I have been aware for a few days now that this is alcohol awareness week. Yesterday I asked myself the question, just how aware of alcohol am I?

A trip to the library showed me I wasn’t very aware at all. Oh, I knew the basics, like what happens if you drink and drive. Even if I hadn’t known that, the crumpled mass of automobile outside the Memorial Union was a reminder.

Chemists refer to it as ethanol, and sometimes CH3CH2OH. It was used to fuel the flame in many a chemistry lab before the advent of the Bunsen burner. Some call it Everclear. Many hope that it is ever-flowing.

Ethanol is of growing importance to Iowa’s farming industry, and to the energy future of the United States. It is a high octane fuel additive that, due to state legislation, makes some gas a few cents cheaper than the alcohol-free variety.

Because it is made from corn it is a “renewable resource.” Although it produces greenhouse gases when burned, these are recycled whenever a farmer grows more corn.

I was not aware that goldfish can produce their own ethanol when the aquarium (or Lake LaVerne) environment becomes anaerobic (lack of oxygen). It allows them to survive and cope with less than ideal living conditions. That may be familiar to a number of college students, especially those with roommates. It certainly gives new meaning to the term “tanked.”

Alcohol is, for better or worse, the essential nectar of college life. It is vital to a great deal of nocturnal social behaviors. If you doubt it, just see what happens when the last keg runs out at a Halloween party. There is a period of awed wonderment followed by an almost ritualistic money-gathering chaos that unites complete strangers in the great quest for maintenance of the inebriated state.

Some rats will push a bar repeatedly just to be inoculated with the stuff.

And then there are the other kinds of alcohol. Should we be aware of those, too? There’s the rubbing variety, good for cleaning tape recorder heads and swabbing minor abrasions (ouch!). Then there are the alcohols with odd names like arachidonic alcohol 40, of use only to the shampoo industry. If your brain is literate some morning, read the back of your shampoo bottle. You think genetically engineered foods are bad? It’s frightening what we put on our hair.

So, hopefully I have contributed to your alcohol awareness. This also happens to be banned books week. So grab a tankard of the amber suds and read “Lolita.” Happy Halloween.