The prohibition of alcohol was a mistake—a historic policy gaffe and a political fi asco. In the language of policy studies, it was a “suboptimal” policy option: a bad idea when compared with the more effective alternatives available. Novelist, historian, and social critic H. G. Wells famously lampooned “the crowning silliness of making prohibition a part of the Constitution of the United States” as the Eighteenth Amendment begot rampant corruption, bootlegging, and crime, eroded respect for law, and eliminated a valuable stream of government revenue by decimating an entire industry while miserably failing to achieve its purported aims of national sobriety, economic productivity, and communal moral salvation

Кл.слова:
сухий закон -- заборона

Open source resources are completely common within our society. Yet open source and free software remain a mystery. Science, public highways, city parks, language—these are at the core of any free society. Commerce gets built upon them. Culture flourishes through them. Yet the same ideas applied to software puzzle many people. Language can be free, and the results of science open to all, yet to many, software is, or should be, proprietary.

Кл.слова:
відкрите ПЗ -- вільне ПЗ

Spirits are all the rage today. Two-thirds of Americans drink, whether they enjoy higher priced call brands or more moderately priced favorites. From fine dining and piano bars to baseball games and backyard barbeques, drinks are part of every social occasion. In The Prohibition Hangover, Garrett Peck explores the often-contradictory social history of alcohol in America, from the end of Prohibition in 1933 to the twenty-first century. For Peck, Repeal left American society wondering whether alcohol was a consumer product or a controlled substance, an accepted staple of social culture or a danger to society. Today the legal drinking age, binge drinking, the neoprohibitionist movement led by Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the 2005 Supreme Court decision in Granholm v. Heald that rejected discriminatory curbs on wine sales, the health benefits of red wine, advertising, and other issues remain highly contested. Based on primary research, including hundreds of interviews with those on all sides--clergy, bar and restaurant owners, public health advocates, citizen crusaders, industry representatives, and more--as well as secondary sources, The Prohibition Hangover provides a panoramic assessment of alcohol in American culture. Traveling through the California wine country, the beer barrel backroads of New England and Pennsylvania, and the blue hills of Kentucky's bourbon trail, Peck places the concerns surrounding alcohol use within the broader context of American history, religious traditions, and governance. Society is constantly evolving, and so are our drinking habits. Cutting through the froth and discarding the maraschino cherries, The Prohibition Hangover examines the modern American temperament toward drink amid the $189-billion-dollar-a-year industry that defines itself by the production, distribution, marketing, and consumption of alcoholic beverages.

Кл.слова:
алкоголь