from an anonymous reader (remember, folks, don't submit with your real name...make something up that explains your question!) comes this fact-based question:

Dear Dredwerkz,

Got a question for you.....

Why is it that "beer before liquor" makes you sicker than "liquor before beer"?

Edward responds:

Well, the adage you refer to is an unproven myth that may or may not be correct. Some limited scientific evidence (remember, the alcohol manufacturers aren't really concerned with the effects of their products, just like the tobacco producers) has led some people to conclude that carbonated beverages ease the absorbtion of alcohol into the bloodstream. Check out factoid #119 at this site which offers a limited explanation. If carbonation helps mainline the alcohol present in the beer in your stomach, the theory goes, it stays to help increase the speed that the liquor is then absorbed. In reverse, the liquor has no such absorbtion altering powers. This is, of course, almost pure hearsay: a sort of pseudo-science caused by lack of real data. Decreasing the amount of time one's body can absorb alcohol also will increase the odds of alcohol poisoning.

Helena's thoughts:

Brad's opinion:

use a little common sense Anon, and think about every drunk person you have ever known. those that were sick the next day either deliberately ignored their limits, or simply lost track during the night. let's ignore the sadists, and concentrate on the problem of losing track. no matter what you start with, by the time you switch, you will already be drunk. so your ability to know your limit is heavily impaired. in this state, one type of beverage will take longer to consume, require increased trips to the bathroom, and generally fill you up so that drinking more is difficult. that liquid is beer. so those that go from liquor to beer will take longer to drink and generally consume less alcohol than the other way around. that's what it comes down to in the end - simply the amount rather than the type of alcohol. now you are in the clear...so stay sick!

Another day, another revelation of wrongdoing from the most egregious of Bush II's cabinet members: Harvey Pitt. In the latest episode, detailed in this post piece, Pitt concealed information from the commissioners of the SEC itself. Now, his own organization is investigating him. But the article reveals more than Harvey's own wrong doing, as it skewers his nominee for the oversight board, William Webster.

The concerns of some consumer groups and lawmakers go beyond Pitt's handling of the appointment, to Webster's handling of key responsibilities as head of U.S. Technologies' audit committee.

By its own account, in papers filed with the SEC, U.S. Technologies was repeatedly unable to file quarterly and annual reports on time. Its former auditor, BDO Seidman LLP, has alleged to the SEC that it told the company's audit committee about serious weaknesses in internal controls involving, among other things, accounting and the timely recording of transactions.

"The shocking revelation that Mr. Webster headed the audit committee of a public company . . . with accounting problems that he failed to fully investigate means that he must resign immediately," said Nancy M. Smith, former director of the SEC's Office of Investor Education and Assistance and director of RestoreTheTrust.com, an investor advocacy group.

Webster, who says he did nothing wrong, became involved with U.S. Technologies through a friendship with Gregory Earls, the company's chief executive and chairman.

That involvement included becoming a director of the company in 2000 and chairing its audit committee, which supervises outside auditors and reviews the company's financial reporting.

Webster said he left the board in July because Earls had let the officers' and directors' liability insurance lapse. "I'm not apologetic," he said. "We acted honorably. As far as I know, the records of the company were correct and there was no fraud."

Although U.S. Technologies originally made money by contracting prison inmates to work in the electronics and manufacturing industries, it refashioned itself during the technology boom into a holding company or "incubator" for dozens of technology firms. It was delisted from the OTC Bulletin Board in September of this year and is now insolvent.

Webster was granted stock options in the company but did not receive fees. He also invested in the company, though he would not say how much.

"My friends thought it was a great opportunity," Webster said, explaining why he joined the company.

Okay, let me get this straight: this is a company that made money by forcing prisoners to build computers. And they may have made poor ethical judgements. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to think that, perhaps, the other nominee favored by everyone outside of the accounting industry, a certain Mr. Biggs. Clearly, Bush needs to do as the Capitals have done and trade Chris Simon, er...Harvey Pitt to some other team. In other news, we're getting more advice questions but I haven't had time to throw them up on the site yet. They should be there before COB today.

Before I'm gone for the day, a quick note wishing everyone a Happy Halloween. That's right, it's time for candy, trick-or-treaters and my personal favorite, scary christian cartoons which warn against the evil day of the devil. Yeah, that must be why those crazy catholics invented the holiday in the first place. Some people see evil in everything around them. Others, like me, merely see evil in getting a big handful of mary-jane's instead of sour skittles. Or people who leave the lights on, but go to a movie on Halloween. That's evil. Almost as evil as the character I'm trying to dress up as to go to a party. We'll see if I acquire the necessary accessories. Until then...

These cursed gray skies are killing me. Luckily, I've managed to fend off the stupid vitamin-d dispair with a dose of fun last night. Unluckily, said fun included getting my overcoat super-smokey. For the record, though, it was well worth it. If i had to get my overcoat smoke-filled every night in exchange for more of last evening, I'd probably do it. Luckily, this morning revelations surfaced about Pitt's idiotic choice to head the accounting oversight board. Unluckily, I forgot my phone this morning. (But I remembered to bring the stupid holder! Bad Edward. Bad Edward.) We'll see if this afternoon can keep up. Maybe, it might even snow! (A little too much to hope for, I guess.)

Okay, I've learned that titles with the first letter capitalized are idiotic. We're talking newspaper headlines, so it has to be in small-caps. Like the end-result? I certainly do. In other news, i'd like to offer an interventionist's opinion of this critique that tom tomorrow offers. from the modern world piece:

And then there's North Korea, a brutal dictatorship with weapons of mass destruction. Not to mention our close friend and ally Egypt, where 63 year old Saad Ibrahim has just been sentenced to seven years hard labor, for the crime of promoting democracy by teaching Egyptians how to vote and monitor elections. And Pakistan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia--the list goes on and on. Don't you interventionists care about the suffering and oppressed peoples of those countries? Shouldn't we send in the troops, as soon as possible?

...

So why are we so focused on Iraq, when there are abuses and outrages and oppression all over the world? What sets Iraq apart, and necessitates a commitment of billions of dollars and untold lives?

Well, gosh, this isn't rocket science, is it?

Iraq has the world's second largest oil reserves, and U.S. oil companies are already salivating at the prospect of divvying them up.

I'm a hawkish democrat interventionist, and yes, damn it, we do need to promote democracy in places that don't contain the world's second largest oil reserves. Egpyt and Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Russia. Afghanistan. North Korea. The list is not infinite. There are a limited number of countries that need to change. Whatever doctrine that needs to be created can be created to deal with this. What's better, is that if we had a history of bosnia behind us, or if we had successfully intervened in rwanda, perhaps things might seem more justified now in Iraq. Presidents typically fight the battles they feel they can win. Before September 11th, the taliban was allowed to subjugate women, destroy religious idols and do as they pleased in the name of "stability". Post September 11th, Laura Bush started talking about the plight of afghan women. Come on. The danger in tom's statements is that it leads to a sort of moral isolation, an uber-relativism where everything outside our borders is too risky to take action on. This, in turn, means that only "strategic interests" occupy the mind of the president at national security briefings. Guess where this leads? That's right, to only invading countries with rich oil reserves. Instead, if we pushed the bushies to take on every evil-doer, we might run them into a wall.

It's the sort of place where Ralph Reed and the Hause of Saud get together and fight. Christian conservatives form a large part of Bush's base, and Karl Rove would have a fit if everyday people woke up, smelled the oil and decided that their president had put money ahead of morality. No one sees complicated issues in black and white better than Republicans. What better foil than to point out their own hypocrisy?

Just as this site has evolved significantly over the past several months, so too have its design goals and ambitions. What began simply now seems much more advanced, even though several features have yet to be implemented. Through it all, I've tried to keep the design changes to the look fairly minimal, although hopefully once i get the style pages working that will be up to the user. Along those lines, I've now removed the default style from suppressing uppercase letters in the main article section. Currently, both the default style (blue) and the red style will act normally. Only the white style (my personal favorite) will continue to make all articles appear in lowercase. Why the change? Why isn't the change obvious? Well, to take the second question first, I tend to write a great deal in all-lowercase. This is probably a neat inversion of the fact that when I write on paper, I write only in uppercase letters. (Print, not cursive, for those who care.) Regardless of the reason, writing articles in all lowercase letters also allows one to avoid many other stylistic conventions, resulting in a distinct tweaking of the language itself.

Unfortunately, I'd rather have these "tweaks" be applied through style sheets, not through the content itself. Instead of going back and re-editing all my work, I think I'll simply start writing it as it should be from now on, and coding my own style-sheets to display at as I would like it. In this manner, three months from now, when I'm sick of multi-case letters, I can stimply edit a stylesheet instead of beginning to type in all lowercase letters again. In addition to simple case, there are several other typographical oddities that I hope to correct over the next few weeks, from quoting defaults to ellipsis to simple paragraph formatting. Ideally, all of these will be worked on through stylesheets, not through actual content. I still haven't answered the first question, namely, why? The latest advice questioner was displeased with the state of her letter, describing it as "stylistic imperialism". Also, Helena's not a big fan of the all-lowercase environment. If anyone else has any opinions, feel free to share them. They'll help spur me to finish the style section ahead of time.

the site is now much more secure. i'm adding this through an ssl connection even as i type, yet the interface looks almost identical to the previous iteration. it just goes to show that i can get on the ball when something important is brought up. now if i could just fix those damn news pages. that and get the style creator working. we'll see...

for anyone who's read the phil dick short story, or seen the spielberg film (which manages to avoid the central tenet of the story, but still inspires nonetheless) you can appreciate the now complete advice question that opened up that section. we may not be pre-cogs, but there are subtle differences between the alternate timelines, most forcibly exaggerated by brad. so check it out and then submit your own. we're still working out the obvious defects in style, taste and design, so some more major formatting may be in order. i'm less of a fan of multiple paragraphs, and helena doesn't like the all lowercase type...we'll see what sort of compromise we work out. incidentally, as long as the volume of submisions remains low, we'll try to reply back to the sender once the reply has been posted. as with the decision to limit the submissions to e-mail, this will enable us to (once the submissions begin to climb) drop such a personal practice in favor of a "come to the site and see" approach in time. for now, though, i'll be e-mailing each sender asking them to check it out and give us some feedback to see if we can improve things slightly by tweaking our approach, etc.

finally, in the particular column itself, NiN asks: is this website secure? i'm a little baffled by the question, but if she's referring to the ability of people to hack in and change answers, I think that it's fairly secure. i haven't shown helena and brad how to use the secure entry page yet...but i will this evening. that way you can be sure that all ifnromation will be sent encrypted both to and from the website. of course, since all the information is going to be publically posted anyway, encryption is a little overkill, except to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks, which i'm not going to go into right now.

the advice pages are now up and running with our first question located here. brad still needs to chime in but that should be done shortly. i'm still tinkering with the format of the question and the response, but at least it's working now. the standard protocol is this: you, the faithful fans, e-mail the address shown on the advice webpage. Next, we take your e-mail and create an article, with all the advice that only the three of us can bring to the table. now, i've seen first-hand other advice pages that allow users to submit directly to the system and then have people comment on them. why the complicated e-mail routine? well, put simply, this way we minimize profane idiots who write questions that are statements, submit hateful/perverse questions and try to get the 'werkz to send traffic to their own website. we're not about that. instead, we're trying to provide a useful service to people who have real-life questions. if a questions turns out to be fake, and yet it managed to fool us, then it stands on its own: if i ask about the social implications of a certain situation and it turns out it's all a farce, the answers are still useful to others who might be in said situation. with that said, we're going to work to eliminate any questions that are obviously falsified. if you're the sort of person who likes fooling other people, you're welcome to have a shot at it.

you'll also notice that the standard author format isn't continued for the advice pages. i may take them off the "latest" section block if they become too numerous, but for now, since all three of us contribute to each response, i'm simply hiding the field from view. some people have requested that the latest box contain the section/subsection information as well...and i'm thinking about implementing this. right after i finish the news section, okay? (that monkey has been crawling on my back longer than gene autry's fabled baseball team's bad luck run!) finally, if you think that the opinions on the advice page are poor or don't solve your problem, head over to the always-fun frequently asked questions page to see why we gave you such lousy advice. everyone should take everything with a grain of salt, right? none of this is meant to be taken too seriously...

starting off the weekend after learning of wellstone's death, everything seemed slightly pessimistic. nevertheless, two parties, many miles and several friends (both old and new) later, i think things have started to look up again from dc to nyc and beyond. throw in brazil's new president and you've got all the earmarks of major changes going on. interestingly enough, the major problem with the FTAA (free trade for the americas) zone is that the US refuses to cut back on its own bloated subsidies. when will the bushies learn that in order to create change, you must lead by example? on issue after issue laudable ideals are mentioned (free trade for all the americas!) and then left behind as domestic political pressures mount. why bush feels that he can say one thing and do another yet poorer, more vulnerable presidents in other countries cannot, is beyond me. perhaps this will be a wakeup call. until then, though, i'll just keep up my busy social schedule as long as my body can handle it.

we just lost one of the most important figures in progressive politics: senator wellstone. the loss is staggering. words fail me. more later...

bob, in one of his better columns, lays to waste the press corps and captain sully in a few insightful graphs. you really have to read the whole piece to understand the true nature of the beast bob's up against.

along with corporate accounting shenanigans, we can't forget our own government, who managed to turn a record surplus into a record deficit in record time. remember when the surplus was going to pay down the national debt in order to free up money for other priorities? remember when alan greenspan said that if paid off the entire national debt we would be in trouble so a moderate tax cut wasn't bad? well, i don't think the entire national debt needs to be repaid. certainly, as long as gdp increases we can handle an increasing debt load, as long as we're growing faster than we're spending. but for god's sake, we spent $14 Billion on interest payments in September alone! (Check out the source here.) The sum of the current deficit, second largest since 1995, merely adds to the woes. Remember that originally, some were projecting a 5-7 trillion dollar surplus over ten years. That sum would have paid off the debt entirely, and allowed a whole bunch more spending room for priorities. Now, though, that dream has vanished.

one day i'll run a company. and when i do, i'm going to attempt to offer complete transparency from top to bottom. perhaps using gnu enterprise financials to do so. it has always bugged me that real, enterprise level software wasn't available on the free-software side, mainly because free software seems oriented around a single individual user model, much like gnu/linux. i'm sure that when i do, people will be angry that others can discover how much they are making, or that the new fridge down in marketing cost twice what it should have. yet it is only through complete transparency that graft and waste can be eliminated. if that means that josie's friends in HR don't get to hire her at an exorbitant salary, so be it. the good of the company comes first.

that's partly why this decision is so important. the sec, already the tool of industry thanks to head honcho harvey pitt, is now trying to gut the power of the enforcement mechanism designed to stop phony audits. this is a national issue, from denver, where the denver post uncovered this nuggest about sen. allard taking money from the industry before fighting reform, to nyc, where the wall street journal came out against pitt, to washington, where the post also editorialized against this political sleight of hand. it's not a newspaper editorial board issue only, though. this has real repurcussions, especially as the economy continues it's downward funkified slide. as much as i'd love to see the dems pick up tons of seats due to the failing economy, i don't want to be as poor as i was a year ago, or worse. we need good audits, and for that to happen, the sec needs teeth. you pull the teeth, you get more phony audits, you get more greed and corruption, you get a lousy economy. simple, isn't it? come on harv!