Forget About Snow, How Many Words Do They Have For Beer?

One of the great things about living in the age of social statistics is the creative uses ordinary citizens can find for carefully collected data. The teenage younger brother of a good friend of mine recently told me that the road trip he had planned to take with some buddies had recently been rerouted when they discovered a website providing details on underage drinking on a state by state basis.

By far the most intersting statistic on the site is the information on the cost of drinking per youth in the state. Or, as my young friend put it, "How much damage the kids do to themselves per teenage capita, yo."

So where are the kids going on their summer road trip? Not Nevada (which is ranked #4). It's off to the lands of the ice and snow, of the midnight sun and the whiskey flows. Alaska, baby, Alaska.