This love story is a little long but well worth the read.
Category Archives: Social Commentary
Wine Tasting
Why we can’t tell good wine from bad:
In 2001, Frederic Brochet conducted two experiments at the University of Bordeaux.
In one experiment, he got 54 oenology (the study of wine tasting and wine making) undergraduates together and had them taste one glass of red wine and one glass of white wine. He had them describe each wine in as much detail as their expertise would allow. What he didn’t tell them was both were the same wine. He just dyed the white one red. In the other experiment, he asked the experts to rate two different bottles of red wine. One was very expensive, the other was cheap. Again, he tricked them. This time he had put the cheap wine in both bottles. So what were the results?
The tasters in the first experiment, the one with the dyed wine, described the sorts of berries and grapes and tannins they could detect in the red wine just as if it really was red. Every single one, all 54, could not tell it was white. In the second experiment, the one with the switched labels, the subjects went on and on about the cheap wine in the expensive bottle. They called it complex and rounded. They called the same wine in the cheap bottle weak and flat.
I’ve always suspected this. And it reminds me of this post from a couple years ago.
How To Steal Power
The latest Afterburner, on the Constitution.
Dear Spammers
Why would you imagine that I would be so stupid as to open an email from “PASCAL,” subject: “From PASCAL”?
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s another compelling email subject: “RE: RE: hi”
William Niskanen
RIP.
I never met him, but by all accounts he was quite literally the gentleman and the scholar.
Feline Love
…a very sad video.
Three And A Half Days
Bill Whittle’s thoughts on the children of Wall Street.
You Get What You Pay For
Tablets have killed free internet. I don’t need high bandwidth (e.g., video) on the road, but I do need to access my blog and email.
Declaring War On Class Warfare
Looks like Paul Ryan is going to deliver a much-needed speech tomorrow.
[Update a few minutes later]
“That’s not class warfare. It’s math.”
Forget math. This guy can’t even do basic arithmetic. And apparently neither can anyone on his staff. Can we see his grades, now?
[Update a few minutes later]
A follow-up for those attempting to defend the president’s math.
Smash Capitalism
…and you destroy civilization.
It’s sad that these spoiled children have put themselves so deep into debt for educations that are worthless, both in the marketplace and in understanding how the world works. They rage against the wrong machine.
[Update a couple minutes later]
They’re also not materially poor. But they do suffer from a poverty that is worse in many ways:
These young people also suffer from a vast intellectual and moral poverty. One of the things that shines through when we interview the people taking to the streets is that so many are woefully ignorant, and that they wallow in a sea of relativism that allows for no morality other than that gained by intense navel gazing. They are the antithesis of the original American revolutionaries, whose leaders were men of exceptional erudition and thoughtfulness, and whose followers knew at the very least their Bible and Pilgrim’s Progress. Revolutionaries of old were shaped by philosophy, known science, literature, practical life experience, and a deep sense of morality and justice. Today’s little park piddlers are shaped by an aching sense of unfairness, a terrible fear of human-kind (that would be the AGW shtick), and a morality shaped by Oprah and whichever fabulously rich Hollywood Leftist happens to grab the microphone on any given day.
These self-styled 99%-ers are not poor, not by any known standard, either today or in the history of the world. They are intellectually and emotionally bereft, but otherwise awash in material benefits.
Fortunately, they’re not, as they delude themselves, the 99%. If they were, the Republic would be lost.