You paid *how* much for that bottle? You twit.

The concept of "value" is rather an amusing one.

It should mean what something's worth but it doesn't, or we wouldn't have old sayings like "he knows the worth of everything, but the value of nothing."

What it means is what something's worth, and right there we have the main reason why sticklers for language can't get along with normal people and why the phrase "that's not what I meant" has any legs at all.

Value, then, steps outside of purely commercial, monetary, supply-and-demand, free-market considerations. It's a bit more personal. Or at least, it's a bit more than point-of-sale.

Value, for example, is when that $26,000 BMW motorbike lasts you ten years, three times around Australia and weekly usage.

Value is, to nick an example from Terry Pratchett (bonus points for identifying the character), when a pair of boots that costs you $300 lasts you ten years, and a pair that costs $100, lasts you two years.

But what I really want to talk about, and why I started this otherwise fairly pointless post, is wine.

Immediately there will be people (assuming anybody's reading this), who will be rolling their eyes and calling me a philistine and going off in a flounce, which is like a huff but for people who drink wine without caring about the cost.

You see, wine is one area that, more than most, defies rational discussion. And I don't just mean because it has a history of causing otherwise sane men and women to say things like "creamy mouth-feel" in public and get away with it.

No, it's because of this: One 5L cask of plonk can cost $10, and a bottle of Penfold's Grange Hermitage (or whatever it's called now, since grape names became copywrit) costs upwards of $400 $500 600.

And before you say that it's worth it: No, it isn't. It is worth it only for two very clear reasons: So you can drink the world's highest-regarded red wine, and so that other people can know you're doing it. Sharing with them may also give you a feeling of smugness or even, let's be charitable, genuine sharing pleasure.

But how much better is it, exactly?

Take the catalogue that fell out of today's paper, from a large-scale franchised distributor of retail alcohol.

It helpfully includes ratings for each wine, out of the standard agreed 100.

There is a 1986 Grange, given 99/100. For $699 (breath! It's only numbers!)

Right next to it on the page, something French from 2006 is 96/100 and $899.

Wait, what?

How does that work? On the same "Something rare" page, a 98 is $499, but a 94 is $59.90 (when prices hit three figures, they stop bothering to put cents on).

At the start of the catalogue, on the very first two-page spread, the cheapest bottle is $9.40 and 94. There are 7 bottles more expensive and lower-rated, and one bottle for $119 is 96. Frankly, I know which one I would be buying.

Turn the page and there's an 88 for 11.90 and a 91 for 44.90.

The catalogue continues in much the same vein until we get to my favourite section, the Fortifieds (yes, I'm a Port man from way back).

At this point, we meet the first perfect score, attached to a 100 year-old Tawny for, wait for it and possibly sit down as if you weren't already, $1,000 for a 375ml bottle.

On the same page, a Tokay receives 93 and is $14.90 for 750ml.

Again, I know which one I'd be buying.

There is, in case you were wondering, one more perfect score - a Muscat which goes for $106.90/375ml bottle.

That's little more than 1/10th the price for the same volume of liquid which is, according to the critics, perfect.

At this point may I suggest that some people are, perhaps, getting ripped off?

Normally I would be quite happy to see anybody who can afford to pay $1,000 for a Port or $699 for a Shiraz, do so. I like wine-makers and want them to do well, preferably at the expense of people who can afford it (i.e.: not me).

But this just baffles me.

Beyond a certain point, your taste (and I will admit that everybody reaches this point at a different, um, point) can't tell the difference between one wine and another, higher-rated, wine. People have even done experiments showing that when subjects think they are drinking expensive wines, they rate it higher even if it's exactly the same as the wine they were told was cheap.

That point may mean that someone genuinely can't tolerate a wine of 94 or below, and I feel genuinely (well, sort of) sad for them.

This isn't even a case of "Oh, you obviously can't appreciate the better wines. No. Honestly, there's something wrong with the rating system when $10 bottles score higher than 90 and there is no nicely usable, real-world correlation between rating and price. Caveat emptor and all that, but shouldn't there be some connection between quality and price? Actually, there's something wrong with the rating system when the lowest score on sale in 88.

Plus: If a 95 bottle can be easily had for $20, that means it takes anywhere up to $200 to add each extra rating point. Except, oh look: here's a Sherry which scores 97 and costs $36.90. 

People, you are being conned.

I'm not sure who by, exactly, but you are definitely being conned.

Sods laws of motorcycling:

(These will be updated, of course)

• When riding in town on a hot day, there will be shade on the road, just not where you have to stop.


• When riding in town, the light will turn green ten seconds after you decide to put it in neutral and stretch.


• No matter how little rain you ride through, you will still get wet underpants.


• Any attempt to find a quicker back-roads route because the highway is clogged, will backfire.


• Any attempt to use the above rule to choose the most efficient route, will backfire.


• When you have a choice of different weight jackets, you will choose the wrong one.


• The night you come home and decide you can't be bothered putting the cover on, there will be torrential rain and it will get into the instrument panel

Being reasonable as an offence against reason.

The ABC in Australia has started an interesting little panel question-and-answer program called, unsurprisingly enough, Q&A, in which highly experienced journalist Tony Jones moderates a panel of guests and fields questions from the website (in real-time, even) in text and video, and from the audience.

On it, this week, were Federal Minister for Telecommunications and Messing With it, Stephen Conroy, and also, among the others, way-far-right-wing newspaper columnist Andrew Bolt.

These two were key for two reasons: One, Conroy got sent more questions than Q&A had ever received on anything, ever, and never managed to give one straight answer in half an hour, and, two, Bolt is a warped travesty of a stereotype of a pundit.

The man managed to use most of the tools of illogic available to his kind: Misrepresenting his opponents and their arguments, warping the argument to suit himself, ignoring any counter-claim that he doesn't feel up to answering, cherry-picking facts, being annoyed when people throw him different cherries, and using the word "moral" as though it had an objective, concrete and unwavering meaning.

All of which would merely serve to provide one side of a debate, and prompt some good back-and-forth, were it not for the greatest sin of all:

Being reasonable.

You see, there is honour in honesty, and honesty in self-righteousness, and truth in bald statements. Yet being reasonable is to use the forked tongue of an insurance salesman to do the devil's work.

Beware, at all costs, these phrases:

• "I don't want to appear [racist][sexist][whatever] but..." - This means that they're about to, but want some sympathy for being honest or for raising a painful point which people may sympathise with, at least a little bit. Be honest. Or, if you realise that you have to skirt tricky shores, be carefully exact.
  
• "While I do concede that point..." - This is tricky, and can be used honestly, of course it can, but it often means "I don't agree with you, and I'm going to try and make you appear narrow-minded and stupid by being narrow-minded and stubborn."
• "Surely nobody would argue that..." or "Nobody is really arguing that..." - This is usually used to make their side of the argument look more moderate, but can also mean that they are trying to discredit your position before you have a chance to state it. They are almost always wrong, and are avoiding the issue, which is what they are arguing.
• "All I am saying is..." - There is no all you are saying. You are saying. This is often a weasle way out of listening to the details, coming up with a counter-argument, or indeed paying any attention at all. When you present the five reasons why science has settled on a position, and they say "All I am saying is...", they're not interested, so give them up as a lost cause. If you really believe that you have been misrepresented, say so. Acknowledge that they may have honestly misunderstood, and try and do something about it. If you want to scale back on your certainty, say something like "At present, I believe..."
• "I haven't heard anything to convince me otherwise..." - This usually means "And I won't, because I refuse to listen to it." This is tricky, in light of what I said in the point above, so pay careful attention. It may be useful to assay a couple of the most common arguments, and see if they recognise them or not.
• "Surely..." - Often expressed as "Surely you can see that..." or something similar, this is the most economical way of combining most of what is listed above, and is shorthand for "I'm a reasonable human being, I recognise my faults, and realise that I may be wrong. But I'm not, because I'm right, and you're wrong. Because I said so."

Here's a good, short tip: If they make your head hurt, appear to be saying only a third as much as they actually are, and you know they're wrong but can't quite work out why, then look for the above statements. They may well be using other tools of illogic, but if they appear to be baffling, then they're invariably piling on the bullshit.

This is absolutely ridiculous

There has been, down in sunny (joke, but I say it with love) Tasmania, a bit of a mess going on with the psychiatric ward at the Launceston General Hospital. I've only been keeping half an eye on this story and can't remember the details, but poor management, inadequate staffing and various predictably bad consequences as a result tend to feature prominently.

As part of dealing with this they will be taking the magnificent and world-changing step of (drum-roll please):

Renaming it.

Oh, you have got to be kidding me. I'm sure there are negative connotations attached to "Ward 1E" now, but changing the name? What will this solve, exactly? And how?

Yes, I know that labels are important, but I also believe that they're not nearly so important as people would like to think (Insert nasty joke about having an Arts education). I know people who still refer to Centrelink as the DSS or "Social Security". I still refer to that architecturally atrocious hotel down on Hobart's waterfront as the Sheraton despite the fact that it was changed to the Grand Chancellor when I was still in high school. It may be something else again now. I'm betting that in years to come there will still be people who hear whatever the new name is, laugh bitterly and so "Oh, that fucking psych ward?"

Here's my piece of advice, totally free: Fix it first. Changing the name while there are still problems will just attach negative connotations to the new name. Changing the name afterwards will do about as much good, but what the hell, you never know. It might work when all the current staff and patients are dead.

Link to the ABC News story.

Dear deity, but this is pathetic.

Apparently there is an annual "Quality of living global index" which ranks cities on how good they are to live in. Not drawn up by the UN, or the World Bank, or anyone you might think would have an interest in this, no: Drawn up by an international investment and consultancy firm.

It seems that Brisbane has slipped a bit in the latest rankings (Courier Mail). Big whoop.

However, what gets me about this story is the response from people to this. I'm not surprised that people are bitching instead of a.) moving to somewhere higher in the rankings, b.) laughing derisively at the idea that you can rank cities like this and expect everybody to agree with you or c.) thinking "Hmm... What do we need to improve?"

What gets me is just how personally people are taking this, and how petty they are about it. Commerce Queensland president got us off to a roaring start with this piece of pointless and "So what?" commentary:

"I am extremely offended," she said.

Your point being?

Employment support enterpreneur Sarina Russo did no better:

"I fail to understand why we have dropped." Well that, right there, may help to explain it, don't you think?

The chief executive of Brisbane Marketing was even more useless, challenging the assessors to "clean their glasses and come again."

Oooh, getting personal! That'll show them! That'll convince them to raise our rating!

And, incidentally, when the article says that Brisbane is the "Worst rated capital in the whole of Australia," I don't see ratings for Darin, Canberra or Hobart. Do you? I think they meant "Worst rated of the Australian capitals assessed." Shoddy workmanship, Melanie Christiansen, shoddy workmanship.

"Damn, I hadn't thought of that, said God, and disappeared in a puff of logic"

I rather like this. If any theists wish to argue it, their challenge is to define "faith"

God is an atheist (Too Much Coffee Man).

Well done, Centrelink

Question M1, on page 30 of the Claim for payments for people with disabilities, illnesses or injuries is "Are you permanently blind?"

Spot the irony.

Even worse is question M2: "Did someone help you complete this form?"

Is this some sort of test? Yes, I'm blind. No, nobody helped me. I'm psychic.

Mua'Dib might be able to fill out a written form using the amazing precognitive powers granted by the geriatric spice, melange, but I'm pretty sure that anybody on this world who was permanently blind, as opposed to merely being very, very badly vision impaired, would have difficulty.

And by the way, does anybody else think that being able to fill out a two-column-per-page form that is 32 pages long could be perceived as seriously calling into doubt your inability to undertake 15 hours of work or study each week? You'd have to do it in installments. Day 1: Lodge intent to claim. Day 2: Pages 1-10. Day 3: Pages 11-20, with a break in the middle...

It's a different story when CARS are involved!

So, the Queensland Government has been sued by people who claim that roadworks in Cairns have damaged their cars (Courier Mail).

I have two questions:Firstly, did any of those drivers have a look at the road they were driving on and, oh, I don't know, slow down or steer around potholes or try and take a different route? Or are they idiots who are trying to make other people pay for their own incompetence? Oh look, there's a look to a full story in the Cairns Post, which is not all that more helpful, but does make reference to scratched paint from concrete dust, and chassis damage from wet lime. Fair enough. But, this leads me onto:

Secondly: When, a few years ago, Queensalnd motorcyclists were claiming that gravel left around roadworks was shredding their tyres and the only response from the road builders was "Many road bike tyres are very high performance and that makes them delicate", what actually ended up happening?

Random drug-related thoughts

These will be very quick, and in response to news items from the ABC:

Conference told drinking needs to be "denormalised". Apparently, society needs to change the way it views drinking before rates of binge drinking will be diminished. Umm... well, duh! But good luck in actually doing anything.

Drug expert supports proposed new liquor changes. The changes proposed are in Western Australia and will involve locking down night-clubs two hours before closing time so that once people have left, they can't go back in. This includes, I speak from experience, stepping out the door, remembering that you've left something in the cloak room and not being able to go back in and fetch it. The expert in question is a researcher from the National Drug Institute (is it really?) at Curtin University, and he says that ... Hang on, the article is a bit confusing about what he does say. It says that he says that drinking is a bigger problem than illicit drug use (which I agree with, just by the way), and that longer and longer trading hours are associated with an increase in violence, but we're not talking about reducing trading hours, are we? Two hours before closing time is not when people decide to go out. They're already in there and hammered by that time. The comment leading the article is not supported by the quotes within said article. Strike one for quality journalism. There is, however, a lot of quoting from the Australian Hotels Association, saying that the industry will be destroyed. This seems like a slightly overblown reaction to me, but I have two questions (well, one question and a suggestion):

• Has it worked in Queensland. We have now had this in place for, oh, I don't know, a while now. Has it worked? Has there been less violence in pubs and clubs, outside pubs and clubs, on the street? There's enough police in Fortitude Valley every night of the week that surely they will have noticed a change, and arrest records are, after all, records. Has it worked?
• Let's consider, as an alternative, and I don't want to be snide or facetious here, but let's just consider enforcing the laws about letting inebriated people buy more alcohol. I have no wish to walk in the shoes of bar-staff and I don't know what their experience is, but if they don't feel safe or able or obliged to cut people off, then there are serious problems with training, licencing or security staffing.

Coroner finds non-sniffable petrol caused boy's death. Ah, Opal. So-called "non-sniffable" petrol, with fewer aromatic substances so that it's harder to get high and cause seriously nasty lasting neurological damage. There are a few concerns here, including: What's it doing to your car's engine? What's it doing to your fuel-economy? Does it work? Why the fuck are we inconveniencing motorists instead of addressing the social issues? But now here we have a boy who tried so hard to get high by sniffing that he suffocated himself. To death. I'm sorry, I thought that wasn't supposed to be possible. Reality check: Opal is still a form of petrol. That means that it floats on water, is highly combustible (which is the point, after all) and is a really savage solvent. When the Coroner said that promoting Opal fuels as non-sniffable is "misleading" he was probably being diplomatic.

There's a reason that Christians need their own bookstores to sell anything

There is a second hand books-and-everything-else shop across the road from my new work, and I finally wandered in today to have a look.

It's fantastic. it's one of these shops run by a couple of little old ladies, where there are incredibly tacky antiques, the occasional good find and stacks, I mean literally, of old books. I wandered in, lingered over the Fantasy/SF section (no Bester, no Leiber, too much Larry Niven, one ratty old copy of Lord Of The Rings), and kept on drifting. I came to the self-help etc. section (oh look, there's a copy of Dianetics! That should be in Fantasy, just let me fix that...) and found a book that claimed to present a unique theory of blended personalities and how to understand this and maximise your life.

Nothing wrong with this so far: There are numerous theories of personality or temperament, and why not another one?

So I picked it up, and flicked vaguely through it, not really intending to read anything, when I found the steaming pile of dog turd in the middle; A diagram which claimed that "there are only three basic types of personality". The three could be loosely described as Wrong 1, Wrong 2 and Good. Wrong 1 was something like "Natural Man" and was angsty and nervous. Wrong 2 was something like "Aggressive Self-Promoter" and was all pushy and unable to appreciate life. Good was...

Wait for it...

Drum-roll please...

"Christ-Controlled Christian."

Fuck off and die, you superstitious, sanctimonious hack.

There appears to be difference between "education" and "schooling"

To quote myself:

"I have commented here before that I am not particularly impressed with the quality of the science education that I received at school. I had some great teachers, but they were hamstrung by the curriculum".

I have just been alerted (thank you, Mark) that one possible explanation of this comes from Richard Feynman, and although he was talking about a particular situation in America, I wouldn't be too surprised if something similar was not the case here in Australia, when it comes to schools buying textbooks:

"They were false. They were hurried. They would try to be rigorous, but they would use examples (like automobiles in the street for "sets") which were almost OK, but in which there were always some subtleties. The definitions weren't accurate. Everything was a little bit ambiguous -- they weren't smart enough to understand what was meant by "rigor." They were faking it. They were teaching something they didn't understand, and which was, in fact, useless, at that time, for the child."

It goes on in that vein for some time, with impressive (and quite scary) amounts of detail.

We're all doomed.

"Turn the other cheek, that I may smite it."

Yeah, sure, Christians are peace-loving people who should have sole say over the laws in this country.

I really don't think so.

Some of the comments are especially entertaining.

Thoughts from the first thirty minutes of Catwoman

• Has anyone tried to quantise just exactly how sad it is that an obviously CGI cat is a better actor than Halle Berry?
• When she is lying on the rubbish heap covered in toxic cosmetics goop, what if she had been found by the seagulls first? "Seagullwoman" doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
• Michelle Pfeiffer was sexier wearing a full bodysuit.
  

How to tell when your goofy puppy is having you on with the dumb act.

The thing that looks like a dead animal skin is a dead animal skin - it used to belong to a goat. The (other) black and white thing he's lying on is a pillow. He didn't discover that lying in the corridor. He picked it up from where it had fallen off the bed and carried it out into the corridor so that he could lie on it.

This is the puppy who took far too long to toilet train, far too long to be taught not to chew shoes, is afraid of his own shadow and still won't heel reliably. Clearly he isn't stupid - he's been having us on.

Linux: Your best defence against idiocy

Some scammers just don't go to enough trouble.

Take this situation: Visiting a random web page, I find it redirected to a "Warning! You may have spyware installed!" page. Which then proceeds to fake scanning my system, with a long list of Windows DLLs flashing by, and a message saying that I have problems, including three worms. As a finishing touch, at the top of the page it tells me that I need to install ActiveX controls, and should click the icon at the top of the screen... And so on.

News flash: I run Linux. I don't have windows worms on my system, they're not binary compatible. For those of you who don't know what that means - it's like trying to run a petrol car on diesel. I don't have dlls at all. Or ActiveX controls. And because I am not using Internet Explorer (a fact which website servers can and frequently do determine using UserAgent identification), I don't have little buttons popping up to helpfully inform me that if I turned on ActiveX controls, it would be easier for utter bastards to hijack my computer and turn it into a zombie spam relay, sorry, enjoy an interactive web experience!

There is a famous quote that the most damaging thing that Microsoft has done is to lower people's expectations of the computer industry. It also seems that the market dominance of Windows and Internet Explorer (and Outlook), quite apart from making life easier for virus and worm writers by offering standardised security holes, offers a nice standardised way of conning the gullible, as well.

If you are on Windows, I recommend AdAware combined with AVG antivirus. If you are on a Mac or any Linux or other *nix machine, you don't need to worry about that stuff. Yet. But you do still need to worry about other security holes, and if updates are made regularly available, particularly for your web browser - do so.

Coffee Man says Die, Spawn Of Satan!

Now that I am slightly steaming (see previous post to explain the connection between mood and posting anything here), I will return to a realisation I arrived at about a week ago now.

I have, frequently, and will continue to do so, just as frequently, sworn at, been sarcastic about or even sardonic towards, excess packaging. Safety concerns have dictated occasionally ridiculous levels of foil or shrink-wrap security around medications and standard food items, but there are times when even that seems to go too far (foil seal on a bottle of two-stroke oil that already has a sealing, child-proof cap on it???), and this is without even going into individually wrapped snack packs, cheese slices and those single-serves of nurofen, guarana and berocca that you can buy at service stations now (for fuck's sake people, every car needs a proper first aid kit!)

Now I admit to some hypocrisy in this - I use a razor that takes replacement heads with four blades each - but I have found the one thing that pushes me over the edge from sarcasm into abuse.

Nespresso.

Fuck with coffee, and you are bound to get me riled up. I still criticise my friends for drinking instant coffee in my house, and they've been doing it for four years now. But Nespresso takes the idea of throwaway packaging to a ridiculous extreme.

What it is (and I'm not even going to provide a link for this) is an espresso system that uses an otherwise standard high-pressure espresso coffee machine and (this is the good bit) individual little cups of grounds. In a normal espresso, you dump a spoonful of grounds (spoons are provided with every machine, plunger, or set of steak knives - I have about five floating around my kitchen now) in the bowl, tamp it down (optional, and I welcome all rational arguments about why it shouldn't be), and attach it to the machine. Afterwards, knock the grounds out into a bin, rinse the basket under hot water, and it's ready for the next one. Or storage. Use hot enough water and you don't even need to wash the bloody thing bescause all the oils that spoil badly made coffee will be get rinsed off.

But this is, apparently, too dirty. It is too messy. It is too complicated. So instead you buy a box of individual packets, pop it in, draw your coffee, and then you can just take the packet out. Some machines will even eject it forcefully into a little bin so that you don't have to touch it.

What a colossal wank. You could a.) buy ground coffee, measure it to your precise requirements, shift between single-shot and double-shot seamlessly, play around with grind coarseness and roasts, and enjoy the effort that goes into making a brew that, in all likelihood, forms a key part of your day or b.) Pay someone else to measure grounds into little cups, pay for the packaging, pay for the gross inefficiencies of space that is required here, find the storage space in your kitchen, be unable to moderate the strength of the cup and be restricted by who stocks it and what roasts they deign to offer.

The fact that Krups was one of the first to jump on the bandwagon I see as even more evidence that this is coffee for those who don't care about coffee but want to be seen to be drinking it. Nespresso is the Hyundai Coupe of coffee. And if you should be so unwise as to visit the nespresso website, your ears will be assaulted by a foul elevator-music background track with, it seems, no way to turn it off. They're the AOL of coffee, as well.

But wait, there's more! While walking through our local supermarket the other day, I discovered... Little individually wrapped nespresso-style cups for stovetop machines. Who do I have to kill, to make the madness stop?

Healing energy, eh? Let's review the data.

A quick summary for all those who like to believe that "There's more in the world than we know about":


And thanks go to Randall Munroe of XKCD.com for his usual clear and concise explanation of a tricky and complex issue. You can also get this one on a T-shirt. I'll have to get one of those one day.

Do the Darwin Awards apply to soldiers? For being soldiers?

Oh, oh, oh, if only this turns out to be true!

Natural selection through military service.

Out of the mouths of political cartoonists.

For all those who still needed convincing that our current legal systems just plain flat out don't work as deterrents for the majority, here's why.

Shifty spin-doctor speak for dummies

This from an email newsletter from a recently re-elected Liberal senator from Queensland, while talking about the last federal election where her party got spanked:

"It would be very foolish not to acknowledge the broadside aimed at our Government in the recent election: Work Choices was unpopular; we weren’t seen as properly acknowledging the challenges of Climate Change; and some aspects of welfare reform were not communicated well."

What the fuck?? "not communicated well"? What, in the name of Satan's Pit Bull Terrier, is that supposed to mean? She's okay saying "unpopular", tries to pull a fast one with "not seen as properly acknowledging the challenges of Climate Change" but then "not communicated well". How slimy is that? She could have admitted that some aspects of welfare reform were, also, unpopular. But apparently the reforms were fine, they just didn't sell them well enough!

Incidentally, I don't remember there being an opinion poll attached to the ballot paper. All of this is still speculation. Well founded speculation in parts, but still just speculation.