Newsday: Booze

[Nubbins]

Where are these Eileen and James people anyway?  They seem crazy enough to be here.

[monkey!]

Matt loves Tori Amos.

[nacho]

False pints!  Glad to see that the horrible Romano's is singled out.

http://www.blogaboutbeer.com/2008/06/17/430/

We all know that the prices of everything — from gasoline, to groceries, to the grains & hops needed to make beer — are on the daily rise; nothing unique there. With the price of beer rising for the breweries, so it rises for the distributors and so on down the line to the bars and eventually you and I.

The bars can only charge their patrons so much for a pint before they start to leave in droves. So instead, a number of bars and restaurants around the U.S. have begun to cheat. Rather than up the price of their pints too much, they’re just giving customers less than a pint of beer and simply not telling them. Some restaurants and bars have reportedly replaced normal 16 ounce pint glasses with 14 ouncers — a type of glassware commonly called a “falsie.”

According to the Wall Street Journal,

    Two of the world’s biggest glassware makers, Libbey and Cardinal International, say orders of smaller beer glasses have risen over the past year. Restaurateurs “want more of a perceived value,” says Mike Schuster, Libbey’s marketing manager for glassware in the U.S. Glasses with a thicker bottom or a thicker shaft help create the perception. “You can increase the thickness of the bottom part but still retain the overall profile,” he says.

Even if they’re lucky enough to get a full pint glass, customers around the country are complaining that bartenders are increasingly putting less than 16 ounces of beer in a pint glass, filling up the extra space with foam. The Journal notes,

    Evidence of short-pouring is hard to nail down, but there are signs the practice is common. Romano’s Macaroni Grill, a national chain, uses the thick-bottomed 14 ouncers in at least some of its locations; a Romano’s bartender in Portland, Ore., volunteered the nickname “falsies.” (A corporate spokesman for Romano’s declined to comment.)

But is two ounces really that big a difference? Archie Gleason, director of marketing for Hooters — which has been noted as serving draft beer in 14-ounce glasses at franchised locations in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee — claims “We can get 20 more beers out of a keg that way”. With the prices of kegs of beer going up at a nauseating pace, 20 extra beers per keg must go a long way.

Many beer advocates are discussing developing stickers to adhere to the windows of bars and restaurants where pints live up to the name. And Oregon legislator Brian Clem is going so far as to take up the issue for the state’s 2009 budget, hoping to fund monitoring of beer portions by the state’s agriculture department.

So, what can you do if you feel you’ve been shortchanged on your pint? The Journal article concludes you,

    Can ask for a “top-off” after the foam on the profit pour settles. That’s what George Collentine did when he was served a beer with almost two inches of foam at an Italian restaurant this month. “I just waited,” says the 38-year-old chemical-company manager from Danbury, Conn. The bartender gave it to him.

[nacho]

Oh-ho!

InBev to buy Anheuser-Busch for $52B

 

ST. LOUIS, Missouri (AP) -- Belgian brewer InBev has announced it will buy its U.S. rival Anheuser-Busch for $52 billion to create the world's largest brewer.

The acquisition means control over America's largest brewer, the No. 2 worldwide, moves overseas. Based in St. Louis, Missouri, Anheuser-Busch has more than 48 percent of American market share with brands that include Bud Light.

InBev confirmed the details of the purchase of Anheuser-Busch early Monday. It first bid for Anheuser-Busch on June 11.

InBev is the world's second largest beer maker, with brands that include Stella Artois and Becks.

The deal must be approved by shareholders and European and U.S. antitrust regulators. The merger will produce the fourth-largest consumer product company worldwide. iReport.com: What do you think of the sale

Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc. did not return messages seeking comment Sunday evening.

The Wall Street Journal said the deal was for $70 a share, a $5 increase over the offer Anheuser-Busch rejected in June.

It wasn't immediately clear how long approval might take from regulators and shareholders. Several Missouri politicians have expressed concerns about the merger -- especially how it would affect the approximate 6,000 people employed by Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis.

InBev has said it plans to use St. Louis as its North American headquarters, and that it will keep open all 12 of Anheuser-Busch's North American breweries. VideoWatch InBev CEO Carlos Brito discuss what the sale means »

InBev SA announced its intent to purchase Anheuser-Busch on June 11. The Anheuser-Busch board initially voted against the merger, calling the initial $65 per share offer too low.

That prompted much squabbling between the companies over the past few weeks. InBev filed a motion seeking the removal of all 13 Anheuser-Busch board members; Anheuser-Busch filed suit calling the InBev effort an "illegal scheme" that threatened to defraud Anheuser-Busch shareholders. Among other things, the suit noted that InBev failed to disclose it operates a brewery in Cuba.

So it was with some surprise when reports surfaced on Friday that the two companies were sitting down for merger talks, reportedly after InBev upped its offer by $5 to $70 per share.

The merger, if completed, will bring to an end to one of the most iconic names in U.S. business and a name synonymous with St. Louis. From college buildings to offices to the stadium where the Cardinals play, the Busch name is virtually everywhere in the Gateway City.

Eberhard Anheuser acquired the Bavarian brewery in 1860 and renamed it E. Anheuser & Co. His son-in-law, Adolphus Busch, joined the company in 1864 and it was eventually renamed Anheuser-Busch.

The company survived Prohibition by selling products ranging from ice cream to root beer.

In addition to opposition from politicians and civic leaders, at least two Web sites sprung up opposing the merger. SaveBudweiser.com claims to have more than 60,000 signatures from merger opponents. SaveAB.com hosted a recent anti-merger rally that drew hundreds to downtown St. Louis.

InBev has not said if layoffs will occur as a result of the merger. But some cutbacks seem likely.

Even without the merger, Anheuser-Busch said last month it planned to cut pension and health benefits for salaried employees as part of an effort to slash $1 billion in costs by the end of 2010. The plan called for offering early retirement to 1,300 salaried workers 55 and older.

The cost-cutting effort -- dubbed "Blue Ocean" by the company -- was part of a strategy to fend off the merger.

The beer industry has been consolidating in recent years amid rising costs for transportation fuel and key ingredients.

[Reginald McGraw]

Is it just me, or are pensions killing all old American businesses?

[nacho]

And over-extension.

[fajwat]

pensions aren't killing them.

they had pension obligations

which they then underfunded, leveraged, borrowed against, and played various accounting games with.

at that point "Hey, it's broken!" and they either get their pension bailed out by PBGC or get a judge to change their contractual obligations.

corporate greed just found a weak spot in their pensions for them to slush funds around and overextend themselves.

the huge stock market bubble helped a lot of shady accounting: "look, with the market up 200%, we only need to fund 25% of the pension!" was a legal policy.  After the crash... they'd been invested 25% of what they needed, into the riskiest, most devalued securities.

(I worked briefly for PBGC.)

[Reginald McGraw]

That's a good point.  Is that what happened with Social Security too?  Or is that all people living too long.

[fajwat]

I think pensions are simpler and less examined by the public eye than social security is.

[RottingCorpse]

I wish they would have done this study while I was in college. Then I would have had an excuse.

"I can't believe you fucked her!"

"Hey man, that last Jager bomb got science working against me."

People Really Do Look Better When You Drink

For the first time, scientists have proven that "beer goggles" are real - other people really do look more attractive to us if we have been drinking.

Surprisingly, the beer goggles effect was not limited to just the opposite sex among the ostensibly straight volunteers recruited for the study - they also rated people from their own sex as more attractive.

Scientists in England gave 84 heterosexual college students chilled lime-flavored drinks that were either non-alcoholic or given a dose of vodka equivalent in alcohol to a large glass of wine or a pint-and-a-half of beer.

After 15 minutes, the volunteers were shown photos of 40 other college students from both sexes. Both men and women who drank booze found these faces more attractive, "a roughly 10 percent increase in ratings of attractiveness," said researcher Marcus Munafo, an experimental psychologist at the University of Bristol in England.

The researchers also asked volunteers to rate their mood, "and there were no differences on those measures in the alcohol group compared to the no-alcohol group," Munafo added. "This suggests that the effect we observed wasn't due to a general change in mood."

It did not escape Munafo that the results are rather obvious.

"Everyone knows about beer goggles," Munafo said. "But some of our results suggest that there's more going on than we might have thought."

The discovery that the effect is not specific to the opposite sex was surprising. One possibility is that alcohol generally makes us see things as more attractive, but when this occurs in social situations, such as at a bar, "this might become targeted at opposite-sex faces," Munafo said. By repeating the experiment with video clips shot at bars, the scientists hope to recreate those social cues and see what happens.

"The main question is whether these effects are specific to faces, or whether we would rate anything as more attractive after a drink," Munafo said.

Future research could expose people who have been drinking to landscapes or the faces of puppies and other animals, "to see if alcohol has a more general effect on perceiving beauty in the environment."

Low dose

"It's also surprising to see this effect is happening at lower doses than you might think," Munafo said. "We're trying to build up a more complete picture of what happens when people go out for a drink, and we're interested in certain behaviors that are more common after drinking, such as unsafe sex, or violence. If this effect is happening at lower doses than expected, it might be helpful for people who are predisposed to such behaviors to anticipate those situations and prevent them."

The scientists would also want to vary the levels of alcohol that volunteers receive, "but there are practical and ethical constraints around how much alcohol we can give people in the lab!" Munafo told LiveScience.

Munafo and his colleagues detailed their findings online August 6 in the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism.

[fajwat]

It did not escape Munafo that the results are rather obvious.
.....

"The main question is whether these effects are specific to faces, or whether we would rate anything as more attractive after a drink," Munafo said.

Future research could expose people who have been drinking to landscapes or the faces of puppies and other animals, "to see if alcohol has a more general effect on perceiving beauty in the environment."

hahahahaha nice

[nacho]

NEWARK, Ohio —  An Ohio man has been charged with drunken driving after crashing his motorized bar stool, authorities said.

Police in Newark, 30 miles east of Columbus, said that when they responded to a report of a crash with injuries on March 4, they found a man who had wrecked a bar stool powered by a deconstructed lawn mower.

Kile Wygle, 28, was hospitalized for minor injuries. He was charged with operating a vehicle while intoxicated after he told an officer at the hospital that he had consumed 15 beers, police said. Wygle told police his motorized bar stool can go up to 38 mph.

Wygle has pleaded not guilty and has requested a jury trial.

[monkey!]

Does Fajwat live in Ohio?

[nacho]

Heh...

[Nubbins]

Holy shit... Newark is basically where I went to college.  It was right next to Granville which is where the school was... we spent a lot of time in Newark because it was only about 5 miles away and it had all of the restaurants, Wal-Marts, etc.