[Leica] Belgian Ale test

[mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner)]

> Mark,
> 
> I would guess that number closer to 10,000. A myriad, in fact.  And yours 
> is
> a powerful argument. Nobody's allowed, really, to refute it, to reject the
> morality of your view; and you could even strengthen it by mentioning
> alcohol's largest group of victims, the offspring. Yet one can't help 
> notice
> your position's Calvinistic failure to recognize the human dilemma. You
> assume people don't want to die, or oughtn't want to, but nothing in our
> experience suggests this is true for everyone. A good number of people 
> chase
> death their whole lives (see Gene Smith bio for one vivid example) and it 
> is
> testimony to God's grace or biology's rigors or the gift of ambivalence -- 
> *
> something* -- that so many manage not to die sooner than they might. I 
> lived
> in the same neighborhood in NYC for 35 years and there were homeless 
> addicts
> and alcoholics with HIV and hepatitis and TB and open sores who still took
> ten years,  or more, to die.  It was a continuing miracle to see them and
> talk to them on the street almost every day.
> 
> When animals (vegetarian ones anyway) discover a plant that causes them to
> become intoxicated in some way, it's said they go back to it regularly. 
> Even
> they, apparently, seek out some relief from the relentless g.d. obligation
> of being themselves.
> 
> Always interesting to me that Muslims oppose alcohol, while the other 
> desert
> religions do not: the Jews celebrate wine and on the Christian side, the
> Evangelists all agree, Jesus' first miracle was making more wine (at his
> mother's behest, no less) so people could *keep *drinking at a friend's
> wedding.  I.e., the guests were already a day-and-a-half-drunk; the crisis
> lay in the possibilty they wouldn't be able to drink even more.  So, as 
> they
> like to say on TV in other time zones: Thank you Jesus.
> 
> V
> 
> PS You can have last word; I promise not to keep this going beyond that....

No this is a good last one I'm not going to try to top it or add
significantly to this nice piece of writing.
And the first time I ever had Calvinism foisted in my general direction. Had
a hell of a time looking that one up and figurering out what you might have
had in mind. But I'm ok with it now in the general gist areas.
The wiki people never really tell you what is going on on that guy.
I had to finally look it up in dictionaries.

[Rabs]
Mark William Rabiner