Why won't French President François Hollande have dinner with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Rouhani's trip to Europe.

Because Rouhani insists that no wine be served.

This has something to do with the French love of wine and something to do with a French "domestic culture war, with its right wing raising alarms over 'Islamification' that has spilled into its deep national relationship with food."

"Susan Cheever... includes a heart-lacerating quote by her father: 'If you are an artist, self-destruction is quite expected of you.'"

"'The thrill of staring into the abyss is exciting until it becomes, as it did in my case, contemptible.' She notes that 'all five of our twentieth-century literature Nobel laureates were alcoholic — Sinclair Lewis, Eugene O’Neill, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and John Steinbeck.' (A proud tally.) And those are the ones who made it to the top. Lots of other great writers who didn’t receive the Nobel laurel were just as pie-eyed. Today, the pendulum seems to have swung again. Cheever says that most of our leading literary figures are fairly abstemious. Whether this will make for more interesting biographies remains to be seen."

From Christopher Buckley's review of Susan Cheever's "Drinking in America: Our Secret History."

"A new survey says more than a third of vegetarians eat meat when they've had too much to drink."

"What's more, they're sneaky about it, with 69 percent saying they don't fess up...."

This isn't surprising. Drinking loosens inhibitions and reduces impulse control. Vegetarians eating meat when they've been drinking is in the same category as: 1. having sex with someone that the sober you would decline, 2. having one or two more drinks than the sober you was planning to drink, and 3. driving while drunk, something the sober you considers unacceptable (but is never put in the position of having to decide not to do).