This is one of the weirder quotes of the day:

I like beer. I like the way it calms me, and I like the taste of it. I’m 38 and have been drinking around 10 beers a day for five years. I pace my drinking so that I am quite sober even with this amount of beer. I can carry on a conversation and feel quite with it. I wake up in the morning feeling fine — no headache. I put in a day of hard, physical work with no problem. My wife says I am headed for an early death. Am I?

Oddly, the health answers columnist in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune did not answer with that question about bears, woods and poo. I had a friend who got to this sort of point. I only knew it when he pulled out a beer as he was driving his truck to the municipal dump one Saturday morning when I was visiting. And while none the beer writers I have known have exactly mentioned having to manage the perils of free flowing ale, many have shared the story about being baked from the grind of beer launch after beer launch.

"Headed for an early death? Am I?" It's a good question to ask yourself from time to time if you list drinking alcohol some way or another on your resumé - as a hobby or even career. Does it also, as Dr. Ding diagnosed today, lead you to other risks? Sure, maybe it's just the risk of missing being fluent at Finnish as well as not being proficient at the banjo or, say, lawn billiards because you were vlogging your beer ticking notes daily for the last eight years. Beer is good but in a way it is not always great. It delay, defers, colours and even assumes on your behalf. It confuses a moment with 24/7. Like any pleasure it can seduce in small tricky ways. Or instead you can find yourself drinking ten beers every day. Or writing about how beer links all the most special moments in life.

There is nothing wrong with making these choices, coming to these sorts of places. But there may be something more right.