William Koch goes after counterfeit wines

Dairy farmers vs. the Constitution

Short timeline of a poorly administrated email list

NYT’s selective support of minority power in the Senate

Smoking still popular among culinary workers

Multnomah County wants to raise tobacco taxes

Hipster puppies

Old tobacco smoke does more than simply make a room smell stale — it can leave cancer-causing toxins behind, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.

They found cancer-causing agents called tobacco-specific nitrosamines stick to a variety of surfaces, where they can get into dust or be picked up on the fingers. Children and infants are the most likely to pick them up, the team at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California reported.

“These findings raise concerns about exposures to the tobacco smoke residue that has been recently dubbed ‘third-hand smoke’,” the researchers wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, available here.

Of course there are policy implications:

James Pankow, who also worked on the study, said it may raise questions about the safety of electronic cigarettes, or “e-cigarettes.” which produce a nicotine vapor but not smoke.

The researchers said regulators who have cracked down on second-hand smoke with smoking bans may decide to consider policies on third-hand smoke.

That nicotine works on surfaces in this way is interesting from an abstract, scientific point of view. What the article fails to mention is that there is essentially no evidence that anyone, anywhere, has ever suffered from exposure to so-called “thirdhand smoke.” The reason these carcinogens are so deadly to cigarette smokers is that smokers inhale them deeply through their mouths directly into sensitive lung tissues dozens of times per day. Exposure from surfaces or from dust inhalation through the nose is going to be far less substantial.

Nonetheless, you probably shouldn’t wrap your infant in smoky blankets. Fair enough. But spreading paranoia about thirdhand smoke has significant negative consequences. We’ve already seen employers discriminate against smokers using these fears as justification. And if this research is used to back legislation against e-cigarettes — devices that are unequivocally safer to smoke than actual tobacco — that will be a blow to public health.

Unfortunately journalists tend to be extremely credulous of any research that condemns tobacco and its related products. Last year The New York Times gave significant coverage to a thirdhand smoke study that consisted entirely of conducting a telephone poll of random people. Soon after Scientific American published an uncritical interview with the study’s author, Jonathan Winickoff, who said in an unmeasured words, “Smokers themselves are also contaminated…smokers actually emit toxins.”

If reporters are going to cover these sorts of stories, they owe it to readers to put the actual risks in proper perspective.

[Via Lene Johansen's Twitter feed.]

Update: Since writing this some debate has gone back and forth on Twitter among science writer Lene Johansen, Jeff Stier at the American Counsel on Science and Health, and Reuters health editor Ivan Oransky. Since Twitter isn’t the most conducive format for extended comments I thought I’d clarify here why I object to the article.

The problem is not that this is junk science or that it shouldn’t be covered. The problem is that people reading the article aren’t interested in the abstract question of how nicotine reacts with other chemicals on a household surface. What they want to know is whether tobacco residue presents a real health hazard to them and whether there are policy implications stemming from the research.

A layman reading about all the carcinogens mentioned in the article would conclude that the health hazard is real. Given the dosages involved this belief is likely false and is certainly unproven. As science journalism, the article fails to give readers the context they need to make sense of the research.

As for policy, the article itself notes that the research is bound up with political goals. The findings may be used to justify such measures as employment discrimination, bans on e-cigarettes, and further restrictions on smokers. This makes providing the proper context doubly important. There are plenty of reputable skeptics of these measures and at the very least the article could have quoted one.

By request, here’s the one recipe that was missing from my closing cocktail menu at Carlyle. (Yes, someone actually wrote in to request the recipe. I was surprised too!)

I came up with this drink for a tequila dinner hosted by Herradura a few weeks ago. They enjoyed a seven course tasting menu from our chef and along with it they requested cocktails made with each of the tequilas in their primary line: blanco, reposado, and anejo. A shot of each was paired with the cocktails, so as you can imagine it was a fun time for all. This was the reposado drink for the evening:

1.75 oz Herradura reposado tequila
.5 oz Cointreau
.5 oz lime juice
.5 oz lapsang souchong syrup

Shake over ice and serve on the rocks in a salt-rimmed glass.

Lapsang souchong is a delicious Chinese black tea dried over burning pine wood. This distinctive process gives it a strong smoky aroma that lends itself well to use in cocktails. To make the syrup, simply brew hot lapsang souchong and mix with an equal volume of sugar. This is the same syrup I use to make extra smoky Swedish punsch; here it stands by itself to lend an extra flavor element to the traditional Margarita.

In the few days this has been on our menu it’s been competing with our token vodka drink to be our best-seller, a useful reminder that simple twists on popular cocktails can be a great way to generate interest in a bar program.

WSJ on the state of molecular gastronomy

Europe’s alcohol belts

“There are no free refills on wine, beer, or cocktails, so let’s put to death forever these practices in coffee”

Discovering colors of dinosaurs

In defense of Elizabeth Gilbert

Tom Palmer’s credo

PDX wants to ban sales of big beers downtown

Gerard Alexander on liberal condescension

Most of the same arguments apply to Oregon. We’re better off than Virginia but our distribution could use a lot of work.

Rand Paul fights for a senate seat

Wishing for a Kindle monopoly

Experiencing the Web through controlled serendipity

Strange week for the nanny state

Not recommended: Five-figure cocktails

New espresso shop for Santa Monica

Bonus link: Stephen on how Rachael Ray gives beer cocktails a bad name. Yum-O!

Will Apple will kill Flash?

A single cell, 10 cm wide

New Labour’s banning years

UK may ban e-cigs

The next ban: Drive-throughs

The United States of vodka

More on the Carlyle closing

Nevertheless, on that fateful evening, an inspector from the New York City Department of Health cited Pegu Club, at 77 West Houston Street in SoHo, for serving the MarTEAni without telling the customer who ordered it that it contained raw egg. The notice said it was a serious infraction that required a court appearance.

Raw eggs are among the ingredients most fervently embraced by cocktail revivalists who have sought out new techniques and circled back to classic recipes. And the MarTEAni is a signature drink at a bar that is seen as a paragon of the new cocktailians.

Serving raw eggs in drinks is, thankfully, not illegal. You just have to tell customers that the drink contains them. A simple note on the menu serves as adequate warning. Unless a customer orders without looking at the menu:

The inspector reported that the customer who asked for the MarTEAni didn’t order it from the menu and that the bartender didn’t mention raw eggs were in it. But the bartender on the night of the inspection, Kenta Goto, said that no MarTEAnis were served while the inspector was present. The inspector who signed the violation sheet, Nathalie Louissaint, could not be reached for comment.

This puts a ridiculous burden on bartenders. How is one supposed to know if a customer has looked at the menu? If a regular comes in and orders the drink, must one warn him of the eggs every time in case a city inspector is watching? Rather than take these chances Pegu Club has taken the drink off the list, a loss to craft cocktail drinkers in the city.

As with many food dishes, raw eggs play an important role in giving cocktails texture. Sensitive buyers should beware and avoid egg drinks if they’re worried, just as they would avoid housemade mayonnaise or other products. For the rest of us a simple menu disclaimer should suffice.

If you’d like to try the drink in question, the recipe is here. Be sure to warn yourself about the raw egg before proceeding.

Photos from a French truffle hunt

The NHS takes on homeopathy

Paper linking autism to vaccines officially withdrawn

Emulating nature to make a new adhesive device

Eggonomics: Odds of double-yolked eggs

Fred Thompson on stabilizing Oregon’s revenue

How to be a terrible bartender