ɔimoɈɒ

I heard on the radio this morning that supermarkets are calling for new laws to prevent the sale of cut-price alcohol as a method of curbing the “booze epidemic”.

Personally I feel that demonising drink has the effect of increasing focus on it. Making it more expensive will just mean that people will spend more of their hard-earned in order to get to the same drunken stupor.

The point of 24 hour opening for bars was to prevent the binge drinking where people buy 5 pints and a half dozen shots at last orders and then attempt to neck them all in the last half-hour before they get thrown out into the street.

If there’s no “time please, gentlemen” moment, then no-one should need to binge drink like that. It’s not going to happen overnight as we have decades of “get a last one in” culture to rid ourselves of. It’s going to be a generational change.

My first encounter with alcohol was on a school trip when I was eleven (it was 1983). One of the other kids, whom I shared a room with, had stolen a bottle of wine from his parents and hidden it in his luggage. Even at that early age, Damien and James (my two room-mates) were drinking illicitly. I didn’t drink it.

When I was at University, one of my friends complained that his ulcer was playing up – an ulcer caused by excessive alcohol consumption. Starting a night meant guzzling a few pints bought cheap from the off license and then heading out to a bar to get plastered. Being a non-drinker in a group of drinking friends has good points and bad points. Everyone gets home safe but you also have to put up with some people who are arseholes when they drink (but otherwise okay to know).

Her Indoors has expressed regret that I’m not a drinker. I think she’s embarrassed by it. The assumption seems to be that if you’re my age and you don’t drink then you must have had a “problem” with it when you were younger. Oddly it seems more socially acceptable than just being a non-drinker.

I don’t want to drink – though I do feel like I miss out somewhat. Not in the experience of being drunk, but in the cornucopia of different tastes and in the appreciation of “fine” beverages. I don’t really have the nose for wine though so I’m unlikely to become a connoisseur even if I did start drinking.

I feel pressure at the moment. More than I ever did as a teen.

John Gruber writes:

Given that Apple still charges a $125 premium for black MacBooks, it’s hard to take seriously any argument that people aren’t willing to pay for style. The Air’s technical deficiencies are irrelevant to a large swath of users, and its aesthetic appeal is undeniable.

As is the way with computers, the car comparison is made. The MacBook Air being a sporty coupé or a modern Mini. Not a lot of room inside and not the best choice for everything but then not everyone needs 5 seats and a cavernous boot/trunk. The Macbook Air does make some performance compromises but it’s got the same dual-core CPU as in my “POWER” Desktop at the day job. Sure, the disk will be slower but there’s no way the performance could be worse considering the extra “POWER” in that machine.

People never learn that numbers are not enough. Her indoors opines that my car wasn’t “fast”. That car, and the current one, can both exceed 70 mph which is the fastest you’re permitted to drive in this country. Some people want PCs for the cavernous cases you can get so they can install dozens of cards and drives. Most, on the other hand, don’t install anything like that. It just sits empty.

I’ve broken with the “lust” of computers. My laptop (a current generation 17″ MacBook Pro) is a desktop replacement. It has compromises but then everything has compromises. It doesn’t do a lot of work these days due to it being a communications machine rather than a processing machine. My needs have changed.

The MacBook Air appeals to me but it falls short on some specifications I require. I use FireWire for one thing. And that, along with the need for an actual graphics card, makes all the difference to me.

But it’d be perfect for Her Indoors.

I sigh a lot. It’s not because I’m sad or annoyed, but because I don’t breathe properly. If I’m concentrating on something, I forget to breathe. No bad thing.

Robert Scoble highlights Linda Stone’s work.

She noticed that most people stop breathing when doing email. She explained to me today that that behavior is fascinating her and that she’s theorizing that it causes stress, among other things.

She suggested a few things to try.

1. Change your posture. She said that people who compute while standing up breath more often.
2. Get exercise. She said that those who exercise seem to breath better in stressful situations.
3. Be aware and check in with yourself to see if you’re breathing normally. She said there are some devices coming soon where you can play a game with yourself to keep your breathing up to a normal rate.

She is now writing for the Huffington Post and in her post about email apnea rambled out a bunch of bad things that can happen to you due to not breathing well.

Okay. Seems it is bad. Oops.

I’m not sure I agree that it’s a stress response. Seems to me more likely to be a focus response. Of course, that takes some of the “auto” out of autonomic. We control our breathing of course, though when we lose consciousness there’s a system that takes over. I’m wondering that with some sort of self-training, a pavlovian response to a metronome maybe, we might be able to beat this. Are there seats which offer better posture for this? Does music play a part? Does the ‘business casual’ dress make a difference? Is my belt too tight? Collar too stiff?

It’s true though, even though I was trying, I held my breath for most of this blog post.