I apologize - "They" have been CRAZY all along

So, ladies and gentlemen, my good audience.  I have been ranting about the government, and chemical companies, and big agricultural businesses with all their herbicides, pesticides, chemicals in the plastic, poisoned water, poisoned everything and I have been doing this since October and then I am driving home from work last night and I hear on the radio, NPR that is, an interview with an author who wrote a book about WINE.  The "sacred" drink, from ancient times.
 http://www.npr.org/2012/12/04/166186416/inventing-wine-the-history-of-a-very-vintage-beverage

Here is the quote from the NPR website:  
"Wine is our original alcoholic beverage. It dates back 8,000 years and, as Paul Lukacs writes in his new book, Inventing Wine: A New History of One of the World's Most Ancient Pleasures, was originally valued more because it was believed to be of divine origin than for its taste. And that's a good thing, Lukacs tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross, because early wine was not particularly good."

You might ask why would I be apologizing and what does this guy have to do with our chemicals of today.  Well, because, PEOPLE ARE CRAZY  - have been from the beginning of time. The explanation is found in the next part of the quote:

"People would add a variety of unexpected ingredients to obscure and enhance the flavor. Everything, Lukacs says, "from lead to ash to myrrh to various kinds of incense, spices. And the most common thing added, especially to wines that people valued, were fresh resin from pine trees or boiled resin — namely pitch — from pine trees. Lead, in fact, will sweeten wine, so lead was used for thousands and thousands of years."

YEP!  Lead, Ash, Marble dust was another one that was mentioned on the radio.  I was, well, flabbergasted, then I got to considering that they probably didn't even think about any side effects, shoot, the water was apparently not very good either because this author indicated that they put wine in the water to make it drinkable. 

So, what does this have to do with all of our man-made chemicals that are put in everything we manufacture, grow and consume?  Well, nothing really.  I just wanted to point out that this kind of crazy behavior has been going on since the beginning. 

By the way, it sounded like a really good book to read.  I wasn't trying to bash the author, it was the content of the wine, really. 

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