On Sat, Aug 21, 2004 at 03:42:32PM -0700, Warren Ockrassa wrote: > On Aug 21, 2004, at 3:20 PM, Erik Reuter wrote: > > >Alcohol doesn't "keep your body warm". It produces a feeling of > >warmth by enhancing blood flow near the skin's surface. But in > >reality, your body heat will then dissipate into the environment > >more quickly. To keep your body warm in a cold ambient, you need > >insulation between your body and the ambient. Such as a coat. > > > >Perhaps the alcohol clouded their minds and kept them from realizing > >this simple fact? > > Ah, but that wouldn't have been a "simple fact" to anyone born before > medical science had progressed past leeches and phrenology. :\
That's absurd. Of course it is a simple, timeless fact as long as humans have had coats and alcohol. Take two people, one given alcohol and put out in the cold, the other given a coat. The coatless one would feel warm for a little while, but as the hours pass the coatless one would begin to shiver uncontrollably and eventually succumb to hypothermia. The one with the coat would last much longer before succumbing. Simple. > Because alcohol *does* cause a sensation of warmth, it was associated > with being warm for centuries, and even today it's used for the > purpose of "warming up" Apparently by people whose minds are numbed, possibly from alcohol or hypothermia. > I'm still curious about the "immoral" aspect of giving booze to kids, > though (and I can't recall who said it was) Fool > I find it an interesting assertion, one that needs some support before > I can accept it as even being a point that can be argued. At least as > a blanket, all-inclusive and arbitrary declaration. How about cigarettes? Cocaine? LSD? Marijuana? > But then, that's *always* my problem when I come across the word > "immoral" (or "moral"), which is why I prefer to think in terms of > ethics. Morality, to me, suggests the presence of an all-powerful > superbeing dictating absolutes, which is something I'd be hard-put to > accept as even a rational conjecture. I've known a number of people who, speaking (thinking?) loosely, use the two words interchangeably. -- Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
