Behind all the nerd billionaires and trendy restaurants in today's San Francisco, there is another city, where the most interesting people aren't wearing hoodies — they're wearing spike heels, glitter catsuits and fantastic hair.
We've invited Peaches Christ, Queen of San Francisco Drag Queens, to play a game called "Fuggedaboutit!" Three questions for a drag queen about Queens — that borough of New York City destined to be the next hipster capital now that Brooklyn is old news.
While testing whether a dash of yeast could keep you from getting drunk, we discovered that it's pretty entertaining — and revealing — to track your blood alcohol while drinking.
Using a Breathalyzer, we watched the alcohol in our bodies soar as we drank two beers on empty stomachs. And we noticed there's a place on the curve — about 0.04 or 0.05 BAC — when the buzz is the sweetest.
The quantified self movement has turned monitoring steps, sleep and other activities with technology into a self-improvement pastime. Could the next frontier be alcohol consumption?
It turns out that the breathalyzer industry has been trying to turn us into quantified drinkers for years. And new products on the market are making blood alcohol monitoring even easier by linking it to your smartphone.
One company, BACTrack, has just released a keychain breathalyzer about the size of a lighter for $50.
BACTrack claims its newest product, the Vio, will be a "game changer" for people who want to drink more responsibly. Technology like this, which can help people find out if they're around or over 0.08 BAC, the limit for driving, might even help make a dent in drunk driving rates and the 10,000 related deaths every year, the company's president and CEO Keith Nothacker tells us.
"Previously there was a stigma with alcohol testing, and we've been fighting that stigma," says Nothacker, who started the company in 2001 as a college senior, and is now based in San Francisco. "We want people to talk about their BAC and not be embarrassed."
What Nothacker envisions is that people will use the Vio to beat back peers pressuring them to have another drink or drive under the influence. The BACTrack app that goes with the Vio takes a reading of you BAC after you blow into the device. But it also allows you to text your friends your BAC. "So someone can say, 'I am two drinks in, I'm not meeting you there, here's my BAC,' " Nothacker says.
Other companies have also begun marketing smartphone breathalyzers to quantified self enthusiasts. For example, there's the Breathometer, a device that plugs into the audio jack of the smartphone and connects with an app. It's also about $50.
Nothacker might be right that more breathalyzers in the hands of consumers — rather than just law enforcement — could help bring down consumption of alcohol. But the reading you get will be, at best, a ballpark figure of your actual BAC.
None of the smartphone breathalyzers are as precise or accurate as what the police will use to test your BAC if they pull you over under suspicion of intoxication. According to Nothacker, those devices can compensate for more variables, such as altitude.
But one interesting feature of both the Vio and the Breathometer tells you how long it will take to reach 0.0 BAC from wherever you are over 0. "So if you're drinking late, you'll see that you won't sober up until the next day in a lot of cases," Nothacker says.
But these companies are clear in their marketing materials about one thing: Don't use this tool to decide whether you should "operate a motor vehicle or equipment." And it's never safe to drink any amount of alcohol and drive, partly because there's a huge variation in how alcohol impairs individuals, even at very low BAC.
So if these breathalyzers can't help you decide definitively if you're too drunk to drive, why would you use it?
One public health researcher, who's familiar with the technology, says he thinks these new tools could help people make better decisions.
"The keychain breathalyzer allows people to find out how much they've had to drink objectively. And they can get a pretty good sense of whether it's a good idea to drive," Michael McDonell, an associate professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington, tells The Salt. "In study after study, we see that just objectively tracking your use of [a substance] will reduce your use."
And while a super accurate breathalyzer is essential if you're using it to decide whether to send someone to jail, knowing your BAC is 0.041 versus 0.047 is less important for a personal tool, says McDonell.
"If the outcome is to help a person stop using or reduce their use of alcohol, accuracy is less important," he says. "And those expensive devices are never going to get out there to everybody."
McDonell is planning to use the Vio in a study of incentive-based alcohol addiction treatment. He'll give patients the device. They'll measure their BAC and then send it to him through the app. If they blow a zero, they get a reward of some kind.
"It should allow us to deliver alcohol treatment in people's home, without having them come into the clinic. And that's big because we know most people don't come in," he says. It's too far or too time-consuming or they fear the stigma of being there, he says.
Our anecdotal playtime with the the Vio certainly made us more aware of the degree of our intoxication. Soon, we were able to more accurately guess our BAC, which the Vio asks you do to before every measurement.
We also became more aware of just how much the amount of food in your stomach influences the rate at which you absorb alcohol — the more food you eat, and the slower you drink while eating, the slower your BAC will rise. Check out the graphs from our yeast experiment: The variation between three people of about the same age and weight is pretty significant.
But these tools are far from perfect. It turns out that it's a bit awkward to operate both a breathalyzer and a smartphone app in a noisy bar with drunk people around you. And if you're lending the tool to a friend who's never used it before, it can be hard to tell if they're blowing hard enough into the device – the likely cause of several faulty readings of 0.0 one of our friends got with the Vio.
The Vio is also a bit fussy. We got a lot of error messages. And the company recommends you use it at least once a month to keep it moist and in working order. The texting feature is also a bit clunky, and there's some mixed messages with the marketing of the device. If BACTrack is trying to discourage people from going overboard with alcohol, why encourage them to post pictures of their drunk selves on the internet through the app?
And while BACTrack says to wait at least 20 minutes after eating, drinking or smoking before blowing into the device, that can be inconvenient if you're already intoxicated and need a quick reading. And Nothacker notes it can take up to an hour for alcohol to be absorbed, so your BAC could continue to rise for 40 minutes after a reading.
All in all, though, a keychain breathalyzer a handy tool to have around. And we can easily imagine a future where people sign their texts and emails with their BAC: "This email was composed at BAC .06."
Maybe we should even try that here at The Salt: Over and out, with a BAC of 0.0.
Two items that are essential to most Indian households are a bucket and a pitcher. They are to Indians what showers are to Americans, an integral part of the daily ritual of bathing. In a country where you can't count on running water, the vast majority of people bathe using a bucket of water, and a plastic pitcher to pour the water over your head and body.
Like every other Indian I know, I grew up with bucket bathing. But by the time I was 10, indoor showers had started to become more common in bathrooms as did a regular water supply, at least in urban India.
For my younger brother and me, showers were the cool, new way to bathe. It made time in the bathroom much more fun than the bucket bathing ways of the old India. Much to my mother's annoyance, we stayed in the bathroom longer, wasting time and water, as she would put it. As a result, she spent her time yelling at whoever was in the bathroom to hurry up and get out.
When I moved to the United States in my twenties, I was glad to bid goodbye to bucket bathing. I was thrilled to have a hot and cold water supply any time of the day, any time of the year, with no fear of the water running out.
Long hot showers early in the morning quickly became a necessary ritual. Over the 11 years that I spent in the U.S., I conveniently forgot what bucket bathing was like. That is, until this summer, when I was forced to return to that old practice in order to survive the scorching heat of New Delhi.
You see, houses in New Delhi still don't have a 24-hour water supply. The city supplies water once or twice a day, and homeowners store that water in an overhead tank.
But as summer progresses and temperatures rise to 90, then 100, then 110 and beyond, this stored water in the tank heats up. So does the water in the metal pipes that deliver it to your bathroom. The only shower you can have in this brutal weather is a hot shower, or more accurately, a boiling hot shower.
When I first complained about this to a friend, she suggested storing water in buckets overnight to cool it down and using it to bathe the next morning. "That's what I've been doing," she said. "It's the only way to survive the summer."
I was horrified. How could I bathe with just a bucket or two of water? It just didn't seem enough. But then my inner voice spoke up, scolding me for being so bratty. I am an environmental journalist. Shouldn't I be in favor of an option that uses less water — especially since millions of Indians still don't have a regular water supply or even a bathroom. Besides, my friends and parents still bucket bathe, despite having showers, either out of habit or because of the unreliability of the water supply. The voice yelled at me. If they can do it, why couldn't I?
Soon, I had no choice but to try, simply because the water coming out of the faucet was scalding. It didn't matter whether it was seven in the morning or 11 at night. The water was always too hot for a shower.
My first few bucket baths this summer were awkward. I was reluctantly relearning to do something I'd done regularly as a child. But soon, the water pouring down my head and body began to feel comforting. The water was indeed cold and refreshing, a welcome if momentary break from the unbearable heat.
Within a couple of weeks, I'd not only become comfortable with my bucket bathing ritual, I'd even begun to enjoy it.
There is something about pouring pitchers of cold water on yourself that is better than the drizzle of a cold shower. Each pitcherful feels like a sheet of water hitting you at once. It's a bit like standing under a water fall, albeit a very small one. You're startled at first, but the cold water racing down your head and body cools you instantly, releasing you from the stupor of the Delhi summer. And because there is a limited amount of water, I now appreciate every drop in a way that I never appreciated water when I used the shower.
So, for now I've taken to bucket bathing. Although I can't promise I'll stick to it when winter comes around. It's possible that my need to stay warm will make me temporarily abandon my water-saving ways to return to the wasteful practice of long, hot showers.
The Netherlands and Australia — countries that lost large numbers of citizens in last week's downing of Flight MH17 — are planning to send police to eastern Ukraine to help secure the debris field there.
NPR's Corey Flintoff, reporting from the site of the downed Malaysian airliner in Donetsk, says Australian premier Tony Abbott is close to a deal that would allow dozens of police to guard the wreckage site. Corey says, and the Netherlands, which lost 193 of its citizens on MH17, is also negotiating to send unarmed police to the approximately 20-square mile site.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said Thursday that he would send 40 unarmed military police to eastern Ukraine "to investigated the crash and seek the remaining victims," the BBC says.
Abbott ordered a further 100 Australian Federal Police to the wreckage site, where 37 Australians in last Wednesday's shoot-down of the plane by a surface-to-air missile. Some 90 AFP were sent earlier, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.
The newspaper reports:
"The group of 100 will be pre-deployed to the Netherlands and Mr Abbott said a small number of ADF (Australian Defence Force) members would travel with the group.
"Mr Abbott said Australia was close to finalising an agreement with Ukraine for the deployment of police to assist in the investigation around MH-17 and to secure the crash site.
"He stressed that the Australian deployment had 'one purpose and one purpose only' which was to 'bring our people home'.
"Mr Abbott said Australia had no desire to get involved in European politics.
"'All we want to do is claim our dead and to bring them back."'