the best things in life aren't things
Posts tagged Alcohol
Pricing and the brain
Oct 3rd
The pricier the wine, the more we enjoy it!
The wines and alcoholic beverage industry as a whole is just a huge marketing contraption, capable of churning brand after brand. It has recently been shown that the pricier the bottle and the fancier the label, the more we end up enjoying it. We have been conditioned to believe that the more we pay for a bottle of wine, it will only have to taste better; of course this is our fault from the beginning, because we are not wine experts – the price we pay for the wine is our only proxy.
Dr Rangel came to this conclusion by scanning the brains of 20 volunteers while giving them sips of wine. He used a trick called functional magnetic-resonance imaging, which can detect changes in the blood flow in parts of the brain that correspond to increased mental activity. He looked in particular at the activity of the medial orbitofrontal cortex. This is an area of the brain that previous experiments have shown is responsible for registering pleasant experiences.
Dr Rangel gave his volunteers sips of what he said were five different wines made from cabernet sauvignon grapes, priced at between $5 and $90 a bottle. He told each of them the price of the wine in question as he did so. Except, of course, that he was fibbing. He actually used only three wines. He served up two of them twice at different prices.
What is the truth?The scanner showed that the activity of the medial orbitofrontal cortices of the volunteers increased in line with the stated price of the wine. For example, when one of the wines was said to cost $10 a bottle it was rated less than half as good as when people were told it cost $90 a bottle, its true retail price. Moreover, when the team carried out a follow-up blind tasting without price information they got different results. The volunteers reported differences between the three “real” wines but not between the same wines when served twice.
via The Economist
By the way, wines are not the only things the marketing machine turned more expensive. We significantly overpay for bottled water, coffee, diamonds, weddings (etc). What else is there?
The five stages of drunkness
Oct 1st
1. Smart
This is when you suddenly become an expert on every subject. You know all and greatly wish to express this knowledge to anyone who will listen. At this stage you are also always right. And of course the person you are talking with is very wrong. You will talk for hours trying to convince someone that you are right. This makes for an interesting argument when both parties are “smart”. Two people talking, in fact, arguing about a subject neither one really knows anything about, but are convinced that they are they complete authority on the subject makes for great entertainment for those get the opportunity to listen in.
2. Handsome/Pretty
This is when you are convinced that you are the best looking person in the entire room and everyone is looking at you. You begin to wink at perfect strangers and ask them to dance because of course they had been admiring you the whole evening. You are the center of attention, and all eyes are directed at you because you are the most beautiful thing on the face of the earth. Now keep in mind that you are still smart, so you can talk to this person who has been admiring you about any and all subjects under the sun.
3. Rich
This is when you suddenly become the richest person in the world. You can buy drinks for the entire bar and put it on your bill because you surely have an armored truck full of your money parked behind the bar. You can also make bets in this stage. Now of course you still know all, so you will always win all your bets. And you have no concern for how much money you bet because you have all the money in the world. You will also begin to buy drinks for all the people in the bar who are admiring you because you are now the smartest, prettiest, and richest person on the face of the earth.
4. Bulletproof
You can now pick fights with the people you have been betting money with because you cannot be hurt by anything. At this point you would go up to the boyfriend of the woman who had been admiring your beautiful self all evening and challenge him to a battle of wits for money. You have no worry about losing this battle of wits because you know all, have all the money to cover this bet, and you obviously win a fight that might erupt if he looses.
5. Invisible
This is the final stage of drunkenness. At this point you can do absolutely anything because no one can see you. You can get up and dance on a table; you can strip down to your underwear, to impress the people who have been admiring you all evening, because the rest of the people in the room cannot see you. You are also invisible to the person whom you have picked a fight with earlier in the evening. You can walk through the streets singing at the top of your lungs (because of course you are still smart and know the tune perfectly) and no one will think anything of it because they can’t see you. All your social inhibitions are gone. You can do anything, because no one will know.
And you certainly won’t remember! 
