Do I sense that
there is a new Bond Film due to be released and this is a sponsored plug for it?
James Bond's 'shaken not stirred': Down to trembling boozer's hands, claim boffins
James Bond's famous preference for shaken martinis is probably due to the fact that his heavy drinking means that his hands tremble so much he actually lacks the coordination to stir them, according to a festive-season medical research study. "We conclude that James Bond was unlikely to be able to stir his drinks, even if he …
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Wednesday 18th December 2013 13:59 GMT Tom 13
Re: More to the point
When I first read reports about this study (maybe on El Reg, maybe elsewhere) I kept having this recurring vision.
I'm sitting on a plush leather chair stroking a white cat as my secretary escorts one of my minions into the office. "Jaws, I have a job for you," I begin as I toss him photos of the doctors who authored the report.
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Wednesday 18th December 2013 19:27 GMT lglethal
Re: Do I sense
If you read the report on the Beeb, they make it quite clear for the rabid Daily Mail crowd (which you appear to be a part of based on your comment) that the Doctors did this report as a laugh in their spare time. They did not do it in their work time, so quit your belly aching about them doing more productive things. They were off work, and managed to come up with a study that might just convince a few people to slow down on the booze over Xmas.
What have you done to try to make the world better in your spare time?
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Saturday 21st December 2013 14:30 GMT Michael Wojcik
Re: Do I sense
More to the point, do these doctors have nothing better/more productive to do?
Yes, God forbid they spend a weekend having a bit of a lark. How dare they do anything for their own amusement?
Well, AC, we can't all be saints. I suppose we sinners should count ourselves lucky that we have your example to aspire to.
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Wednesday 18th December 2013 12:22 GMT Psyx
MATHS FAIL
"**Each unit is roughly half a pint of beer or one pub measure of spirits. If you as a man have one large/normal gin-&-tonic or one lonely beer on five days each week, for example, that's your lot. You cannot have any more booze than that - according to the government."
I assume that you're mid-research, drinking heavily, and hence counting each finger twice.
1 pint = 2 units (fairly mild stuff). x5 days = 10 units (call it 15 if you have decent beer). That's rather less than the recommended amount. Likewise, it would be 5 Units if you just had a 25ml G&T. Indeed, you can drink a pint of fizzy lager stuff AND a single G&T every day of the week, and you'd be then hitting the recommended 21 Units, or just stick to proper beer and still neck a pint every single day and be inside recommendations.
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Wednesday 18th December 2013 20:09 GMT Vic
Re: MATHS FAIL
> 1 pint = 2 units (fairly mild stuff)
Very mild stuff. That's for 3.5% ABV beer, which is less than most stuff available these days.
Most beers you see these days are between 2.5 and 4 units per pint.
I've got some Gouden Carolus for Chrimbly which comes in at 6 units per pint. And it's gorgeous :-)
Vic.
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Wednesday 18th December 2013 14:01 GMT launcap
Re: I'm waiting for a character update ....
>a bottle and a half of wine (or corresponding amount of concentrate) every day. That is alcoholism level
>consumption by any standard.
Not in the Georgian era.. I seem to recall that a gentleman of the era would routinely get through 2-3 bottles of wine a day.
Strangely enough, I appear to have just bought two Georgian-pattern high-capacity glasses. Hic haec hoc!
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Wednesday 18th December 2013 06:47 GMT Khaptain
Not so crazy
If I had to wake up every morning, try to save the world, risk getting my balls slapped with a heavy knotted rope, suffer jet lag permanently, endlessly watch my favorite lovely lady getting fed to the lions etc I would probably be on drugs, slightly alcoholic and probably have a very bad attitude..
James Bond actually fares quite well considering the odds.
The yanks got men that wear capes and spandex, we were lucky and got James Bond.....
Long live Bond, James Bond
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Wednesday 18th December 2013 06:55 GMT JLV
>Most of us aren't Double O assassins, of course, and a Bond-esque boozing level of half a bottle of spirits per day - let alone a Fleming-esque full bottle a day - will indeed shorten our lives noticeably
Given alcohol's well-documented effects I would have thought that that half bottle would shorten James' survival odds during car chases, sniper target duty, piloting failing aircraft and other random mayhem requiring superlative coordination quite a bit.
More so than being tipsy endangers us in our heroic struggles with rampaging computer mice, punishing annual performance reviews and badly-styled Powerpoints (TM).
But that's just my ill-informed self. Thanks for putting me right ;-)
Carry on, James.
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Wednesday 18th December 2013 07:12 GMT Don Jefe
Meanwhile, in other studies where government consumption guidelines are followed, marijuana causes you to go on homicidal rages, forget your baby in the swimming pool, fail in school, drive recklessly, rob your friends and neighbors, engage in premarital sex and, most tellingly, to engage in homosexual behavior with your dealer in order to score another hit. All of those things were once in anti-marijuana campaigns here in the US.
It doesn't matter what the vice or issue is, there is always somebody out there who will position worst case possibilities as near certainty and use popular culture images in their examples. Christ, even the 'real' Superman was once depicted by the New York State Republican Party as being a petty criminal, willing to kill, because he grew up without his father as a role model.
If you go back and look at all the 'studies' of fun substances and activities it's easy to see why people who know nothing about a subject will often spout off with insane statements whenever that subject comes up. You'd think people would be able to look into something and assess risks for themselves, but I suppose that means they'd have to assume responsibility for their decisions. Can't have that.
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Wednesday 18th December 2013 18:29 GMT Marshalltown
Indeed
"It doesn't matter what the vice or issue is, there is always somebody out there who will position worst case possibilities as near certainty ..."
You ought to read up on Seventh Day Adventist and Mormon research on the evils of caffeine. It gives terms like "anecdotal" and "cherry picking" new meaning.
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Wednesday 18th December 2013 20:31 GMT Captain DaFt
"there is always somebody out there who will position worst case possibilities as near certainty"
And then there's people like me that'll cherry pick an article that makes their claims look stupid: http://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/no_water_for_25_years/
To wit: Dr. Walter G. Kendall, age 81. A dentist, bicyclist, and horticulturalist, drank a glass of water.
It was the first glass of water he had drunk in 25 years.
He reportedly "suffered no ill effects," and followed it by several cocktails.
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Wednesday 18th December 2013 07:58 GMT OzBob
So Bond is "fiction"
FFS, he's not like "the Doctor" and regenerates, they are different actors - of course it is fiction! They make have thrown a little tradecraft in since Daniel Craig took over the role but its still fantasy and a little bit of satire.
BTW, my best friend tries to treat alcohol and women similar to Bond (inability to deal with reality and contempt for the opposite sex), and he looks like a tramp (at 44 years old.). Not an advisable career choice.
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Wednesday 18th December 2013 08:48 GMT Steve Todd
Shaken not stirred was an innuendo
as to how Bond liked to leave his women.
The books generally don't have much to do with the films (Moonraker being the worst, where the only similarity was the name of the villain), and their whole attitude would be unacceptable today but as Lewis said, they are works of fiction not a life guide.
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Wednesday 18th December 2013 11:53 GMT hplasm
Re: You're allowed more booze than that.
As the physician who was asked to provide the maximum *allowed number of alcohol units for consumption freely admits to pulling the number out of his arse, then it follows that any critique of a subject's drinking that relies on these units is by definition , bollocks; when applied to a fictional character, doubly so.
*All hail Nanny!
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Thursday 19th December 2013 23:42 GMT Malcolm Weir
Re: You're allowed more booze than that.
One of the (many) fundamental failings of the "recommended maximum units of alcohol per week" nonsense is that is assumes that the effects of alcohol are discrete and linear. There is no mechanism for, e.g., factoring in the positive effects of alcohol in managing stress, so someone with a high stress job might genuinely be able to absorb more units with beneficial effects, before the negative effects starts to outweigh the positive ones.
Another ignored phenomena is that, for some individuals, drinking is a displacement activity that displaces other, more harmful, actions (over-eating, narcotics, etc). For this population, although alcohol may (or may not) be problematic in itself, it is less problematic than the alternative.
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Friday 20th December 2013 12:30 GMT Intractable Potsherd
Re: You're allowed more booze than that.
Yes, the positive aspects of alcohol are always ignored by the killjoys. When I was nursing, I worked on a very progressive unit for the elderly where, as a team, we decided that allowing our residents to be adults and have alcoholic beverages in the evenings if they wished was a good thing. We rapidly discovered that it reduced the need for sedation at night - definitely a bonus -, the number of falls, and, in those who drank ales and stouts, their need for laxatives went down. In addition, the patients and their relatives reported a marked improvement in quality of life measurements.
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Wednesday 18th December 2013 09:15 GMT Anonymous Coward
Hello doctors
Fiction alert! We have this thing called "fiction", which means that people make up stories right out of their imagination. It pleased Ian Fleming to invent a person who behaved much as he himself did (smoking, drinking, driving fast cars, gambling, etc.) yet didn't suffer the ill consequences that Fleming inevitably did. (Granted, Fleming was somewhat older).
If you really want to see what an earnest concern for scientific facts and consistency can do to a beautiful fantasy, read Larry Niven's immortal demolition of Superman's romance with Lois Lane:
http://www.rawbw.com/~svw/superman.html
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Wednesday 18th December 2013 13:16 GMT Platelet
Re: Hello doctors
"Fiction alert! We have this thing called "fiction", which means that people make up stories right out of their imagination."
Doctors produce fiction as well.
Richard Smith, a member of the Royal College of Physicians working party that produced the recommendations, told the paper the limits were prompted by “a feeling that you had to say something”.
http://metro.co.uk/2007/10/20/government-guessed-alcohol-limits-340800/
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Wednesday 18th December 2013 09:17 GMT wolfetone
Who the hell cares?
Seriously. Have these "Boffins" have nothing better for doing that working out how a fictional character would perform based on his penchant for drink? IT'S FICTION! ESCAPISM! It doesn't have to make sense!
And to think of all the hours they have spent working out all of this crap when they could've been working on a cure for cancer. The mind boggles.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
