"You see, I have difficulty imagining a real scientist daring to waste funding trying to answer a question that anyone who has ever imbibed alcohol, and anyone who has not, could answer. Here, watch:

  Why are drunk people aggressive, stupid, and incapable of differentiating between accidental eye contact and a proposal of marriage? Because they are drunk!"

the study was looking at the longterm effects of drinking, not how people act while drunk " Excessive alcohol consumption irreversibly damages the temporal lobes and, as a result, alcoholics are left with 'a wide array of behavioural problems, including disinhibition and disregard for social norms', said experts in California."

Scienctists these days specialise in thousands of different fields, stephen hawking has proved and expanded upon theories of relativity, thermodynamics and quantum mechanics. The practical applications of thermodynamics to pick one i am more familiar with, are vast and are even present in making your cars more energy efficient.

And as avogadro said, the study is longterm and looks at effects of alcohol abuse on the specific sections of the brain controlling things like inhibitions, which is probably of more importance the you or i realise.

One last thing is that electricity and cars were not invented at the snap of your fingers, they take decades to both invent and understand enough to be able to apply.

As for Deci, you are completely and entirely wrong.

The majority of science always has been about blue sky thinking, right from the word go. Do you think Pythagoras really cared about the applications of his theorem? If he cared about practicality, why would he have famously spent so long worry about irrational numbers? It just so happened that one of his completely theoretical jaunts of fancy managed to yield an incredibly useful property of a triangle. As another example, Michael Faraday is an incredibly famous physicist and a pioneer of electromagnetism. The then British Prime Minister William Gladstone asked him "What is the purpose of electricity" to which Faraday replied "well sir, one day you may be able to put a tax on it". i.e. nobody knew what the applications of electricity were when it was first investigated. Yet it is one of the things you claim that scientists used to do that was useful.

"Excessive alcohol consumption irreversibly damages the temporal lobes"

That seems pretty huge to me.

Morbo the Annihilator

To a lighter degree i have to agree with Deci...

I'm actually suprised though -- that global warming wasn't somehow thrown into the mix.

i dont understand how u got from one to the other here?

they are when drunks beat up Al Gore

> Simon wrote:
> "Excessive alcohol consumption irreversibly damages the temporal lobes"
That seems pretty huge to me. <

You did not know this already? Did anyone else on this forum, other than me, already know that alcohol irreversibly damages your brain?

"...but it is how that is of interest i belive."

Well, first you drink a pint of Dutch Lager...

Temporal lobes.

How is it ridiculous? Alcohol = Magical liquid that erases bad memories e.g. how you came to be in bed with the fat goth.

My guess: Something to do with alcohol being a deadly poison? I think that's why it ruins the liver.

Oh, and the garbage-flies thing was actually "rotting meat spawns maggots"... way back when they didn't know that flies lay eggs, apparently.

> Simon wrote:
> "My guess: Something to do with alcohol being a deadly poison? I think that's why it ruins the liver."
Yes, but it still doesn't tell me much. The best a doctor can do with that information is tell a patient to stop drinking alcohol.<

Yeah... and why are you asking me, I'm not a doctor?
All I need to know is that alcohol makes you stupid, it has been doing that to me since I was 16, and "experts" have just discovered this? [Jump off a bridge]! Experts my arse.

I don''t mean to be rude, but this whole thing just reaks of stupid. I don't know how, and I don't need to know, because I don't drink now

>The body is just a bunch of chemicals reacting. If I look at two temporal lobes, one is normal and one is smaller, and I hypothesize that the difference is caused by alcohol, then alcohol must interfere with the normal chemical/protein balance. Which protein(s) and which chemical(s)? In what concentrations? Fixing these imbalances is very important in medicine.<

Or you could simply be looking at the brain of someone who is not a practised liar: Pathalogical liars have a lot more white matter than "normal" folks.

>Know the details can allow the drug discovery process and a doctor can then prescribe Fokkerine to a patient to prevent the formation of protein A, which prevents the formation of protein B, .....which prevent the formation of protein ZZ, which keeps alkaloid Conficker in low enough concentrations so that it slows the destruction of your temporal lobe cells.<

Sure... or the piss-head could grow a big boy spine and learn how to make it through the day without getting pissed?

>"way back when they didn't know that flies lay eggs, apparently."
One way we prevent flies from spreading is by putting our perishables in plastic bags and tying it up so flies can't get in to lay those eggs.<

I just eat them first, saves money.

It not only damages your brain but also other organs in your body.
Alcohol is poison to your body, your body has trouble getting that stuff out of your system

Poison is bad

Ofcourse many people act like it doesn't care them because they wanna be part of the ''i dont care about alcohol, it makes me happy Yippiee!'' fan club
They wanna show others around them that they are tough and drinking alcohol makes you look ''cool''

I've been drunk once, it didn't felt nice, i didn't feel happy either, i felt weak. and if something we're to happen now i could not help myself or others.

Im not drinking any Alcohol anymore, for the reasons that its bad for the sport im doing, most alcohol drinks i dont like, it cost alot of money and it makes me feel weak and the knowledge that it is poison to my body.
I like to stay in controle.