Hard News: Conversation Starters
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Ben, unless you offer up some physiology-stylee evidence that "basically no children like the taste of alcohol" you are making your own position untenable. You are conflating personal experience and anecdote and trying to tell everyone here that you are right. It's not going to work, buddy.
And your hypothesis (to give it way more gravitas than it deserves) would fail to account for the fact that I didn't like coffee when I was younger and I started drinking it at age 16 but not with milk. And I've never consciously registered any alteration in my consciousness from drinking coffee. (Unless it was laced with alcohol, but that is another story.)
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Liquor outlets - it's all a matter of class.
I worked as a planner for the old Waitemata City in the 1970s when it changed from being "dry" to "Trust Control". Before that time the area was not really dry - liquor used to be sold in a whole array of clubs - sports clubs, cozzy clubs, workingmen's clubs, the RSA... It seemed every park had a sports club building, the major feature of which was a bar. (This included the New Lynn under-14 league club - the kids did the running around, their parents did the drinking - it may still be going). The club system had the perceived advantage that members had some control over who could join and therefore could keep the riff-raff out.
Anyway, we had to find some means of accommodating the brave new world of liquor outlets. We invented the concept of the community cafe - rumored to exist in France but never really seen. We needn't have bothered - the Trust built three booze barns and a few bottle stores and put their feet up.
I'm still in two minds about Trusts - they distributed fire extinguishers, torches and smoke alarms to the population and funded the Waitakere Stadium which got built with none of the drama that faced other stadiums (actual and proposed) in Auckland. But that's something a community tax on alcohol sales could do. And this appears to be at the expense of pretty dreary and widely-spaced outlets in the West. Interestingly, the supermarkets and liquor trade managed to initiate a referendum on whether trust control should be dropped in favour of the free market - and were soundly thrashed.
The local Pak n Save has found a way around it - they have a defined beer and wine sales area with separate till, ostensibly operated by the licensing trust but selling at PnS's (considerably lower) prices. And the local Foodtown in New Lynn has a separate wine shop (they purchased a heritage wine-shop license).
I am not entirely convinced that the free market in the West would lead to the opening of those funky little bars, cafes and specialist wineshops beloved of the residents of Grey Lynn. My theory is that these need a sophisticated and well-off clientele to prosper, and these people tend to be concentrated in only a few parts of town. Elsewhere, the free market will be the usual array of hole-in-the-wall liquor stores, supermarkets and chain restaurants.
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James, I agree that there are possible basic drivers to our tastes. Indeed I'm saying that alcohol is in the basically yucky class. But there is no doubt you can train yourself to like just about anything. Some people like intense pain. Others like fear, or horror, or getting beaten up. I would suggest that usually there is a reason outside of normal human tastes for such preferences.
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Coming in rather late to a rather extended conversation, which resembles the over-lappingin a Robert Altman movie. Just to add my two-cents worth (well, more properly 50 cents worth, given the charges for internet use in Collingwood, NW Nelson);
* the debate about about anarchism. The problem is that anarchism seems to often be only a sliver of difference azway from libertarianism, whereby a concern about the well-being of one's fellows quickly to to self-interest and authoritarianism.
* the Hattie 'research' (more meta-analysis, or an extensive literature review, than new research). My wife Josephine (a very good teacher) points out, quite correctly, that it once again puts full responsibility on the teacher, with little regard for the willingness/preparedness/attitude of students. We don't, as the bloke from Auckland Grammar suggested, need "compliant students" but we certainly need students open to learning, respectful to teachers, willing to move beyond their own subjectivity, and open to surprises. Intertesting too, that there no similar measure of the performance of tertiary teaching, other than rather futile 'Course Evaluations' given out at the end of each semester--if they are good, you use them in promotion bids; if they are bad, you ignore them.Best wishes to all from the beach.
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Stewart, how about you produce one child who did like alcohol from the first nip.
I don't really get your coffee point at all. Can you make it clearer? Are you trying to tell me that you spontaneously suddenly discovered a like for the taste of black coffee, but have never felt a coffee buzz at all? Perhaps you feel the reverse, the 'no-coffee-low'? Removing discomfort feels the same as comfort, you know.
I wouldn't put coffee in the same class as alcohol though. It's nowhere near as toxic.
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oops.. I intended to write "the over-lapping dialogue in a Robert Altman movie". I realise we have the Preview facility but an impulsive press of the Post Reply button sends out all your mistakes for the world to read (blame it on it having to rely on a PC keyboard and having to pay for internet access!)
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I was also relieved to discover a bit later on that wine came in flavours that weren't sweet and fizzy, and that there was life beyond Liebestraum.
So glad as a nation we have moved on from Cold Duck, Blenheimer, Mateus, Liebestraum and Chasseur etc. Although I have to thank the orange cask for getting me laid for the first time.
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The 'best' way to reduce the driving-related harm is to reduce the amount of driving in a community.
I think your anaolgy is quite facetious and not that analogous.
Look at the road toll. It's nearly halved in the last 50 years. In that time, I think it is fair to assume, the number of cars on the road (and journeys taken) would have increased significantly. The fact is that cars have got safer and seat belts become compulsory. Driving is safer than it was 50 years ago.
But how can you make alcohol safer? It's a chemical intoxicant.
Sure, you can try and change attitudes to alcohol, but this doesn't appear to have had much success. ALAC likes to say that they have c.90% brand recognition of their social marketing campaigns, and that c.20% of people surveyed have thought about their drinking as a result of the advertisements. But this hasn't been transformed into lower rates of consumption, less ED presentation for alcohol related events, fewer addicts, and less alcohol-related crime.
The way to target it is through how and where people get their alcohol, as well as trying to change their attitudes.
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I said you trained your tastes OR you are a freak. I think the first case is more likely by nearly 100%.
Ben, are you me? No? Then stop telling me what I am. Seriously. Now.
So why don't people prefer Chardon to Macs, then? It's got more alcohol in it. And how come people prefer one alcohol beverage over another but that varies completely from person to person?
Not sure why you're asking me this. Is it some kind of argumentum ad absurdum?
Of course it isn't. You said people only like alcoholic beverages because of the alcohol, because they're intoxicating. Ergo, by your reasoning, the more alcoholic something is, the more they should like it. This clearly isn't the case. You're not actually listening to anything people are saying, you're just repeating 'it's yucky' over and over again until, I assume, you 'win' by sheer persistence.
But there is no doubt you can train yourself to like just about anything. Some people like intense pain.
And are surprised to find they like it, disgust themselves, and spend years trying to pretend they don't. But that'd be another thing you know more about than I do, right Ben?
And yes, I know kids who've liked an alcoholic drink from a very young age - too young to know whether it had alcohol in it or not. I shall inform their parents that Ben says they're freaks.
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I thought the deal with alcohol is that people (and other animals) were originally attracted to it because its smell is like that of ripe fruit. Other animals overeat fermenting fruit and get bombed on it. Certain strains of mice are bred to prefer alcohol, for experiments to do with alcoholism and so on - there are heaps of examples here.
It's a bit of a stretch to posit that alcohol-preferring mice talk themselves into liking it because they're planning on getting drunk.
Kids have super-sensitive tastes, as someone has already pointed out. I used to taste drops of the cask of Muller Thurgau in the fridge, and didn't like that much. But I loved the smell of the banda sheets we had printed out at school, and that's pure alcohol.
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yes but the full quote is...
The reason is because alcohol is a solvent. Many of the flavour compounds in wine dissolve in alcohol and not in water.
You do law, I'll do biology/chemistry :).
Which implied to me, at least, that water was not a solvent.
And it's not like one is polar and the other not (which might have been an implied difference).
I did pretty well in chemistry in my day too :-)
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Also, I'm not much of a tea-drinker, but on the odd occasion when I do have it, it's invariably without milk, let alone sugar. I even used to have black tea at London caffs, where it actually is black.
I believe this wins the argument.
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Oh, wait...
At any rate, despite his dubious taste in music, Bob appears to be otherwise normal. Between bouts of screaming (which are gradually getting less frequent), he leads a busy and action-filled life.
Perhaps his happiest moments are spent rifling through the recycling bin in order to drink the dregs from my beer bottles...
Though I'm not sure whether this strengthens or weakens my argument, given the Nature of Bob.
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I thought the deal with alcohol is that people (and other animals) were originally attracted to it because its smell is like that of ripe fruit.
If you put your nose into a glass a reasonably fresh Heineken, you should get a nice, soft aroma of bananas, from the esters. If you happen to drink it factory-fresh, it's very noticeable.
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life beyond Liebestraum
I sense another nostalgic PAS book in the offing..
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Duncan, Mike Whiting just retired last month - not sure if you remember him.
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__Sigh ... and why, pray tell, do cafes continue to successfully sell lattes and flat whites? Perhaps some people prefer them?__
Yup, so what?
Because that would mean they have different tastes from me .
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I noticed the banana flavour about a decade ago, in either DB Natural or Export, I forget which. The smell of yeast brewing is also sufficiently universally popular that people use baking bread to sell houses.
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Ben,
it's your argument to & so up to you to provide evidence (other than the anecdotal stuff proffered thus far). And re the coffee thing - yes, that's exactly what I'm telling you...I started drinking black coffee aged 16, having disliked it (coffee) previously and I have never perceived any 'buzz' from coffee.
I appreciate your point about young people having to persevere with alcohol (drinking for the effect rather than the taste) but that's far more to do with peer pressure than taste. And I salute your rather brutal honesty about the fact that you drink for the effect. I also drank mostly for the effect for some time but have grown out of that & now drink alcoholic drinks for the effect and the taste.
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__life beyond Liebestraum__
I sense another nostalgic PAS book in the offing..
Now you put it that way, it's a cracking title. Although perhaps for a chapter or volume, rather than the whole book.
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A tender coming of age tale.. :)
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people use baking bread to sell houses
I can say that looking for a house I noticed once some people had a breadmaker on. Considering all the windows were open, the effect was mostly lost.
I recall there's a by-product of fermentation that is (or works like) glutimates and triggers the umami receptors and is therefore objectively yummy. Tastes like protein!
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not wanting to harsh the chat mellow...but I'm really hoping this ain't a good example of where the Gaza debate is heading within the ME media.
http://gulfnews.com/opinion/columns/region/10272422.html
courtesy of popbitch.
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I guess my unease with supermarket sales stems from the degree to which it normalizes alcohol, placing it on the same level as bread and milk. I'm still not entirely comfortable with that equation.
But that is the whole point. If alcohol is a forbidden fruit then the yoof will WANT it with a vengeance.
Yeah, but I really don't buy the line that it's because things are illegal that people want to consume them. I don't think that outlawing tea or test match cricket or the Winter Garden would suddenly make those things terribly sexy and desirable. People get drunk because they want to get drunk, largely.
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And there is a very simple reason for that, it is poisonous. It causes your body damage. Therefore it is a trained taste, not innate.
I don't expect to change your mind Ben but this is not correct.
There is sweet FA evidence to show alcohol in small doses does humans harm. Before anyone panics I'm not saying getting drunk is good for you or anything of that nature. Simply that as far as I know (and I've read a bit) there are no studies that show moderate drinking does anyone any harm. Certainly not enough harm to create a selective pressure to create a genetic basis for disliking alcohol.
So your evolutionary argument is without basis Ben.
To be honest my guess is that humans have been using alcohol long enough to purify water to be able to make and equally valid (or invalid) evolutionary argument in favour of alcohol. It would go like this...
Way back when alcohol was first being used, water was frequently not safe to drink. Thus those humans that laced their water with alcohol (thus killing nasty bacteria, worms etc) were less likely to succumb to disease and more likely to breed. This might have created a selective advantage for those genetically disposed to prefer the taste of alcohol.
Of course the above is just waffle. Most evolutionary arguments are just waffle, they can be plausible but never provable. However thinking about selection pressure that might have operated can help sometime. However as I said there just is no evidence for a selection pressure against alcohol (in moderation).
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