alcohol

Just about every computer available these days comes with a CD/DVD burner as part of the package. Whether your primary use for this drive is to make mix CDs for the car, backup data, or burn DVD backups for your movies, you need a good program with the right type of features for the job. Though Windows offers some burning features, you're not going to get the options you'll find in a stand alone app.

There are many paid CD and DVD burning apps to choose from and some of the most popular in this category--like Nero … Read more

Confession: I don't know a whole lot about alcoholic beverages. I'm that girl who pours blue Curacao into stuff simply because it turns your drink a cool color. I don't actually know what it is. That's probably not a good thing.

My cluelessness is starting to give my friends headaches--literally. I read in The New York Times that rose champagne was going to be really trendy this season, so I got some for a New Year's Eve party, only to learn that the stuff tastes even worse than regular (cheap) champagne and makes you feel … Read more

Can't believe I managed to miss this one, considering one of my favorite activities in college was to watch Jeopardy with a dozen people and see which of us could be the most obnoxious by yelling out all the answers. On Monday night, snarky news forum Fark.com sponsored a category on the timeless game show, in which the three contestants had to complete corny, pun-ridden headlines that had been plucked off the site.

Naturally, two of the questions dealt with "potent potables." The first was "Noodle shop accused of aiding drunk driving; that's because … Read more

Red wine is a drink with a dark side. We praise it for its full body, long legs, and exquisite nose, but the bacchanalian beverage has long been accused of being particularly prone to giving people headaches. Some people have such a sensitivity to red wine that they can't drink it at all.

Now, the Associated Press has good news for all you wine lovers. Scientists have speculated that the chemical culprit in red wine might be biogenic amines, like histamines. And although that hasn't been proved for certain yet, a group of UC Berkeley researchers working on … Read more

Riding on a sleeper train for several thousand miles seems a bit silly sometimes when you can just hop a plane for a couple of hours and get to the same destination in a fraction of the time, especially when it's often cheaper to fly anyway. Amtrak, however, is attempting to counter that image by promoting its train service as the landlubber's equivalent of a luxury cruise--a booze cruise, that is. According to an Associated Press article, the passenger rail service is trying to "gin up new business" (Ha, ha! You slay me, AP!) by offering … Read more

The likes of Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton might soon find themselves restricted to driving Nissans as part of their parole. The Japanese automaker this week announced that it had started testing an in-car Breathalyzer system that disables a car's ignition if it senses that the would-be driver is over the legal limit.

In a press release that looks suspiciously like it was translated by a software program, Nissan says that the system will be installed on "daily-operating vehicles where the drivers will monitor various factors such as functionality and alcohol-detection reliability." According to Edmunds, Nissan intends … Read more

Larry Ellison aside, those Middle Eastern businessmen sure do put Silicon Valley to shame when it comes to extravagant displays of opulence. Typically, we don't get names to accompany the tales of pimped-out Airbus A380s and the like, but generally the price tags speak for themselves. My favorite new "oh my gosh, I can't believe how much cash that guy spent" story was covered in the British press earlier this week: a band of partiers, led by an anonymous Dubai cash cow, spent a total of $210,000 at the posh London nightclub Crystal last Saturday … Read more

I am joined today by the wonderful Tim Moynihan, who schools me on the tech that I'm definitely going to need at some point in the future (brainwave-reading headgear, anyone?) We also ask the one of the most important questions of the year: Will it blend? A special thanks to CNET member Austin for that one! Here are the rest of the links for today:

If you think you can fool a breathalyzer by downing a whole tin of Altoids, don't bother (we have friends who've tried). Besides, testing for alcohol levels by breath may soon be a thing of the past thanks to newer technologies.

Take this machine from a company called TruTouch Technologies, for example, which tests for blood alcohol by analyzing the skin and can yield results in 30 seconds. Uber Review says the technology uses "infrared reflectance spectroscopy," which we're all familiar with, of course.

Just don't mistake it for a toy cash register, or … Read more