Under the heading ‘More Shallow Useless Facts’, here are a few conversation starters — or stoppers, depending on who you insult along the way. They are from TheDailyBeast.com and they sum up what your sex, education and where you live has to do with how your drink:
1. Men drink 11.1 percent more than women.
2. New Hampshire residents consume 89 percent more beer than New Yorkers do.
3. Ugandans drink 97,250 percent more alcohol than Pakistanis.
4. The rich out-drink the poor by 27.4 percent.
5. Almost twice as much wine is consumed in Washington, D.C. as in California.
6. Caucasians drink 13.9 percent more than African Americans.
7. College graduates are nearly twice as likely to drink as are people who didn’t finish high school.
8. People employed in the arts and in the leisure and hospitality industries are nearly three times as likely to be “problem drinkers” as those employed in education, social services, and health care.
9. Gay people drink 16 percent more than straight people.
10. American college students participating in study-abroad programs drink twice as much as they did before going abroad.
11. The number of American women who binge-drink during the first trimester of their pregnancies has nearly doubled in recent years.
12. Members of cohabiting couples are 11.2 percent more likely than married people to have had five or more drinks in a single day at least once in the past year.
13. College students who are both athletes and members of fraternities or sororities drink over three times as much as college students who are neither athletes nor part of the Greek system.
14. Malt-liquor drinkers drink 45 percent more than hard-liquor drinkers.
Ah, generalizations. If you want to dig deeper on any of these “findings,” click here.