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timeasmymeasure
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no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 11:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 03:42 pm (UTC)They were right. I have no clue why the Govt is still talking up the severity of the cuts when the reality is they're really quite small in total cash terms.
Of course, for those areas hit the most, they're not small, and some Depts are really getting gutted, but others aren't.
The real freaky thing is to look at the 2007 budget report and compare their projections to what actually happened.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 06:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 11:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 11:51 am (UTC)Looks like it was a hoax though:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/21/lulzsec_census_fake/
no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 11:10 am (UTC)Yup.
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Date: 2011-06-22 11:20 am (UTC)Also, there's no real pressure to drive down prices. I experimented with pricing my Kindle books at 99 cents, and saw a slight rise in sales, but not enough to make up for the lost revenue compared to pricing them at $5. When people buy books they're only comparing against a fairly small reference class - someone who wants to buy my book on the Beatles is not instead going to buy Amanda Hocking's stories of vampires in high school because they're a couple of quid cheaper.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 11:36 am (UTC)I think for any given "X" you can find someone who will say the equivalent of "I can't tell good X from bad X and don't care", with a possible exception when X is sex.
Nokia’s MeeGo-Based N9 Is Sleek and Hot.
Looks great but it won't replace my N900 without a keyboard. :(
no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 11:50 am (UTC)And I'd argue that most people can't tell the difference between good and bad wine. Or indeed, red and white:
http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2007/11/the_subjectivity_of_wine.php
no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 11:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 12:03 pm (UTC)I can still tell the difference between wine and vinegar, and they can still tell the difference between sex and, say, rape.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 12:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 12:20 pm (UTC)(Much like me with good and bad wines).
But yes, it's a fun analogy, and I'm not taking it terribly seriously :->
no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 12:24 pm (UTC)Certainly granted.
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Date: 2011-06-22 12:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 12:34 pm (UTC)Julie could definitely tell when I gave her soy milk one time :->
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Date: 2011-06-22 01:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 01:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 01:46 pm (UTC)Hmm... that's less convincing because they're very texturally different (onions having layers) but I can't find a good link.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 01:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 01:45 pm (UTC)Absolutely, but most people don't know quite how much.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 01:51 pm (UTC)Weirdly I could never stand curry back then, and I'd cry if I was forced to eat it (even with nose pinched and a glass of water). I love it now.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 01:34 pm (UTC)You can see what comes next. I ripped the colour samples out of her colour book and asked her to pick. She got it wrong.
Sometimes I wonder why people still hang out with me.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 01:04 pm (UTC)I don't take milk or sugar, you see.... makes it really obvious.
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Date: 2011-06-22 01:11 pm (UTC)I don't take milk or sugar and I've done the experiment. I can't tell decaff from caff using similar cost cheap coffee brands.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 01:15 pm (UTC)[I do believe that most people can tell coffee from grounds versus instant -- which I guess leads more people to think they can tell decaff from caff].
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Date: 2011-06-22 01:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 01:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 01:41 pm (UTC)Nowadays I keep a jar of decaff handy for when it's late but I really want a cup of coffee. Decaff seems to have less bite to it than regular coffee, and I need an extra half teaspoon to get the same taste.
I do tend to have pretty much the same amount of caffeine from day to day, and I can tell the difference if I have significantly more or less, so I'd be able to tell if it was decaff even if I failed the taste test when I wasn't jumping up and down an hour or so later.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 01:46 pm (UTC)Decaff seems to have less bite to it than regular coffee
That's just about the strength of the particular coffee you are using though surely? Caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee comes in stronger and milder flavours.
I'd be able to tell if it was decaff even if I failed the taste test when I wasn't jumping up and down an hour or so later.
Certainly I'd believe this.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 02:55 pm (UTC)Maybe (although I am using the same brand of coffee for decaff and regular). I mentioned that decaff lacks a certain "bite" that isn't quite compensated for by adding in extra coffee. I'll need to experiment a little, although preferably at a weekend when I'm not interested in getting much else done ;)
no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 03:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 12:09 pm (UTC)My summary of the best statistical evidence.
1) An educated palate is price sensitive and will prefer more expensive wine (statistical correlation in blind tests).
2) An uneducated palate is not (no statistical correlation in tests).
3) The positive results in 1) can be thrown off by presentation (colouring wine, changing bottle etc).
The red wine/white wine test you cite is a slightly silly one as I doubt most wine critics would regularly drink warm white wine so how would they know what it *should* taste like. Sort of like complaining someone can't recognise good quality steak when it's gone through a blender and been spoonfed to them as smoothie.
Where the line between 1) and 2) is, is hard to judge.
For comparison, I don't know if you remember, there was a similar experiment done with Vista where people were told it was shiny and new and asked to test it (with a few disguised buttons). It turns out that this got a great reception compared with Vista. Does this mean that there's no particular quality difference between operating systems? No, it just means you can prime people to think strange things.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 12:11 pm (UTC)If changing the bottle a wine comes in affects (1) then that indicates that (1) isn't telling you much more than "I've tasted this before, and it was in an expensive bottle."
no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 12:24 pm (UTC)I'm afraid that does not fit with the existing statistical evidence (and indeed is against it) since in an unprepared blind test the experts (rather famously) cannot reliably place the wine even by country so definitely cannot detect which bottle it comes in.
[Your hypothesis was a bit reaching anyway IMHO, it would be a bizarre system where people's palates were sufficiently good to distinguish exactly which bottle a wine belonged to but not tell when the same wine was served in different bottles.]
I guess you could hypothesise that there's an "expensive winey sort of a taste" which experts don't really enjoy but have somehow learned to detect and say they prefer even though they don't actually "prefer" it.
[Expensive wines taste different->experts can detect this->experts say they prefer expensive wines in blind tests].
However, that hypothesis is really indistinguishable from them actually enjoying it without some kind of neuroscan and, for me, I think it's easier to just say that they do enjoy the expensive wine more.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 12:33 pm (UTC)I more meant the "expensive wine taste"- or possibly the same as "I've tasted this brand of coke before, and it was expensive, therefore I liked it more."
But yes, if in the blind taste test there was a correlation with expensiveness then there must be something going on.
What I'd be interested to know is how much of the "linkingosity" was correlated with the bottle it was in, and how much with the wine. You could do that one fairly easily by switching wine between bottles.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 01:08 pm (UTC)However, and this is an important however, you may be aware of the compliance experiment where people are shown two lines one of which is clearly longer than the other. If sufficient "stooges" step forward to say that the shorter line is longer then so will a good percentage of experimentees. Without the priming, the candidates can definitely tell line A is longer than line B).
We don't need to move to the subjective "that wine bottle is expensive, I will pretend to prefer that wine", within an objective context with a known correct answer which is observable and obviously objectively correct a lot of people will go with what they think the crowd believes.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 01:47 pm (UTC)He had prepared himself for the experience by thinking about it all day and then really concentrated on the meal. It was delicious, the most special thing he’d eaten, ever. Turned out to be tuna and the only difference was how much effort he had put into experiencing the meal because he thought it was special.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 01:49 pm (UTC)Things also, obviously, taste nicer when we're hungry. And what we've eaten beforehand primes us.
I've had water with all sorts of tastes, and I'm fairly sure that most of them were in my head.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 01:52 pm (UTC)Reading the anecdote I became much more aware of how often I eat mechanically and how much more I enjoy food when it is combined with a bit of theatre, ritual and good company - such as a dinner party.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 02:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-05 09:24 am (UTC)I’m not sure I could pick them in a blind taste test.
I’m not sure this is a problem if I’m buying the experience rather than the chemcials.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 12:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 05:19 pm (UTC)Having said that, I often feel xkcd suffers from the fact that it's so big. I preferred it when it was uncool, being a connoisseur in webcomics (I appear to remember we were on a panel at the 2008 Eastercon?).
Full disclosure: my favourite wine is the £4 bottle of Chilean white wine they sell at the Co-Op, because it's dead cheap. There's definitely a difference between good and bad coffee, though, and even I can tell the difference between good and bad whisky in a blind taste test despite the fact that I detest the stuff (bad whisky is a lot more bad than good whisky, but good whisky is still awful).
no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 06:35 pm (UTC)1) Many people, when first trying wine, beer, whisky and various other alcoholic drinks, make a nasty face, and clearly don't like it.
2) However, social norms, and the fact that people _do_ like being drunk cause them to keep trying it.
3) Eventually they develop a taste for it. Because the brain appears to do so with anything that it's repeatedly exposed to that turns out to not be actually poisonous.
4) At which point they develop whole subcultures around the particular kind of intoxicant that they've forced themselves through this process for.
If looking at pictures of Joe Biden got people high then there would no doubt be people that would put themselves through the process, and after a while would find different ones more appealing than others. As it doesn't, nobody forced themselves to stare at them for hours at a time. And thus nobody develops Stockholm Syndrome about them.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 11:34 pm (UTC)Intoxication, I would argue, has very little to do with it. I know several people who don't like wine, so drink alcopops and cocktails instead because they like the flavour. If one's drive is to become intoxicated there are ways of doing so that don't require having to acquire a taste for wine, in a similar way that people who don't like tobacco often take cannabis in cakes and other foodstuffs as an alternative.
The insinuation that Munroe's subcultures/interests are somehow superior to those of wine buffs makes me uneasy, and it's along similar lines as the recent comic in which he laid out why he was superior to sports' fans. I don't like the idea that any community is superior to any other community and it's rapidly turning me off his webcomic.
ETA: I have just remembered he did do a comic way back when that took the piss out of Linux users, so perhaps I'm not giving him enough credit. It just feels like he's aiming unfair jibes at the segments of the population that aren't stereotypical xkcd readers, in order to create some feeling of superiority in those that are.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-23 08:29 am (UTC)I think Randall just writes about whatever amuses/interests him. At this point it seems unlikely that he's trying to build an audience.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 06:39 pm (UTC)