SHARING A BOTTLE…
0835 by Jeff Hess
As an undergrad at Ohio University in the early ’80s I took a lot of courses from Dr. David Williams whose specialty was the history and politics of the then Soviet Union. I remember one of Dave’s tales about drinking in Moscow, where he attended Moscow University for his Masters in Journalism. The story went something like this:
When you’d walk down the street and pass a liquor store (state owned, of course), you’d often see someone standing outside holding up one, two, or rarely, three fingers. The raised fingers were the number of people they were looking for to share a bottle of vodka. It wasn’t that Russian drinkers were particularly social, it was that the tradition was to finish a bottle after you opened it. And to symbolize your intent you’d throw a way the cap.
Being a typical (at least then) Ohio University (a fountain of knowledge where many went to drink) student, I adopted this mode for sometime, sharing the experience with friends in Dave’s classes.
So I do understand a little something about the Russian drinking experience, but I don’t get this:
UK researchers estimated that half of all deaths in working age men in the country are due to hazardous drinking.
The products, which also include herbal tinctures sold in pharmacies, are widely available, cheap and contain up to 97% alcohol, the Lancet study says.
It was found that they contain very few toxins but are deadly simply because of the extreme alcohol levels.
Is that these products aren’t taxed at the level of alcohol sold for drinking? Are they more easily available for some reason.
The usually thorough BBC doesn’t tell us in the story.
And oh, by the way. How many of you out there know that Listerine is 50 proof?
I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: 
My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. 
I haven’t flown but once in the past 10 years; just a quick hop to La Guardia and back. It was annoying, but nothing like what Monica Emmerson and her son had to face. Who ever is the top dog at the agency responsible for the treatment she and her son received at National Airport needs to publically apologize to her and fire the thugs.
I’m constantly tossing interesting websites into what I call my blogpile. Some of them find their way here in the form of regular posts, but more often than not they languish and get buried deeper in the pile. The end result is that I have to go back and do a bit of shoveling. Today’s item is 
