do this by shouting 'down in one!'.
    • Take less time between sips. This means that the beard is already saturated and absorbs no more beer. Encourage your bearded friends to do this by shouting 'drink!' &lt/Father Ted&gt
    Baz
  • As one who has been to Ireland and the Guiness brewery in Dublin, I can definately attest to it tasting different here in the states. In an old /. poll somebody said the reason is that it is pasteurized here.

  • I'm guessing it dries in their beards and washes out the next time they shower. Just a crazy thought.

  • I keep being amazed at the enormous amounts of time "scientists" seem to be having on their hands lately. You can't be serious about research like this. This is of no public interest whatsoever and I think they could at least use their time for something research worthy. I'm not saying that they shouldn't have fun with it, but I hope they didn't get a grant or some other form of pay for this research. #include

  • Bah humbug (Score:3)

    by Kaufmann ( 16976 ) <rnedal&olimpo,com,br> on Saturday February 26, 2000 @05:39AM (#1244898) Homepage
    Tsc. I tell ya, you kiddies have it easy. Back in the day, we didn't have any of those fancy schmancy shaving creams or aftershave or blades or anything like that. Nosiree bob. Try using a Gillette when you've got a sabertooth coming after ya, I'll tell you that! Hell no. We used our own two-inch fingernails to shave, and we LIKED it! Now THAT's a real man. Ah, those were the days...

  • Re:Why? Why drink American beer??? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Since I am from Canada, I can understand many American "Beer" drinkers' aversions to drinking Guinness. American beer is very week and almost clear. Clear beer? It just isn't right. You should come up to eastern Canada and try some of our micro-brewed beers. Beers with 6 or 7 % alcohol content, not that wussy 4 %. And while I'm raving, how about that American "coffee". It's also virtually clear - kind of an amber color. You can even see the bottom of your cup! What's with that?

  • Define "Average Guinness Drinker" (Score:3)

    by tilly ( 7530 ) on Saturday February 26, 2000 @05:52AM (#1244900)
    The statistics offer little hint here.

    Do they mean, "The average person who describes themselves as a Guinness drinker." Do they mean, "The average person who drinks Guinness at least X times a week." Do they mean, "The person who consumes an average Guinness." (Thanks to the lightbulb paradox, the last is likely the heaviest drinker.)

    Then once we know what they mean by an "average Guinness drinker", what is their estimate of how much said drinker drinks? That is the important point. Are we estimating that people lose 10% of their Guinness to the beard? A tenth of a percent? What?

    Without a concept of that someone like myself who likes Guinness (particularly in the form of a black-and-tan) but does not often consume it will have no idea how to judge how much I personally save in beer by shaving.

    Cheers,
    Ben

  • food? (Score:1)

    by latro ( 292 )
    I can't believe they didn't compare the guiness loss to the amount of food lost each year in people's beards. Watch out for that peanut butter!

    -------

  • Studies have shown women find men with beards sexier & more "manly"

    Yeah, but those studies were run by single bearded men...

  • Wonder what the World Record is (Score:3)

    by ch-chuck ( 9622 ) on Saturday February 26, 2000 @06:41AM (#1244904) Homepage
    for beer lost when run thru the soup strainer and cookie duster.

    Hopefully you know the story about the Guinness [guinness.ie] Book or World Records - see, bar patrons inevitably get into arguments over who's got the biggest this and what's the fastest that - kinda like discussions of Apache vs IIS or benchmarketing - so Guinness publishes a book that the bartender can whip out to settle such disputes before it comes to fistcuffs.

  • What about The Great Guinness Toast? (Score:3)

    by G27 Radio ( 78394 ) on Saturday February 26, 2000 @06:42AM (#1244905)
    Um, interesting that this story should pop up this morning on my considering that tonight is the annual Great Guinnes Toast. February 26th, at 11:30PM EST (EST=GMT-5.) You may read about it at http://www.guinness.ie [guinness.ie], but you must enter your age to verify that you are 21.

    Also I believe that the results of this study are wildly inaccurate. I can't believe even amateurs would account for such a loss of Guinness. If this were accurate I'm sure that someone would damn well be looking for a solution to this problem. Why hasn't there been been a 'Voices from the HairMouth' article or something like that, hmm?

    numb
  • Canada beer stronger? I think not. You forget that the two countries calculate the percentage differently (IIRC, one based on weight, one based on volume). Read the Beer FAQ for more info. Bottom line - they are the same strength.
  • True, I live close to St. James Gate in Dublin, and the smell alone tastes good. I live in Germany now though, and it's virtually undrinkable. The stuff they get here is made in south of Paris, it's stronger (6% as opposed to 4.3%), but it tastes like bad Murphys. If you're ever in Italy, don't drink it either, it's from London, it's the same 4.3%, but it *does* taste like asphalt. I'm not certain where your Guiness comes from (assuming you're Amercian is fairly safe ;-) )but it's highly unlikely it comes from Dublin or Belfast, the only two acceptable kinds of The Black Stuff. It simply doesn't travel well, so they brew it closer to the market. So you're stuck with asphaly 'till you make it to my local (The Gravediggers in Glasnevin, Dublin. Officially the 2nd best pint in Ireland)
  • If memory serves me correctly than for every time you drink 3 liters of you urinate 4 liters of fluid.

    um, wouldn't that be a net loss of 1 litre of water each time? if that were true we'd all just shrivel up.

  • Sure, if you drink Bud. But the States also have a lot of really great microbreweries that make very good beer. I've lived in both Canada and the States and I think the best American beer is better than anything made in Canada.

  • That's interesting, because my beard doesn't work that way.

    It opperates on the same principle as the scales on certain desert lizards. My facial hair captures moisture from the air and channels it through the method of wicking to my mouth. This is one reason that I usually appear to drink less water than the average human.

    Consequentially, I more efficiently imbibe any liquid, including Guinness. I'd suspect that the average beardless drink would actually lose more Guinness than I, due to the evaporation of the foam left on their naked upper lip (even for the mrere fraction of a second it takes before they retrieve it with their tongue).

  • and what tastes good? pisswater budweiser (no offense to prague, only a-b)?

    or a big 2-litre...of colt 45 ;-)
  • As opposed to men with two or more beards...
    This is such a stupid story. Sigh.
    ----------------------------------

    "Don't try to confuse the issue with half truths and gorilla dust."
    Bill McNeal (Phil Hartman)
  • Oh my God!

    That is where all my beer is going. That's it. Now I have a reason to shave.
  • WHO CARES.
    Snorp
  • Clearly you just don't understand the Black Pint.

  • Of course... if you lose 10% of your Guiness through your beard, you might end up with that much on your face (or the floor) if you shave.

  • ..did The Onion change format to the slash?
  • Beer that is. Or any other liquid for that matter. Say I was bearded, and I drank, say 3 litres of liquid a day. Say I did this for a year. That's 3x365 = 1095l. Say half of it was lost due to evaporation. That gives me 547.5l of liquid. Say most of this liquid had a density similar to that of water. This would meen 547.5 Kg. So my beard would way 547.5Kg.

    That ladies and gentlemen, is why the beard sucks.

  • So how does quantity consumed in the recent past correlate with proportion of guinness lost? :-)

    Cheers,
    Ben

  • Warning: Fox Special Press Release (Score:5)

    by dougman ( 908 ) on Saturday February 26, 2000 @08:49AM (#1244925)
    (AP) - Los Angeles - Fox Networks announced today the newest prime-time special to debut for the May sweeps week.

    "Who Wants To Marry A Crusty, Guiness-In-His-Beard Drunk European Guy" will bring the chance to one lucky American girl to get hitched to the most prolific European male in today's exciting culture. 50 women will compete in such events as the drunken foosball tournament, back shaving competition, and the semi-final contest, the fish-wrapping race. The mystery Guiness-In-His-Beard Drunk European Guy will receive advice and counsel from special guest judges ZZ Top and former professional wrestler "Hillbilly Jim". The happy couple, at the conclusion of the show will be wed in an exciting 3 minute ceremony, followed by 15 minutes of commericals and an exciting trailer for the upcoming "Robbie Knievel jumps over 50,000 bowls of steaming hot grits on top of a 200 foot-high pile of Windows 2000 Advanced Server CDs".

    sorry, I have a touch of the flu and the Dimetapp is getting to me.

  • My friend for those who like their stout, it is Harp Colone.

  • Americans: be sure to drink the cans (Score:3)

    by Tony Shepps ( 333 ) on Saturday February 26, 2000 @08:57AM (#1244927)
    Here in the US of A, one can buy Guinness in cans or bottles. Since the topic has come up, I thought it would be important to mention that Guinness is the one brew that is better in the can than in the bottle. The can has a widget in the bottom that, to put it in geek terms, "builds the head dynamically". Pop the can, pour into an appropriate vessel, and you get [almost] the same head and cascade as a glass from the tap.

  • Re:Why? (Score:1)

    by bbt ( 48407 )
    you sir have never obviously reached the level of a guinness drinker.

    guinness is the mana from heaven.

    have you ever tasted liquid asphalt?
    you would have noticed that liquid asphalt had a much more bitter taste.

    you sir are a cad.

    rgrds,

    a seasoned guinness drinker
  • No! The best way to measure the ammount of consumed beverage is to observe how much they drank, and then how much they piss out (adjusted for bodly consumpsion of course).
    The rest must be hiding in the beard.

    ----------------------------------------------
  • ...you have to come to Portland, OR, and sample an ale called "Fred" (named after a local beer writer). It's brewed by the Hair of the Dog Brewing Company [hairofthedog.com], and has an alcohol content of 11.5%.

    I'd wager that's a bit stronger than Molson Ice (yes, that's blatantly unfair, but so were your characterizations of American brews).

    As someone (Bob Hope?) once said, "That'll put hair on your chest, and part it in the middle."

    If you ever get a chance to try this brew, do so. It's quite an experience.

    Here's [brewzone.com] a brief review.

    We have many, many fine brews here in Oregon. You might want to try them before slagging on American brewers.

    One of my non-Oregon favorites (but not far from Oregon): Downtown Brown, from the Lost Coast Brewery [lostcoast.com] in Eureka, California.

    New XFMail home page [slappy.org]

  • What are nerds not supposed to care about beer? I feel sorry for the nerds who don't.
  • ...would create such uproar over the method of getting these statistics.

    Personally, I'm more bothered by the amount of free time these Irish poll-takers have. What's next?

    News Flash: Northern Ireland study shows that the average child will, between birth and the age of five, flind over 2.5 tons of food. "These kids are like Pedro Martinez!" says one researcher, "They were getting creamed carrots in their parents' faces at over 50 yards!"

  • You think THAT'S easy? Try using the sabertooth tiger to shave! We hadda do that, and we LIKED it!

    What's that, you say? How'd we calm down the tiger? Why, bottles of Guiness, of course! Sheesh, you get the sabertooth drunk enough, she'll try -anything- once.

    'Course, half the Guinness would end up in her fur...

  • With the size of each individual particle of Guinness, I can imagine it'd be more like flea/mite bowling that it would be drinking.

    Mite1: "Here it comes!" *WHAK!*
    Mite2: "Yay!" *WHAK!*
    (repeat 10^3 times for every square inch of beard)

    -- leave it to programmers to declare Guinness becoming lost in a beard not as a bug, but as a "feature".


    _____________________
    .sig Instructions
    step one: place .sig here
  • Guiness is the most generic stout you can find. It's the Budweiser of stouts - the only thing it has going for it is its name.

    I don't care if X million people drink it daily; there's probably 5 times as many that drink Coors Lite, and we all know the quality of that "beer".

    So using a straw to drink it wouldn't really make a difference for the proverbial Joe Blow, since most of them don't know even know a stout from a porter.

    And it prevents their facial hair from absorbing the drink.

    Of course, the better beers should be savoured from a nicely chilled glass...
  • Why is it stupid?
    It's rather refreshing to see a good beer story admist all the repetitive M$ bashing and linux hyping.
    Jeez, lighten up and try to have a little fun for once in your life. Variety is good for the soul.
    ~dlb

  • > someone seems to have an awful lot of spare time on their hands to perform such a study,

    A waste of time? GOD no! If you're the Guinness people, you've just bought yourself MAJOR amounts of free advertising for almost nothing.

    I love Guinness, and when my Brother came to visit once he of course had to try it, having heard so much about it from me. He took one sip, made a queer face, and set it down. I didn't take offence, I love liver and onions personally and can understand wierd differences in taste, and besides, suddenly there was twice as much Guinness at the table for me! :)

  • It goes into /dev/null ;-)
  • Someone did once tell me about a cocktail made from Guiness and Baileys. Apparently it's called a 'nuclear winter'
  • Quite true... remember the ill-fated attempt to introduce Budweiser beer (at the American 3%) to Canada? Remember their huge ad campaign where they attempted to re-market it by strengthening it to put it on par with our beer?

    As someone else posted earlier, Canadians tend to dismiss American beers as being for "children and the elderly."

    Not to say that all Canadian beers are great, either though. But when you've got as many breweries as we have, a few bad ones have to slip through. In terms of sheer numbers, Canada produces more brands of beer than any other nation on the planet. This is mostly the fault of beer itself, being that it doesn't transport well, so you've got to have a ton of breweries when you've got a country so damn large.

    In any case, when you've got "Fin du Monde" and "Maudite" at 9 to 12%, in a 750mL bottle, there's not much American beers can do for you.

    As for Guinness... it puts all of our beers to shame, at least here on Vancouver Island.
  • There are many statements, here is one. "With better than even odds the lightbulb currently in your lightbulb socket will last longer than the lightbulb that you use after it."

    It seems impossible, hence the name, "The Lightbulb Paradox".

    The reason for it is a sampling bias. When you choose the lightbulb in a socket at a specific time, the odds of a given lightbulb being picked are proportional to how long it lasted.

    In this case a random drink is more likely to be chosen by a heavy drinker than a random drinker.

    Cheers,
    Ben
  • Irish police are on the lookout for a dangerous criminal. Labelled the "Shaver", he has been prowling the countryside, breaking into people's homes, and shaving the beards off of several of the men known to frequent the many pubs in the country.

    While the Shaver's motives are unclear, it is even more unclear as to why the victims become so distraught after losing their facial hair. Shane O'Connor, a wife of one of the victims, said, "Well, I told me husband ne'er to go to those awful bars again. He's been good about it for a whole month, he 'as. But ever since this Shaver character relieved him of his beard, he's been trembling like mad, and every moment I take me eyes off the devil, he's off in some dirty pub again!"

    In other news, a new brewery has sprung up in Northern Ireland. Called the Bearded Guiness Company, this new brewery has managed to output an enormous volume of quality Guiness stout, without any apparent source. More on this amazing little brewery at 6:00.

  • Re:Why? Why drink American beer??? (Score:3)

    by Windigo The Feral (N ( 6107 ) on Saturday February 26, 2000 @09:50AM (#1244948)

    Some anonymous coward dun said:

    Since I am from Canada, I can understand many American "Beer" drinkers' aversions to drinking Guinness. American beer is very week and almost clear. Clear beer? It just isn't right. You should come up to eastern Canada and try some of our micro-brewed beers. Beers with 6 or 7 % alcohol content, not that wussy 4 %. And while I'm raving, how about that American "coffee". It's also virtually clear - kind of an amber color. You can even see the bottom of your cup! What's with that?

    Speak for yerself. As an American, I can truthfully say that I cannot stand most American pisswater that passes itself off as beer. Literally about the only two "big" brands I find remotely drinkable are Red Dog (actually tastes a lot like the American version of Molson) and some of the Michelob stuff (because, among other things, Michelob actually makes heifeweisens and dark beers).

    Most of what I drink tends to be either microbrew stuff, Negra Modelo (fortunately, Negra Modelo is very easy to find in Louisville, what with the largish Mexican population here) or stuff like heifeweisens that I have to go somewhere like Liquor Outlet (big warehouse stores for alcohol) to get...I'd drink more Guinness except that the stuff is ruddy expensive here (average price for a six-pack of Guinness in the Southeastern US tends to be around US$9--which is around Can$15 if I remember my exchange rates right), so it must remain an occasional treat *sigh*...

    If I remember right, the main reason most beers in the US are a) pisswater and b) usually just 4 percent or so have to do with a) the fact that the largest brewery here (Budweiser) actually uses rice as a base (now you know why the Japanese love Bud--it tastes like a better version of Asahi or Kirin :) and because of funky rules regarding alcoholic strength and labeling here in the States (up to around six percent, if memory serves, can be labeled as beer, and two-percent beer is actually sold in some states; anything between six and twelve percent legally has to be sold as "malt liquor", and I'm not sure if it's legal to sell beer-like beverages that are over twelve percent).

    But no, you're not the only one who can't drink American beer. :) My sister, on the other hand, can't see how I like dark beer (then again, her favourite beers are Miller Blight and Tequiza, so go figure)...

    Coffee, on the other hand, is another thing altogether. ;) I seriously take it that you have never had good, old, authentic "trucker coffee" in a truck-stop in the States. Trucker coffee is by no means clear--it is black as the Ace of Spades, is probably closer to a syrup than a liquid if done properly, and can be used as paint-stripper if one isn't brave enough to drink the stuff. ;)

    Needless to say, especially in the Southeast US, you will usually have a choice of either tea or trucker coffee (and if you're REALLY far south, like Louisiana, you start hitting that zone where you will get chicory in your coffee whether you want it or not--chicory actually makes coffee MORE bitter and gives it a unique flavour; Kentucky, I think, is around the northernmost limit of where chicory coffee is regularly sold). I can only assume wussy, see-through coffee is sold mostly up North...

    (As an aside, I was raised on trucker-coffee, and most "normal" brews don't have that much taste to me. To me, "normal strength" means that even after a liberal amount of sugar and cream are added one can STILL taste coffee. Alas, my husband won't allow me to make non-espresso-based coffee anymore because he claims that the coffee I make could kick-start a corpse ;) (Then again, that's the entire PURPOSE of trucker coffee--to make it so strong as to wake the very dead from their slumber and let them drive cross-country. Believe you me when I say that the modern geek has STILL not quite gotten to the level of caffeine dependence and experimentation as the modern American trucker ;)

  • From a few years back, the seminal Feline Reactions to Bearded Men [improbable.com].
  • "Stout" is technically the intersection of the sets "beer" and "porridge".

    And IMO the epitome of both.
  • Today Guinness will attempt to break their previous world record for simultaneanous toast at your local participating pub. Check it out at:
    http://www.guinness.ie/

    It also just so happens to be my birthday, so have a toast for me!
  • I have noticed a trend. The same people who don't like guiness don't like spicy food, and tend to eat nothing but bland mush and drink "lite" beer. I say fuck'em.

  • Rendler dun said:

    Has anyone ever tried mixing it with jim beam?? mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm yummy you'll be puking ur guts out all night :\

    Well, duh. I can name many a reason for that:

    1) Like the old saying goes: "Liquor then beer, never fear; beer then liquor, never sicker."

    2) Guinness should not be drank with some plebian bourbon like Jim Beam. ;) (Yes, I can afford to be a whisky bigot and in particular a bourbon bigot. I live in Kentucky, not terrifically far from the "Brewery Belt" at that; needless to say, we have a LOT of bourbon to sample from here. ;) Jim Beam is pretty much the Budweiser of Kentucky bourbons anyways--about the only stuff lower on the scale is stuff like Heavin' Hell, erm, Heaven Hill (the Milwaukee's Beast of bourbon, and no, I am not making this up--Heavin' Hell truly sucks and can be used as a substitute for syrup of ipecac should you find the need to induce vomiting quickly in someone). More proper bourbons to drink with something like Guinness would be something far smoother--like, oh, Knob Creek (which is, surprisingly, made by the same folks who make Jim Beam but is really good, where Jim Beam is mostly good for getting drunk ;) or Maker's Mark (yum) or, if you can afford it, Blanton's (supposedly the best bourbon in the world, and most definitely the most expensive--it's something like US$50 a fifth (750 ml bottle), and even the AIRPLANE bottles of the stuff are right around US$6 or US$7; this largely explains why I've never had the stuff).

    I can testify this, though; if you get good bourbon instead of rotgut, you can drink beer then whisky or the reverse. (I should state, though, as an aside--if you are American and were not raised by raving alcoholics, do not try to even keep up with a native of Belfast at drinking. You Will Not Succeed. Especially if you are anything like me (a smallish woman with around half the mass of the guy from Belfast who has a fair amount of Irish and Native American ancestry--and who tends to get giggly after about, oh, two or three pints of hard cider :). I tried this. Once. I ended up piss drunk at 7 am laughing at bad Jackie Chan movies and waking up later that day with a rare hangover [I usually drink water after drinking to specifically prevent hangovers, and it usually works...not that day, though :P]...trust me. You Will Not Win. Not unless your name happens to be Snorri and you speak Khazad and people refer to you as their dwarven drinking buddy. :)

  • Since I am from Canada, I can understand many American "Beer" drinkers' aversions to drinking Guinness. American beer is very week and almost clear. Clear beer? It just isn't right. You should come up to eastern Canada and try some of our micro-brewed beers. Beers with 6 or 7 % alcohol content, not that wussy 4%.

    You haven't had good American beer. Ignore most Macrobrews; about the only thing decent there is Pete's Wicked, Sam Adams, or Henry Weinhards. American microbrews are usually pretty good, though, Rogue Ale up in Oregon makes some good stuff, as do the people down in San Diego who make Arrogant Bastard Ale.

    Of course, Americans aren't the only ones who make crappy Macrobrewed beer. In Mexico, Corona and Corona Light (!) come to mind. Corona Light actually looks like white grape juice it's so light. Peroni from Italy pretty well sucks, and everyone knows Fosters is Australian for Millah Lite.

    And while I'm raving, how about that American "coffee". It's also virtually clear - kind of an amber color. You can even see the bottom of your cup! What's with that?

    A coffee shop near our home makes a "Piledriver", which has 6 shots of espresso. Not only can't you see the bottom of your cup, you need a spoon (and afterwards, a complete neurological physical) when you drink it.

  • Here in Canada, there's another difference between Guinness in bottles and in the cans with widgets. The stuff in bottles is brewed here under license by Labbat's (I think) and the stuff in cans is imported, although I've heard that they just import the mash and use local water. As far as the stuff in kegs goes that you'd get in a pub, most of it is imported just as the mash, but some distributors do import full kegs at a premium price!
  • Funny that a GUINNESS toast would occur at about 4:30-6:30 in the morning in Europe...

    I thought about this and the idea is to set a world record for the biggest simultaneous toast. I figured the timing of the event is when most of the US is out at bars and just in time for breakfast in Ireland.

    Mc'numb
  • I don't know about the US where, from what I gather reading the comments here, Guinness is only available in a can.

    Arg, no. I know there are three places that have Guinness on tap within two blocks of where I am sitting right now. Some of the other restaurants and bars might also serve it. I live in West Palm Beach, Florida (and my office is right on Clematis, downtown, FWIW).

    There's also a renfaire (Renissance Festival) just south of here that has literally dozens of beer tents, and I believe that they only have Guinness.

    As Guinness on tap is the only beer I will drink, I can say that I don't really have a hard time finding it. About a third of the time, it arrives in a mug, but that's not too terrible.

    I can come in, get hyper on coffee and penguin mints, walk across the street for lunch, down a few pints, walk back, and start in on serious coding. Around five or so, I start back in on coffee.[1]

    The average American beer is very light and sweet, and I would imagine that is why he dosen't like it. There are plenty of alternatives available, however. Sort of like American TV. NBC, CBS, ABC and FOX are your most visible networks, and most show crap with few exceptions, but there are hundreds of lesser, better or niche sources, like PBS, The Learning Channel, Animal Planet, The History Channel, etc. Don't forget that your average FOX fan would consider Yo-yo Ma to 'taste like Asphalt'. That dosen't mean that good cello is not available or not appreciated in America. We're just... big and varied in our tastes.

    Oh, and on the radio, after every Guinness ad, they always say something along the lines of: "Imported by the Guinness Brewing Company". Dunno what they import - the mash or beer, but something is imported.

    [1] Not that this is an everyday event, by any means - except for the coffee. I've long since stopped figuring out how much I drink by cup... I am literally up to a half gallon or more a day, washing down penguin mints. I know this because I french press a half gallon each morning to take into the office, and I have taken to making a Dunkin Donuts run at around 8pm. I wonder how much I loose to my full beard?

    --
    Evan

  • On one of the morning radio programs here in Ireland yesterday a
    "recognized" beard expert was quite critical of this article.
    He supposedly made a similar experiment for his thesis and had alot
    of other factors which were not mentioned by the original researcher
    (e.g. angle of head, time of day, etc. ).
    He also made 2 other points,
    1) he had never heard of the scientist mentioned in the article
    even though he was a "leading expert in the UK"

    2) the type beard he mentioned ( a handlebar beard I think ) was
    not the worst offender.

    Out now to drink some Smithwicks for me :-)
    Con
  • We were talking alcohol at a bar last night, when the topic of Guinness came up, which after a while led me to buy one. We discussed this widget issue for a while, whereupon the bartender informed us that they'd changed the widget or technique to include a little plastic ball... a ball that was just about the right weight and size, etc., to make it quite easy to get free games on a foosball table.

    Indeed, we cut open the can, and the ball is quite nice. Looks like a night of foosball (and Guinness) for me.
  • Does anyone remember the beer shampoo craze of the late seventies and early eighties? I remember one particular brand called "Body on Tap". The advertising said that the beer in it gave you thick, luxurious hair. By that logic, a little Guinness in the ol' beard should also make it thick and luxurious and a hit with the ladies (or the dudes, if you are so inclined. Just keep animals out of it, and you'll have no argument from me).

    Of course if you want a really shiny beard, put a raw egg in your Guinness. It works when I put one in my dog's food...

  • >- kinda like discussions of Apache vs IIS or

    Nah, that's not the kind of argument they have in bars that the book settles--those questions don't have clear answers that anyone but an idiot can see . . .

    :)

  • There are a great many different Guinness's brewed at the main brewery. Iirc, the irish version is actually lighter and lower in alcohal than most of the rest due to the way taxes work there. There are at least two distinct varieties in the US--the bottled and canned just plain aren't the same beer, even before bottling/canning. I don't know if the tap & canned are the same; they seem reasonably close.

    ANd then [no, I'm not making this up] there's the Miranda Guinness, the supertanker that delivers the stuff around the world. There's details in the promotional literature from the brewery tours that my sister brought back for me.

    Yes, I'll repeat that: Guinness has a supertanker to deliver their beer, and a fleet of smaller ships to shuttle it in.

    So far, I've been unable to book a cruise on it.

    Hmm, while I'm at it, they watered down the bottled version in '93 or so; it went from very good to so-so (the Miller Reserve stout was actually better than what they sold here in bottles after the change, believe it or not . . .)

    hawk
  • My oatmeal stout has (more than) a full bowl of oatmeal in every glass. It's not just for breakfast any more.

    Thick enough that you might use a fork, but you use a spoon to get every drop . . .

    and 15 gallons to be brewed next weekend . . .
  • Several posters have commented on the watery stuff that passes for beer among much of the American populace.

    The following link explains how American beer got so wimpy - it was the feminists, who deviously eliminated real man's beer:

    http://www.credenda.org/issues/vol1 1/reci11-2.htm [credenda.org]

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