WI no alcohol?
- Thread starter Hobelhouse
- Start date
I'm assuming from your posts that the Tequila Monster (a seven-foot purple weasel, according to the research of Jeph Jacques) has made himself known to you.
Ah, citrus-based alcoholic beverages are just like a good POD: they don't seem to do much radical at first, but after a few weeks you wake up to find a seven-foot pencil delivered to your door.
Serious answer: ASB, as alcohol is in fact ethanol (CH3OH) and is a naturally occurring hydrocarbon.
Flocculencio
Donor
Pfft. Stop acting all-knowing. You're 16 and in Leicester- we all know the finest booze you get is White Lightning shoplifted from the Co-op
Pfft. Stop acting all-knowing. You're 16 and in Leicester- we all know the finest booze you get is White Lightning shoplifted from the Co-op
I'm Methodist, the best I get is three-year-old Ribena.
Pfft. Stop acting all-knowing. You're 16 and in Leicester- we all know the finest booze you get is White Lightning shoplifted from the Co-op
And I'm seventeen, thank you!
Believe me, you DON'T want to drink CH3OH. It would make you go crazy, blind and dead (most likely in that order, and undoubtedly in quick succession). Ethanol is C2H5OH, what you wrote is methanol.
*ends the annoying know-it-all attitude*
Not to mention that neither are hydrocarbons, hydrocarbons are, for example, methane (CH4), ethylene (C2H4), and ethane (C2H6).
*ends the annoying more know-it-all than thou attitude*
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Hendryk
Banned
Alcohol has been ingested by human beings ever since some hunter-gatherer drank the fermented juice of a rotten fruit and got wasted in the process. No credible POD short of ASB intervention could change that.
Certain developments could be changed, though. IIRC the first cocktails were invented during the Prohibition, to conceal the vile taste of bootleg booze under other flavors. Without the Prohibition, we'd probably only drink our liquor neat.
Certain developments could be changed, though. IIRC the first cocktails were invented during the Prohibition, to conceal the vile taste of bootleg booze under other flavors. Without the Prohibition, we'd probably only drink our liquor neat.
Doesn't keep well though... Sea exploration might be more difficult, - no easy to make purifying agent, no way to boil much water onboard, no way to keep it... Silver-based purifiers have nasty side effects if used for too long...
Anaxagoras
Banned
If there were no alcohol, unattractive people would have much less sex. Consequently, the human population would be lower but people would be more attractive on average.
I don't think we can get rid of alcohol, per se, as it occurs naturally and regularly. HOWEVER. If anaerobic metabolism in, e.g. our muscles, didn't split glucose into ethanol and lactic acid then our bodies wouldn't have evolved special pathways to deal with the ethanol so produced. If that were the case, then ethanol would be approximately as poisonous as methanol or the other alcohol.
I say 'almost', as our fruit-eating primate ancestors would have had to be able to deal with at least slightly overripe fruit. Hmm... Ethanol might smell as bad to us as mercaptans (the primary odour in skunk spray)?
I say 'almost', as our fruit-eating primate ancestors would have had to be able to deal with at least slightly overripe fruit. Hmm... Ethanol might smell as bad to us as mercaptans (the primary odour in skunk spray)?
Well, it doesn't. There are multiple anaerobic pathways (glucose->lactic acid, glucose->acetic acid, and glucose->ethanol, and some exotic ones, associated with chemosynthesis) and not a single one producing both lactic acid and ethanol.
Although some procaryotes do use multyiple pathways, animals use exclusively the 1st, while fungi are using 3rd. So, all we need for a teetotal world is persuading fungi to use any other pathway.
And I plan to be VERY friendly with him rather shortly . . .
" . . . And there's booze in the blender,
and soon it will render
That frozen concoction that helps me hang on."
-Parrothead National Anthem (by Jimmy Buffett)
Bobindelaware
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