Bartenders can be your best friends or your worst enemies, and even sometimes your lover - if you’re interested in contracting an STD. There is nothing more frustrating than wading through a crowd of people to get to the bar, then have the bartender serve everything with a vagina before even acknowledging your existence. Well, just be happy that according to a study, once that bartender does pour you a drink, you’re getting your money’s worth.

The study, done in Northern California counties, found that on average bartenders are exceeding the “standard” size for alcoholic beverages:

The average glass of wine was 43% larger than standard, and the average mixed drink was 42% larger. The average draft beer was 22% larger.

According to the study, from “Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research” (sending in my subscription request immediately!), the “standard” size for drinks are as follows: 5 ounces for wine, 12 ounces for beer and 1.5 ounces for spirits. This makes sense for beer, seeing as how pint glasses are 16 ounces… and if you’ve ever ordered a wine at a dive bar, it’s pretty much tradition to flip that fancy glass to the lip.

So, remember to tip your bartenders this weekend, since when you think you’ve only had four drinks, it’s probably closer to six. Now I see what T-Pain was talking about!

Original story: Los Angeles Times Blog

This map here represents the single men and women in the United States. The bigger the blue dot, the more single men are in that metropolitan area. The bigger the red dot, “Hello, Ladies!”

The visual was put together by the fine people at The Boston Globe, which by my calculations, are all single women.

Also, by my calculations, we need to get the hell out of the West Side and hit up the East Coast. I’ve always heard the rumors about the sausage factories that are Anchorage, Honolulu and Denver (Menver), but I didn’t think it was an epidemic that was sweeping the whole coast. That bachelor party in Atlanta later this month is looking pretty good to me.

Original Story: The Boston Globe.

There is some crazy stuff going down in Oregon these days. First, a dude gets his home ransacked thanks to a Craigslist posting and now men are having babies.

That’s right, a transgender “man” is pregnant in Oregon. For those of you who don’t get the headline, “Junior” was the 1994 Arnold Schwarzenegger movie about a male doctor who decided to impregnate himself as part of a research study. Arnold was probably feeling a little guilty about “True Lies” and had to do someone a favor, just not the people who paid $8 to see that piece of crap though (thankfully, myself not included).

Anyway, this is no research study and certainly is no movie. Thomas Beatie writes his story in the “First Person” section of The Advocate. Here’s the opening to the story:

To our neighbors, my wife, Nancy, and I don’t appear in the least unusual. To those in the quiet Oregon community where we live, we are viewed just as we are — a happy couple deeply in love. Our desire to work hard, buy our first home, and start a family was nothing out of the ordinary. That is, until we decided that I would carry our child. I am transgender, legally male, and legally married to Nancy.

I don’t really know where to go from here. This is about a million times worse than the guy who got breast implants, although to be fair it was part of a bet. Not to mention the biggest sacrifice of the whole situation is giving up alcohol for at least 9 months! Now that’s crazy!

If you want to read the entire article, check out it out here.

The ground-breaking study shows that the hippocampus, the part of the brain involved in memory, spatial tasks and many other functions, was more than 10 per cent smaller in those whose tipple was wine than in those who favoured beer.

Talk about great news. The researchers from Germany’s Göttingen University think that the findings might be related to a compound found in blood called homocysteine which has been linked to dementia, brain atrophy and strokes. The beer drinkers in the study were found the have the lowest levels of homocysteine. I can’t wait to get home tonight and start drinking some Guinness. Here is my favorite part of the article:

Researchers say that alcohol alone may not account for the differences because the beer and spirit drinkers had greater lifetime consumption of alcohol; in the case of beer drinkers some had consumed twice as much alcohol as the wine lovers.

You might want to read that again. You can drink twice as much beer and still have a bigger brain than a wine drinker. Looks like it is time for me to get my weeknight drink on so that I can start protecting my brain. Hurray beer! Hurray science!

Original Story: The Independent via Dethroner

Ever wonder how much your body would be worth if you donated it to science? Yeah, me neither, but this is actually kinda fun. I am worth $3390…

I wonder if I could get an advance?

The Cadaver Calculator

Apparently the sun is starting to get to the people in Southern California. Some researchers at UCLA with nothing better to do with their time have made some interesting discoveries. And by “discoveries,” I mean, “information people would know if they would have gone to college.”

The researchers attended parties as sober sisters and polled partygoers about their intentions and even gave them breathalyzer tests. So yeah, you guessed it… people were there to meet “sexual partners” and were drunk. It’s never too early to start giving out the Noble Prize for 2008, but UCLA has just jumped to the top of my list. Here’s the result of their survey:

The study showed that while 61.3 percent of respondents reported being at the party to socialize, and 45 percent reported having fun as a main motivation, nearly 40 percent of all respondents said they were at the party to get drunk. More than 21 percent said they were there to try to meet a sexual partner.

Moreover, they found that at themed parties women wore less clothing! True dat! Have these people never heard of Halloween? It’s pretty much an excuse for girls to wear the sluttiest clothes imaginable and write it off as a costume… Pimps and Hoes Party, Gangsta Party, ’80s Party, Lingerie Party, Toga Party, etc.

My favorite quote in the article comes from a fellow at Boston University, appropriately named Peter True:

“Definitely. They have to be that faded to go out wearing those ridiculous clothes, I’m 100 percent sure.”

Now, he speakth the truth!

To check out the rest of the results and the indepth research, which also takes into account party size and location, from UCLA here. (And yes, that picture ran with the article, thank you ABC!)

TastyBooze will now only be accepting invitations to “themed parties.” So it has been written.

I don’t need an excuse to enjoy a cold beer but that doesn’t mean I am not going to take advantage of a great one when I see it.

In a rare piece of good news for those who like a pint, Spanish researchers say beer can help someone who is dehydrated retain liquid better than water.

Juan Antonio Corbalan, a cardiologist who worked formerly with Real Madrid football players and Spain’s national basketball team, said beer had the perfect profile for re-hydration after sport.

Looks like my parents should have been giving me half a beer at half time of the my little league football games instead of those bullshit orange slices.

Original Story: Telegraph.co.uk

A study released today found that the historic Sabertooth Tiger had a substantially weaker bite than our friend the Lion despite those monster teeth. Apparently, the old Sabertooth had to tackle it prey to the ground and bite into its soft neck for an effective kill (what a weakling right…). The author of the study even referred to the Sabertooth as having a “wimpy bite”. I don’t know about you, but a Sabertooth could bit like a mosquito with those teeth and I think it would still hurt. In fact, with money on the line, I think I would still go with the Sabertooth in a Lion fight regardless of bite power. I have to think our king the jungle would be near as scared of those teeth as I am.

Original Article