Drunkest City...

[Swiss Miss]

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...08-24-14-45-30

MILWAUKEE (AP) -- Milwaukee has been ranked by Forbes.com as "America's Drunkest City" on a list of 35 major metropolitan areas ranked for their drinking habits.

Forbes said Tuesday it used numbers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to rank cities in five areas: state laws, number of drinkers, number of heavy drinkers, number of binge drinkers and alcoholism.

Minneapolis-St. Paul was ranked second overall; followed by Columbus, Ohio; Boston; Austin, Texas; Chicago; Cleveland; Pittsburgh and then Philadelphia and Providence, R.I., in a tie for ninth.

Rick DeMeyer, 28, said Wednesday as he was celebrating his birthday at G-Daddy's BBC he could understand Milwaukee's ranking.

"I have had people stay with me from London and Chicago, and they can't get over how much we drink," he said. "I guess we do."

But officials at Visit Milwaukee, the area's convention and visitors bureau, contend that the city has come a long way in ridding itself of its beer-guzzling image.

Milwaukeeans have plenty of other ways to entertain themselves without drinking alcohol, said Dave Fantle, a spokesman for the group. He noted a new convention center and baseball park had been built and the Milwaukee Art Museum expanded in recent years.

"We've gone from Brew City to new city," he said.

I think it's awesome for Milwaukeeans to have a reputation cooler than cheese. It's like they one upped themselves when they didn't even have to. I'm kind of sad Orlando isn't on that list. I've worked hard to try and get us to the top! :( I hear it's really boring in Milwaukee though. I wouldn't go still.

[RadioactiveMan]

You can't do it alone, Swiss. It's a team effort. If the others aren't pulling their weight, you should start knocking heads.

[DansDarkSide]

Swiss I looked it up and you guys are on there.

#31 Orlando

Good job lol

[Sypher]

This list has to be wrong. There is no way New Orleans is only #24.

[DansDarkSide]

I quessing they went by residents of the city. Like 5/10 residents had a drink in the last so n so days.

[Swiss Miss]

Originally Posted by DansDarkSide

I quessing they went by residents of the city. Like 5/10 residents had a drink in the last so n so days.

According to the article, they took into consideration "numbers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to rank cities in five areas: state laws, number of drinkers, number of heavy drinkers, number of binge drinkers and alcoholism."

I'm happy that Orlando is on the list, but I expected us just so much higher... (no pun intended...)

[waltky]

No wonder drinkers so goofy...

Excess Drinking Shrinks the Brain
MONDAY, Oct. 13,`08 (HealthDay News) -- The more alcohol you drink, the more your brain shrinks, a new study has found.

"The take-home message is that, if you drink a lot, you're going to hurt your brain," said Rajesh Miranda, an associate professor of neuroscience and experimental therapeutics at the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine. "This is something we knew, but this is a huge study that quantifies that." "It's not surprising that alcohol would cause shrinkage of the brain. That kind of thing has been observed in animal models and smaller studies," Miranda added. "The surprising thing is that they [the study authors] showed that even low levels of drinking are not protective, as people had seen in other cases." The findings are published in the October issue of theArchives of Neurology.

Brain volume decreases naturally as people age, at a rate of about 1.9 percent per decade. At the same time, the brain acquires white matter lesions as it gets older. Both of these changes also accompany dementia and cognitive decline, according to background information in the study. Moderate levels of alcohol consumption have been linked with a decreased risk of cardiovascular disease, leading researchers to hypothesize that restrained tippling might also slow declines in brain volume. Previous studies have also found that drinking alcohol in moderation is associated with improved cognitive function and a decreased risk of Alzheimer's disease.

For the new study, led by Carol Ann Paul, of Wellesley College in Massachusetts, researchers conducted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and health exams on 1,839 adults (average age 60) participating in the Framingham Offspring Study between 1999 and 2001. None of the participants had evidence of clinical dementia or had suffered a stroke. The men and women were asked how much alcohol they drank each week, then were classified as abstainers, former drinkers, or low (one to seven drinks per week), moderate (eight to 14 drinks per week) or high consumers of alcohol (more than 14 drinks a week).

Most participants (almost 38 percent of men and more than 44 percent of women) fell into the "low-consumption" category. Men were more likely than women to report being moderate or heavy drinkers. Alcohol had no protective affect on the normal, age-related shrinkage in brain volume, the researchers found. To the contrary, the more a person drank, the more their brain volume diminished. This relationship was somewhat more pronounced in women, although women tended to be lighter drinkers. The gender difference could be explained by biological factors, namely that alcohol is absorbed faster in women and they tend to feel the effects of alcohol more than men, the researchers said.

Source

[waltky]

N'awlins got the highest crime rate...

New Orleans has highest U.S. city crime rate: report
Mon Nov 24, 2008 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New Orleans had the highest crime rate of any U.S. city last year, with 209 murders and more than 19,000 reported criminal incidents, CQ Press reported on Monday in an annual ranking.

Other high-crime cities, in declining order, were Camden, New Jersey; Detroit, Michigan; St. Louis, Missouri; and Oakland, California. New Orleans, where population declined dramatically after 2005's Hurricane Katrina, showed a jump in the murder rate, which rose from 162 in 2006 to 209 in 2007, the report found. CQ Press, which compiled the rankings from FBI crime statistics, said the most crime-free U.S. city in 2007 was Ramapo, New York, followed by Mission Viejo, California, which had the lowest ranking last year; Lake Forest, Chino Hills and Thousand Oaks, California; and Newton, Massachusetts.

The crime rate rankings were calculated using six crime categories: murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and motor vehicle theft. The categories have been used since 1999 to rate crime in all U.S. cities with at least 75,000 residents that reported crime data to the FBI, according to CQ Press. When looking just at the 33 biggest U.S. cities, with populations of 500,000 or more, Detroit, Michigan, had the highest crime rate and Honolulu, Hawaii, had the lowest.

New York City had the second-lowest big-city crime rate after Honolulu, and Seattle, Los Angeles and Fort Worth, Texas also made the top 10. Detroit, Michigan had the worst crime rate among big cities, according to the report, followed by Baltimore, Maryland; Memphis, Tennessee; Washington D.C. and Philadelphia. More information is available online at http:/www.cqpress.com/pages/citycrime2008. CQ Press is a division of SAGE, which publishes journals, books, and electronic media for academic, educational and professional markets.

New Orleans has highest U.S. city crime rate: report | U.S. | Reuters