Hard News: Conversation Starters
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I think a case can be made that climate change is a direct result of capitalism. Capitalism is beleaguered by short-term, narrow thinking that results in some very bad outcomes.
I think you'd have a very hard time making that case. The USSR was one of the worst polluters on the planet. China is currently one of the worst.
Industrialization has led to climate change. But that has occurred in every political environment.
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Russell, Macs Light used to be 1% but still better taste than the other low beers (and damn handy for scattered xmas commitments requiring driving). When did they make it stronger?
They didn't! I'm not sure what I was thinking, because it is indeed 1% -- and, as you say, better than the others.
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one of capitalism's great strength is it isn't a philosophy, or at least it didn't start as one.
um kinda. You'd have to admit that Adam Smith's "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" is a philosophy of capitalism as much as it is anything.
I think all of the forms of society being discussed have evolved from their origins. And I can't see capitalism as anything other than a philosophy now and in some cultures it is even elevated to the status of a religion.
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RTD's are drinks that are designed to be binge drunk (terrible grammar I know)
We used to live in a party flat and we would always put on a tub of party punch. We discovered that if we wanted to get people to get drunk faste;r putting a cup of pure glucose would cause it to be drunk like water. This is the same with RTD's they are super sweet to encourage them to be drunk quicker.
On another note when I worked in Belgium the cafeteria at the business park I was working at served super low and non-alcoholic beers. (Stella Artois makes a nice super-low alcohol beer. It is funny that you can't get it here as probably wouldn't sell) Anyway I got talking to the locals and they told me that they sold non-alcoholic beer in schools over there. Maybe they were all kidding themselves that they liked the taste.
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Any binge issue has a supply side. A pretty straight forward solution to problem drinking would be to force liquor outlets like supermarkets and off licenses to close their liquor sections between 10pm and 10am.
If it were practical, I would like to see the liquor discounting banned.
Teens in particular are price sensitive. Go to a nightclub and you won't get much change from $10 for a standard 330ml beer. Someone on a limited income can't get very plastered at those prices, and since it is meant to be all about social drinking we should all agree that is a good thing. I would think that raising the age you can purchase alcohol in an off-license to something as high as 21 whilst allowing 18 year olds to continue to drink in restaurants, pubs and bars is something I think would make a difference in pursuit of our social drinking nirvana.
Of course, we have to actually WANT to change our drinking culture. And I am not sure that collectively, in our heart of hearts, we really want to abandon just yet our red-blooded Anglo-Saxon binge drinking culture for the effete ways of the continentals. I don't see much evidence myself of a desire to change the drinking culture here in NZ in any meaningful way. We were talking about this just the other week amongst ourselves, and when on the subject of civilised European drinking one of the girls piped up with the joke about why do the French plant trees in the Champs- Élysées? So the Germans can march in the shade, which everyone agreed was a jolly funny little joke. it also kinda illustrates the subconscious views a large number of us still hold.
Oh and anyone who thinks National's education changes are not simply a way for them to further their favoured two tier model of cherry picking elite schools that do well in testing splitting off from the second best for the second class state school rump has clearly never met Anne Tolley, a woman whose could be charitably described as somewhat intellectually limited.
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I'd recommend the methylene chloride, to the adolescents of today. In moderation of course.
Of course. Inhaling dichloromethane makes you talk like an Australian - the famous paint stripper accent. And yes, I too like the entertainmaent value of conspiracy theories. A pity that the illuminati never seem to be able to work together, though. Back when Dupont was demonising weed in order to promote their chemical hemp substitutes, Henry Ford was attempting to make cars out of the stuff.
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The point is no extreme political philosophy works very well at all.
I think the point is more that any ideology is wonderful in its pristine state. It's when you roll it around in the dirt of messy, irrational, bewilderingly perverse human reality that the cracks start to show. And you've got to patch 'em up with whatever you think might work, and have to hand at the time.
Makes my head hurt, but isn't it so human?
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I have a true story about the price of liquor.
I was in a certain "notorious Auckland celebrity nightspot" when I got my first over $9 dollar beer.
I said to the barman, "Did you hear about the penguin that swam into the viaduct, climbed out of the harbour, and came down here and ordered a beer?"
"No" said he.
"Well, the Penguin ordered a beer, drank it thoughtfully, and then ordered a second. The barman, who could no longer contain himself, said "You know we don't get many penguins down here" to which the Penguin replied...
"At these prices, I'm not surprised".
The barman laughed politely and I thought it best to flee to a dark corner.
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Any binge issue has a supply side. A pretty straight forward solution to problem drinking would be to force liquor outlets like supermarkets and off licenses to close their liquor sections between 10pm and 10am.
Serious question, Tom: Do you think problem drinkers go into remission during day light hours? Not really my experience, and how about that six o'clock swill?
As someone said more eloquently upthread that I can manage, I really think the side of the equation nobody is looking at is enforcement. You can fuck around with the law one more time, but if it's going to be routinely and blatantly flouted what's the point? Apart from allowing the usual suspects to look like they're doing something useful.
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Craig, if there is no more liquor around most people go home and go to bed. if they can nip down to the local 24x7 supermarket and get more, many will. More to the point, I didn't say shut the bars and clubs and pubs that for a variety of reasons my be open at 7am with people who haven't been to bed yet. Those bars charge high prices, and for most people their personal harm market self regulates in that case (i.e. they come down, run out of money, and go home).
Problem drinkers will go to all sorts of ingenious and devious length secure their supply. No amount of law or regulation will keep them from their bottles of rum hidden in the shed,or whatever.
Enforcement is absolutely part of the equation. No amount of tinkering with the law around age will a difference if the police and the liquor industry conspire to weakly enforce the drinking age. If you want police corruption, go look at all those big, "up market" provincial bars where the coppers show up at 11.30pm on a Saturday for free pizza and a good natter with their mate the publican before heading off again, without asking a single one of the patrons for ID...
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Robyn
The sense of taste develops as we get older. Where we previously were revolted by olives, as adults we happily eat them. Oh, and coffee - that's a big one.
Actually it's the reverse. Children have a much better (more sensitive) palate than adults. They can detect lower concentrations of compounds.
The reason children hate broccoli etc is because they have a much stronger ability to detect the bitter compounds than us adults. To them it really does taste yucky. It's you the adult who can't tell how yucky it tastes :). As a general rule if a child tells you it tastes bad it's because their sense of taste and smell is better than yours.
It's a bit more complicated than that because there does also appear to be a particular heightening of the ability to detect bitter compounds in children. That makes evolutionary sense since bitter compounds are often toxic and often more toxic to children than adults.
But mostly the reason you like coffee is because you got older and lost the ability to taste all the bad flavours. See there are advantages to getting older.
However, there is another factor in play as well. Children do not have the language to describe the different flavours and scents they detect and as a result tend to lump things together. For example fruit are all sweet, until they learn the language to describe the differences between individual fruit.
Language plays a huge role in our perceptions. If you don't have the words to describe the difference you tend to stop noticing the difference. It's easiest to see when learning to taste wine, as you learn more words to describe different flavours, those flavours become easier to distinguish.
So young drinkers are doing two things when they avoid complex dry wines. First they are tasting the unpleasant flavours that we can no longer taste and second they are failing to distinguish the complexity that exist in the wine because they don't have the language yet.
Capturing that in legislation might be tricky :).
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BenWilson: I'm like you, although I don't have any real interest in getting drunk, so I just stick to the soft drinks. I once read an article that said that about 25% of people have taste buds that are more sensitive than normal, meaning that they have a real sweet tooth and never get a taste for bitter things like coffee and alcohol. That seemed to describe me pretty well - perhaps you're the same.
(Similarly, there's supposedly a 25% group that has less sensitive taste buds than normal, meaning that they appreciate stronger tastes more.)
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For example fruit are all sweet, until they learn the language to describe the differences between individual fruit.
Here's some holiday entertainment. Get an orange and cut off both ends, top and bottom. Then lick them. One end is noticeably sweeter than the other - no matter how old you are.
Right, carry on.
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Ben
I'm yet to see the shelves lined with no-alcohol wine and millions of connoisseurs supping away going on about the lovely bouquet and which bloody province of France it comes from.
The reason is because alcohol is a solvent. Many of the flavour compounds in wine dissolve in alcohol and not in water. Also because alcohol has a higher vapour pressure than water the flavour compounds dissolved in alcohol are carried by the alcohol vapour to the place in your nose where you detect those compounds.
So if you remove alcohol from wine you remove many of the flavour compounds and you remove your ability to smell and taste those compounds. Note most of the tates of wine are smells carried by vapour from your mouth up to the back of your nose where you detect them. You in fact taste most things in your nose not on your tongue, expect for the 5 tastes the tongue does detect.
TLDR Take alcohol from the wine it does not taste as good. The reason the shelves have an absence of alcohol free wine is because it tastes like crap.
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argh
tates => tastes
expect => exceptdamn beta software :P
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But mostly the reason you like coffee is because you got older and lost the ability to taste all the bad flavours. See there are advantages to getting older.
I think this must interact at least a little with the findings that suggest that people learn to tolerate/enjoy pretty much any food if they are presented with it enough times. My sister and I were fed olives - not to mention whole coffee beans out of the grinder - from a young age and thought they were just fab.
(This must surely be fairly typical in Mediterranean cultures, for that matter? The olive bit, at least.)
An I turn' out jush fiyn...
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And I am not sure that collectively, in our heart of hearts, we really want to abandon just yet our red-blooded Anglo-Saxon binge drinking culture for the effete ways of the continentals.
Well put. I feel just like that. Personally, I'd rather abandon drinking altogether than become effete.
Giovanni, of course I don't drink ethanol. If I must drink alcohol I drink beer or wine because that is what is offered. I still hate the bloody stuff, but when you're with the Indians, it's rude not to smoke on their nasty peace pipe. Doesn't mean I'm gonna puff all night long. Ethanol also tastes disgusting, as do most spirits in pure form. I'd almost certainly dilute them with a drink that tastes nice, like maybe orange juice or coke.
Now I'm not about to say that no-one else can possibly find the taste of alcohol nice. You can come to like any yucky old thing, if you have it enough and enjoy something else about it, and keep telling yourself you like it. I've heard smokers discussing the various lovely taste of their cancer sticks in much the same way a wine drinker carries on. Many people actually like the smell of their shit too, possibly associating the relief they feel from doing it with the smell. I actually like the smell of leaded petrol, and despise unleaded, possibly because of a mental association with the traditional lameness of the unleaded, and working for years in a servo.
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Craig, if there is no more liquor around most people go home and go to bed. if they can nip down to the local 24x7 supermarket and get more, many will.
Or you can be like the guy in front of me at Pak'n'Slave at 5.30 last night. He had at least 8 x 24 packs of Speights (shudder) and DB Exports (quakes) and a dozen bottles of cheap white. And a pack of steak and a pack of sausages.
Dude had it all planned out.
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I was in a certain "notorious Auckland celebrity nightspot" when I got my first over $9 dollar beer.
Paid NZ$40 for 2 stubbies of Becks in Portofino in July.
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I think the point is more that any ideology is wonderful in its pristine state. It's when you roll it around in the dirt of messy, irrational, bewilderingly perverse human reality that the cracks start to show.
Exactly. As I say frequently, communism is a wonderful system. Until you involve people. The thing about capitalism is it doesn't pretend that people don't have differing motivations and "hot buttons". If you're a money-hungry sociopath, capitalism doesn't try and make you act like you're disinterested in personal wealth and only in it for the collective good. Collectivist-based societies require at least some subjugation of personal motivations, and pretend that nobody has those motivations in the first place. All pigs are equal, etc.
Capitalism certainly has its problems, and it highlights human selfishness pretty successfully. But those problems can mostly be managed, if people don't pretend that capitalism is perfect and should be left alone. People like Rodney, for example. The market will not correct itself without intervention, because almost no markets exist that actually qualify as "perfect".
And while we've got Rodney et al actively involved in governing the country we shouldn't hold our breaths on rigid enforcement of licensing rules, because Rodney has exhibited a total lack of desire to bring in the responsibilities side of the profit equation. Profit uber alles, and that's all that matters. Not that Labour were much better, but they didn't have an "unfettered free market" ideologue like Rodders cluttering up their side of the House.
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Josh, by drunk, I mean 'under the influence of alcohol', which for me takes about half a beer. That's more than enough to feel the effects. I don't think it's got amazing taste buds, I've just never been able to stomach the lying-to-oneself involved in saying yucky things are nice. I also like coffee, but I would never have learned to like coffee by drinking decaf.
Bart and Giovanni, I can fully appreciate that it's very difficult to make wine taste like wine without the alcohol. But I put it to you that you would never have learned to like any of those wonderfully subtle nasty yucky flavors if there was no alcohol in it. There are plenty of nasty non-alcoholic things that people could sit around developing a taste for, but strangely they don't seem to. To me, that is a clear indication that the alcohol is what people are in it for, and the tastes are just way of justifying that.
People talk about how wonderfully thirst quenching beer is. But there is no way on earth it really is as thirst quenching as something actually designed for rehydration, like maybe water mixed with glucose and salt. Beer is simply low-alcohol and low sugar, so it's more thirst quenching than, say wine, or a really sweet fizzy drink.
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$40 for two Becks??? Holy moley, clearly my notorious night spots are not as notorious as yours!
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I like the taste of beer -- it's quenching and it's one of the few cold drinks (yes, obviously, apart from water) that isn't sweet, which makes it good with food.
Milk? Some lemonades? (Charlies has a lot of sugar, but I wouldn't exactly describe it as sweet)
Also, there's a "fun" case you come across early in one's law degree which explains that if you can't physically get drunk off something (e.g. a low alcohol beer you'd need to drink a physically impossible amount to get drunk) then it isn't covered by licensing laws (which is how dairies and supermarkets first started stocking that low alcohol stuff).
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$40 for two Becks??? Holy moley, clearly my notorious night spots are not as notorious as yours!
Damn that Cary Grant and his love of secluded romantic Italian seaside villages!
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To me, that is a clear indication that the alcohol is what people are in it for, and the tastes are just way of justifying that.
People talk about how wonderfully thirst quenching beer is. But there is no way on earth it really is as thirst quenching as something actually designed for rehydration, like maybe water mixed with glucose and salt.
Oh yes. When I come in from the hot sun of an afternoon, what I really feel like is ... a tall, cold glass of ... water mixed with glucose and salt.
Yeah, that'll really hit the spot ...
C'mon Ben, you don't really like grown-up drinks and you're generalising your experience to everyone else.
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