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For the past four years the Omnium-Gatherum blog has opened your Saturday morning Inbox with news of driven people, eye-popping places, and new ideas that may have escaped your gaze.
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Now, for this week’s Omnium-Gatherum…
WILL THE DAY COME WHEN ALCOHOL IS TREATED LIKE TOBACCO?
The fact that this question is even askable, let alone answerable, speaks to how drinking is fading, and what role your own diminished drinking might play in that.
I ask because once again, a respected medical authority has concluded that no amount of alcohol is safe to drink, and because we’re plunk in the middle of drinking season. These “none is too many” reports are growing each year, and the number of Canadians who drink alcohol is falling.
We were all brought up knowing that tobacco will kill you if you consume it over time, but drinking will kill you only if you consume too much of it. But what if the second half of that last sentence is false? What if alcohol is worse for society than tobacco? (Mothers Against Drunk Driving has all the costs, and there is no Mothers Against Smoking).
What if we’re viewing alcohol today through the lens we viewed tobacco in the 1960s? Back then, half of Canadian adults smoked. I was growing up in Edmonton and when my parents had a party, our living room was dense with smoke. They never gave it a second thought, nor did I. In those days, pretty much everyone smoked at a party because…it was a party!
But what was so natural that no one even thought to comment on it can quickly become unnatural, illegal and shunned. Before 1976, no one drove wearing a seatbelt. One year later, everyone drove wearing a seatbelt. When I was in my 20s, drinking and driving was a risk worth taking. Today, you’d be crazy to drink and drive.
Last year alcohol consumption in Canada fell 12% from 2008 and beer consumption alone fell by 20%.
Today, non-alcoholic wine is one of the fastest-growing segments of the North American alcohol business.
Today, the ‘sober-ish’ movement is growing fast. Soberish doesn’t mean abstaining from alcohol; it means drinking less than your friends. There are even ‘drink drops’ that will give you the familiar buzz from wine, with no alcohol.
Today, ‘sober-curious’ young people are changing the conversation around alcohol, and a recent Leger poll tracked how ‘Dry January’ (and its sister ‘Damp January’) are morphing into year-round movements.
Will the day come 50 years from now when the world will look back on drinking the way we now do on tobacco? Maybe not. People don’t take trips to tobacco plantations to sample this year’s crop. They don’t invest huge sums in tobacco cellars, or host tobacco-tastings. There is no Tobacco Control Board of Ontario, no social benefit to smoking as there is to drinking alcohol, and especially wine. For alcohol consumption to be a forbidden fruit, centuries of tradition and trillions of dollars would have to be overturned and spent elsewhere. So it isn’t likely, but it is possible and if the science is right, laudable.
I quit drinking 34 years ago. I’m not an alcoholic. But I am an addict who believes any mood-altering substance will lead me back to my drug of choice. This is a bet I can’t afford to be on the wrong side of. But the one benefit I’ve enjoyed from my enforced absence from alcohol-induced levity is one that people rarely mention. It has nothing to do with sickness or death. It has to do with money. Over the years, not drinking has saved me thousands and thousands of dollars. And the price of that privilege is that I get to be the designated driver for friends who want to drink but not drive. Which is fine by me.
But for those of you who still drink because you think your friends will think less of you if you’re not drinking, believe me they won’t. Not because their love for you is of a higher order. It’s because they won’t notice, and if they do, they won’t care. I repeat: They. Won’t. Care.
So, as we enter full-bore into drinking season, think about cutting back or cutting out your alcohol consumption. The sun will still come out tomorrow.
1. Counter-factuals. a. Inmates train prison guards: A report by Britain’s Prison Reform Trust says inmates should help train prison guards as part of a “radical transformation” of the role. b. Drugs are better than diet and exercise for losing weight. Speaking of which, why does Ozempic seem to treat everything? c. You can now grow your own toilet paper.
2. The other Word of the Year. The Economist’s Word is kakistocracy, which means government by the worst. But the Aussies have a much more comely and timely word whose euphemism is “platform decay.”
3. Ten septillion times. That’s how much faster (10 to the power of 25) that Google’s new quantum computing chip can complete tasks than conventional computers. As The Guardian reports: “The new chip, called Willow and made in the California beach town of Santa Barbara, is about the dimensions of an After Eight mint, and could supercharge the creation of new drugs by greatly speeding up the experimental phase of development.”
4. The latest in what’s bad for your health. Solo binge-watching. Much better to binge with others. Plus the real reason you’re so anxious. Plus Christmas parties you don’t get invited to. And of course, first dates.
5. New skills, new advice. I want to study forensic linguistics and solve crimes; and dance like Dick Van Dyke when I’m 99, then appear on Jimmy Kimmel. And wag my finger at teens about hospice care, and remember, when mamma ain’t happy, ain’t no one happy. And speaking of women of a certain age…
Oh, and AI can now predict weather and extreme conditions better than weather forecasters.
6. Daniel Craig is Queer. Here he is in the eponymous movie that’s drawing ravesslams. As for James Bond, he’s fine with it.
7. Geoffrey Hinton picked up his Nobel Prize in Stockholm this week. Here is his acceptance speech in its entirety.
“This year the Nobel committees in Physics and Chemistry have recognized the dramatic progress being made in a new form of Artificial Intelligence that uses artificial neural networks to learn how to solve difficult computational problems. This new form of AI excels at modeling human intuition rather than human reasoning and it will enable us to create highly intelligent and knowledgeable assistants who will increase productivity in almost all industries. If the benefits of the increased productivity can be shared equally it will be a wonderful advance for all humanity.
Unfortunately, the rapid progress in AI comes with many short-term risks. It has already created divisive echo-chambers by offering people content that makes them indignant. It is already being used by authoritarian governments for massive surveillance and by cyber criminals for phishing attacks. In the near future AI may be used to create terrible new viruses and horrendous lethal weapons that decide by themselves who to kill or maim. All of these short-term risks require urgent and forceful attention from governments and international organizations.
There is also a longer term existential threat that will arise when we create digital beings that are more intelligent than ourselves. We have no idea whether we can stay in control. But we now have evidence that if they are created by companies motivated by short-term profits, our safety will not be the top priority. We urgently need research on how to prevent these new beings from wanting to take control. They are no longer science fiction.”
8. Where you live, then and now. This online Scottish map app lets you compare where you live now with the exact same place decades and even centuries ago. Can we get one of these for Canada?
9. Japan plays Toronto. Toronto wins. Twice. The Toronto Maple Leafs baseball team have signed superstar pitcher Ayami Sato as the first woman to play professional baseball in Canada.
Next, Japan’s public broadcaster, NHK, is streaming a documentary on award-winning UHN thoracic surgeon Dr. Yasufuku Kazuhiro who is revolutionizing cancer treatment.
10. Ladies, please! First, an Italian nun was arrested for working for the mafia. Next, from The New Yorker’s Best Performances of 2024: “Why chase eternal youth when you can kick ass in your nineties? In Thelma, June Squibb plays a granny who gets conned out of ten thousand dollars and vows to face down her scammer. Squibb got her first Oscar nomination at eighty-four, for Nebraska. As it turns out, she was just getting started.”…Finally, Netflix has begun streaming a short documentary, The Only Girl in the Orchestra, on the double-bassist Orin O’Brien, who became the first female member of the New York Philharmonic in 1966 under Leonard Bernstein. There were no dressing rooms for women.
11. What I’m liking: An Arab-Israeli debates against the motion: “This House Believes Israel is an Apartheid State Responsible for Genocide.”
I’m also liking the 6-part 2023 BBC series The Gold, about the Brink’s-Mat robbery in 1983. At the time it was the biggest robbery in history. The dramatization, on CBC GEM (so, free) stars a boxcar of familiar Brits, including Hugh Bonneville, Dominic Cooper, Charlotte Spencer, Sean Harris, Jack Lowden and Tom Cullen.