You guys must be heavy drinkers...

[D_W]

Are you absolutely sure? I've not heard of your Mormon, but that may well be my lack of education.

I guess some of the "who invented it" is determined based on what's deemed as "TV" vs something far away from being viable.

Philo Farnsworth was the first to transmit electronic images (electronic on both ends - early television as we know it rather than a combination mechanical/electronic process that really had no potential).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo_Farnsworth

 

[Garno]

I am very proud to say I am tea total and I have been for almost 20 years now.
I don't even bother with a small sherry at Christmas (actually when I did partake in drinking I would never have a Sherry).
I don't drink through choice and not because I had a problem and have not missed it one little bit

 

[Droogs]

About Brits being heavy drinkers, I remember seeing a card that was given to US troops in Germany and in the gulf, on which it said "Do not: fight, gamble or enter drinking competions with allied UK forces" and on the other side it said "You will lose" I think mainly due to US beer having about the same strength as a pint of shandy at the time

 

[artie]

The interesting part to us as americans is that you can be subject to inspection to see if you are watching any live TV and then fined if it's discovered you are.

Not subject to inspection at all. Except that some people will push their luck.

Much like a city cop who demands your ID when you are strolling down the street.
He has no right, but most people show it anyway.

 

[D_W]

Not subject to inspection at all. Except that some people will push their luck.

Much like a city cop who demands your ID when you are strolling down the street.
He has no right, but most people show it anyway.

They do that here, too. There are a couple of very clear federal laws here - you can video a public official in a public space any time as long as you'd like (there's insufficient punishment for officers who physically take your equipment away, though, and return it later - but that can be partially remedied by having several devices recording) - having one elsewhere recording footage or audio that conflicts with an official report becomes very unflattering for public officials.

The officers here generally have to write an ID of an individual in their reports, so it creates a problem for them to not have it, but you're not required to provide it.

I have never been arrested, nor remotely close, but had a friend whose brother was convicted of murder after hanging around with a group of drug dealers that included a local judge's son. That's a bad policy - if the judges son does something and it becomes public, the judge's son will leave the country (and never return) and the friends will suddenly find out "they did it".

Most attorneys (and police investigators) talking to the public will say "limit your contact in situations where you don't need the police - even honest misunderstandings can lead to charges and convictions with no intent of wrongdoing on either side".

That said, the police here don't usually start to hassle anyone who hasn't been a constant problem for them in the first place.

Not that these kinds of things are unique to law enforcement in the states. (guy living in my neighborhood moved to russia after college to take a job and got beaten up by russian police a few times because they knew he was american and assumed he was up to no good. He moved to a former soviet bloc to work for another company and got beaten up by their police because they assumed that since they hadn't seen him before and he was white, he must be russian and lying when saying he wasn't).

 

[selectortone]

And ..

I think mainly due to US beer having about the same strength as a pint of shandy at the time

Yep. I remember going over to the US in the early 90s for a conference and drinking bottle after bottle of Budweiser and wondering why I was still sober as a judge. It was a very boring conference, I could have done with a little buzz. They don't put the ABV on the label like they do here, or they didn't back then anyway. I think the beers, at least the craft ones, are a bit more like we're used to there now.

Mind you, to put the shoe on the other foot, I went to a conference in Belgium at around the same time and was plied with a few bottles of Leffe Tripel (abv 8.8%). That stuff is lethal

 

[D_W]

Unfortunately this is what our news is becoming and the main reason I stopped listening to it.
In my opinion the news should consist of , well, news, you know, things that have happened and have had an impact on someone or something.

There is a pro wrestling promoter here (now retired) who says the following:

If you have a news channel and you are constantly telling me things that I've hear before and offering your opinion or commentary, that's not news. The nature of news in general, by definition, has the burden of being something that you didn't know or the broadcaster would have reason to believe you don't know. If they are telling you thinks you already know, *it's not news, it's promotion or manipulation".

News and commentary used to be something like 50/50 here, perhaps more skewed than that toward news. When my grandparents tuned in to watch the news, it was sacred. No VCR, no internet, you got one shot at it and it may not be repeated later. The news has lost the ability to be news because their medium is outdated, so they've turned to commentary both because it costs less to create and is far easier to continue to generate than news coverage, an because instantaneous feedback shows more or less that people like to torture themselves (mostly choosing to watch repetition of something they already know they despise).

 

[Sandyn]

I stopped drinking last March when challenged by someone to stop for a few days. I also reduced my sugar intake by stopping snacking on biscuits.
I didn't drink a lot and I really don't miss it. I did eat a lot of sugary snacks after retiring.
I will have a beer when I can meet up with my friends again, but not a chocolate biscuit!

 

[D_W]

And ..

Yep. I remember going over to the US in the early 90s for a conference and drinking bottle after bottle of Budweiser and wondering why I was still sober as a judge. It was a very boring conference, I could have done with a little buzz. They don't put the ABV on the label like they do here, or they didn't back then anyway. I think the beers, at least the craft ones, are a bit more like we're used to there now.

Mind you, to put the shoe on the other foot, I went to a conference in Belgium at around the same time and was plied with a few bottles of Leffe Tripel (abv 8.8%). That stuff is lethal

I'm not sure if it's a law, but they generally do it now. Our alcohol is sneaky and sometimes not. That is, nearly flavorless peewater is common here. But peewater with a faint aftertaste of stale beer (intended to be easy to drink) could be anywhere from 3.5% to 7%, and the labeling is almost unintelligible in telling you which is which unless you look for the numbers.

Most of the large brewery beer here is like pop music. Pop music is for people who want the edges taken off of real music so that it doesn't require thought or appreciation - or standards. The large commercial beers here are generally overly sweet or simplified "beerish" tasting stuff. A few like sam adams and yuengling and a bunch of older regional breweries have real beers, but the way the alcohol system is here in most places, the distributors of the major brands give priority to the major brands (that is, the distributors are independent, but they tend to favor a given brewery by choice).

What happens is if you have a unique smaller brewery, the larger breweries create something that looks like your beer (and they may even push the limits and name it almost the same) and then demand that the distributors (who stock store shelves while delivering product) move the smaller breweries to the high or low shelves so that the eye level shelves all have the copycat product.

it's more effective than it should be.

 

[Rorschach]

Most attorneys (and police investigators) talking to the public will say "limit your contact in situations where you don't need the police - even honest misunderstandings can lead to charges and convictions with no intent of wrongdoing on either side".

Similar situation here. Don't call the Police or talk to the Police unless you really need them. While the vast majority of officers are good people trying to do their best, there is a small number of well protected and power mad cops who will not only push things to limit but will actively break the law in the knowledge that the system protects its own. Their first reaction upon meeting anyone is "how can I get them for something" and someone who knows the law and stands up for their rights is irresistible to them and that attitude becomes toxic to the good officers around them, a corrupting influence.

 

[D_W]

There's no legitimate investigation system here - you have to make (Depending on the local rules) a complaint either to the station's review board or to a prosecutor's office.

The prosecutor needs motivated police to bring them criminals or they'll be elected out. The police themselves obviously aren't going to do anything unless they find the behavior beyond offensive. Bad system.

I had a bad ticket written on a bicycle once here and a county policeman wrote me a ticket for it (I ran a stop sign on a bike). He wrote a ticket using code section numbers for cars and filed the ticket with the DMV (or his station did). I got notification that I had an infraction of "falling asleep behind the wheel of a car", which instantly goes out to insurers. It took a lot of work to get it fixed. If I file a complaint, what's going to happen? Every time I ride my bike at the county park where the officer works, I'll be getting an escort. No thanks.

From time to time there are issues with folks who were previously married to someone an officer marries later (officer harasses former spouse, etc, to please new spouse), but that's just infrequent stuff that makes for fluffy news stories.

 

[D_W]

I stopped drinking last March when challenged by someone to stop for a few days. I also reduced my sugar intake by stopping snacking on biscuits.
I didn't drink a lot and I really don't miss it. I did eat a lot of sugary snacks after retiring.
I will have a beer when I can meet up with my friends again, but not a chocolate biscuit!

Your comment reminds me of John Daly saying that he ate four large M&M bags per day (not little ones, but the kind you get in a bulk bag) when he quit drinking due to the lack of alcohol being converted to sugar.

 

[Sandyn]

he ate four large M&M bags per day

M&M's, mm&mm's, mmm&mmm's, mmmm&mmmm's, mmmmm&mmmmm's. Once I start, I can't stop!

 

[doctor Bob]

I’ve only ever been drunk once just happened to last from 1980 to 1999

 

[Trainee neophyte]

I guess some of the "who invented it" is determined based on what's deemed as "TV" vs something far away from being viable.

Philo Farnsworth was the first to transmit electronic images (electronic on both ends - early television as we know it rather than a combination mechanical/electronic process that really had no potential).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo_Farnsworth

It's one of those times where everyone had a go, so pinning the tail on who was really responsible is down to culture and nationality. Most Brits would recognise John Logi Baird, who also sent moving pictures by radio waves in the 1920s.

Another fun one is who invented the telephone? Alexander Graham Bell (another Scot), obviously, unless you are Italian. There was a bit of a furore many years ago when Microsoft gave "alternative facts" on their Encarta encyclopedia: How Encarta sees it

 

[JohnPW]

That last part is at least good. Police can request to come into properties here, too, but every piece of legal advice I've ever seen is to tell them "if you want to come in, go get a warrant", as it looks no worse to a judge that someone got a warrant than it would if they didn't. And police usually ask to look around when they're not sure if they can get a warrant or wouldn't go to the effort.

Even if you feel like you've followed every law ever, there is likely something that could be found worth investigation or referral to another agency.

The BBC inspection people are not police. They're just ordinary citizens.

 

[Cabinetman]

Selectotone and DW. That Budweiser effect was the old US as I’m sure DW knows, craft breweries are really going for it. In an effort to find a beer I liked that wasn’t going to knock me over I spent quite a long time looking at ABV ‘s (alcohol by volume) as so many of the beers were above 5%. And it really surprised me that not all of them had the strength printed on them. this photo shows the beers available in an old Liverpudlian pub dismantled and taken over to a town called Lititz in Pennsylvania, I bet Doug knows it! The first column of numbers is the ABV and as you can see most of them are about 5–6–8 %and then there are two at 15and16 % Thank goodness you can only buy those in a half pints, so not altogether true anymore that American beer is like dishwater. I decided Yuengling was my favourite tipple, about 4%. Ian

 

[Cabinetman]

The BBC inspection people are not police. They're just ordinary citizens.

And they are a real pain, you have a building without a TV licence ? You get non-stop letters reminding you that you need one, you tell them that you haven’t got a tv in your workshop, and then the pressure is put on, it’s like talking to a brick wall, and eventually they threaten to inspect and do they ever turn up? Not in my experience.

I always thought they had a way of checking if you were watching television in your home, from a van on the road outside, or was that just a story put out to scare people?

 

[Linus]

It's one of those times where everyone had a go, so pinning the tail on who was really responsible is down to culture and nationality. Most Brits would recognise John Logi Baird, who also sent moving pictures by radio waves in the 1920s.

Another fun one is who invented the telephone? Alexander Graham Bell (another Scot), obviously, unless you are Italian. There was a bit of a furore many years ago when Microsoft gave "alternative facts" on their Encarta encyclopedia: How Encarta sees it

Actually , I believe that Leonardo Da Vinci invented the telephone. It wasn't until Bell came along with his device that he had anyone to call.

I'll get my coat!

 

[eribaMotters]

Getting back to French wine industry being hard hit by Brexit. The UK was [is?] the 2nd largest consumer of French wine in the world.
What is so attractive about French wine, red in particular, is the drinkability in that it generally not so heavy as new world wines and has lower alcohol levels.
We have trailer tented and taken a caravan to France since about 1999. At one time we would bring back up to 60 x 3L wine boxes in the days we had large get togethers. In 2019 we were still only paying 9 Euro a box for very drinkable stuff that in UK supermarkets was then selling at £18 for the same box.
When we finally get over to France again we will only be allowed to bring back 12 boxes between the two of us. It does not take a mathematician to work out the French are going to loose a lot of sales because I can assure those of you who do not venture abroad that I'm not unusual.

Colin