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#581
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Steel frames and le Tour
On Mon, 21 Jul 2008 21:34:25 -0700 (PDT), Scott
wrote: On Jul 20, 1:58*pm, wrote: On Sun, 20 Jul 2008 08:14:25 -0700 (PDT), " wrote: On Jul 19, 10:15*pm, wrote: On Sat, 19 Jul 2008 20:56:40 -0700, Howard Kveck wrote: In article , wrote: On Sat, 19 Jul 2008 01:04:33 -0700, Howard Kveck wrote: In article , On Fri, 18 Jul 2008 23:30:32 -0700, Howard Kveck wrote: In article , wrote: The rest of the "heavier" feeling was probably due to all the extra attention that I paid (does it feel heavier? lighter? how does it normally feel?), plus the unavoidable knowledge that there were _seven_ whole pounds sitting right there in plain sight whenever I looked down at the speedometer. * One point I haven't seen made, Carl: this isn't exactly a blind test, is it? If you really wanted to seriously test this, I think you'd have to devise a way to do it so you were unaware of when the bike had the extra weight on it when you went out on the road. Dear Howard, Here's the relevant post: * No, Carl, you state in your above post "the unavoidable knowledge that there were _seven_ whole pounds sitting right there in plain sight." That pretty much defines it as *not* a blind test. Dear Howard, Er, where did I argue with you? The relevant post that I quoted in full makes it plain as sin that it wasn't a blind test. * The point was that doing a blind test is the proper scientific way. Doing it so you know the condition of the bike ("I can see the extra weight") makes the results of minimal value. For fun, tell us how you would "seriously test" for the speed and acceleration effects of a 7-lb bicycle weight increase and what blinding procedures you'd use. * I'd think it would be obvious that you need to have a bike with a package on it that is enclosed. You have someone other than yourself either fill the package with seven pounds or not fill it. Then you ride it, not knowing the condition (standard weight or seven extra pounds). Dear Howard, The rider would probably notice the extra weight if he tips the familiar bike slightly sideways or just rolls it out the garage, so we have to be awfully careful to get him to sit on it. If he stood up, he might well notice the extra weight as the bike tipped from side to side. On a reasonable paved road, he might notice the vibration damping of the extra 7 pounds. Of course, you'd have to go to a lot of trouble to have someone else insert an extra 7 pounds on a random basis. The steel rods were handy, exactly the right weight, and didn't involve awkward wind drag questions or boxes. In any case, blind testing would be far more trouble than it's worth. In Newton's world we don't need a blind test to figure out the effect on acceleration or cruising speed when we add 7 pounds to a bicycle and rider of known mass--it's so trivial that it will be lost in the ordinary real-road variations of wind and rider power. Anyone can log times for a 15 mile ride for a week and see how much the time varies. Incidentally, it was John Tomlinson who kept demanding that I add the weight, apparently unable to understand how little difference it would make. He wanted it added for a year, an even less rigorous test. After all, my power output next year is likely to be lower, given my age. So far, no one has wondered out loud what the obvious effect of paying more attention would be and whether it would be likely to outweigh (sorry, couldn't resist it) the effect of a 4% weight increase. Cheers, Carl Fogel Carl *(Dear?) I think I know what the problem is. I have a similar problem with wine. To me, if the wine doesn't taste like pure alcohol, or like vinegar, I cannot distinguish between a $15 bottle of wine and a $150 bottle of wine. I am merely casual wine drinker and will never be a pro wine taster. With bicycles, it is the same. Maybe we are casual cyclists that cannot distinguish between materials or weighs. JT and jb are more likely the professional sort that have their bodies so fine tuned to bicycles as wine taster have their tongues tuned for wine. TDF riders, being pros, are even more sensitive to this subtle differences being able to distinguish bb types, composition of chainstays, seatstays, integrated headsets, carbon vs alloy cranks, *and even age of the bicycle. So, even though I can down a bottle of wine like the more sophisticated wine taster, and ride a fairly good distance at good speed like some of the sensitive cycling types, I certainly have not developed the subtle sense necessary to distinguish the fruity flavors, the oak, the chocolate, the age, the carbon seatstays, the oversize bb, the carbon brifters, etc. So, maybe you and I are of the less sophisticated kind for whom aromatherapy will not work for recovery. Not sure if this is an advantage or a disadvantage. Advantage wise, I am happy with my inexpensive bikes and with my $10-$15 bottles of wine. However, maybe I am not truly enjoying some of the subtleties of life. (XOXOXO?) Andres Dear Andres, Actually, "sophisticated" wine tasters may be just as happy as you, but they're mostly fooling themselves. The same is probably true for many of our more indignant posters, who believe (in good faith) that their bicycling shorts can detect speed and acceleration differences in the range of ~2%. Wine tasting lends itself to much easier testing than adding weight to bicycles. (Luckily, Newton can tell us what happens with the weights, so it's no big deal in the bicycle world.) Wine-tasting claims have never survived real testing: I guess you're not familiar with the test one undergoes to achieve Master Sommelier status? Dear Bret, "The Court of Master Sommeliers[1] is the most internationally recognized organization and certifies professional sommeliers. As of 2008 there are fewer than 160 people in the world who have attained the designation of Master Sommelier. This is up from 100 in 2000." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sommelier If you've taken the test, you can tell us more. Black glasses and blindfolds? If not, you may still have an interesting link that goes into details of how blind this test is: "The tasting examination is scored on the candidate's verbal abilities in clearly and accurately describing six different wines. Within twenty-five minutes he or she must: " "Identify, where appropriate, grape varieties, country of origin, district of origin and vintages of the wines tasted." http://www.mastersommeliers.org/exam/diploma Kind of vague, isn't it? The tasting examination is "scored", but there's nothing about how high a score is passing. Incidentally, Part 1 of the master sommelier examination is titled "Restaurant services and salesmanship"--it's far more detailed than the tasting section, which was quoted in its entirety. If you have a case in which _any_ group of a dozen wine experts reproduced their results in blind testing the next day with the same wines, you have data for a doctoral dissertation. Cheers, Carl Fogel |
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#582
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Steel frames and le Tour
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#583
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Steel frames and le Tour
On Mon, 21 Jul 2008 22:26:09 -0700 (PDT), Bret
wrote: On Jul 20, 9:35*pm, wrote: On Sun, 20 Jul 2008 21:15:14 -0600, wrote: On Sun, 20 Jul 2008 19:04:04 -0700, "Paul M. Hobson" wrote: wrote: Dear Andres, Actually, "sophisticated" wine tasters may be just as happy as you, but they're mostly fooling themselves. The same is probably true for many of our more indignant posters, who believe (in good faith) that their bicycling shorts can detect speed and acceleration differences in the range of ~2%. Wine tasting lends itself to much easier testing than adding weight to bicycles. (Luckily, Newton can tell us what happens with the weights, so it's no big deal in the bicycle world.) Wine-tasting claims have never survived real testing: [snip] Carl, I don't imagine you to be much of television watcher (neither am I), but I think you'll get a kick out of this nonetheless. *There was an episode of Myth-Busters where they tested the claim that running cheap vodka through a water filter would improve it and that 10 runs through the filter would bring it up to top shelf quality. So they ran batches of vodka through store bought Brita filters 1,2,3,...,and 10 times. *They then had a renowned vodka critic come in a rate the 10 filtered batches along with the unfiltered cheap vodka and the unfiltered top shelf vodka. Much to my surprise, he ranked all twelve vodkas correctly. \\paul Dear Paul, Here's a different take on tasting vodkas that hadn't been filtered: "Vodka is a neutral spirit, distilled, according to the U.S government definition, 'as to be without distinctive character, aroma, taste or color.' Most American vodkas originate, therefore, not with passionate, flannel-shirted men like those who create whines, but with corporatte giants like the agrochemical supplier Archer Daniels Midland. And the job of the vodka distiller is to take the 190-proof industrial swill such suppliers provide, add water, and _subtract_ as much of the taste as possible. Through massive image-building campains, however, vodka producers have managed to create very strong expectations of difference." [Almost like bicycles in the TDF--which one would you prefer and why?] "As a result, people believe that this liquor, which by its very _definition_ is without a distinctive character, actually varies from brand to brand. Moreover, they are willing to pay large amounts of money based on those differecnes. Lest I be dismissed as a tasteless boor, I wish to point out that there is a way to test my ravings. You could line upu a series of vodkas and a series of vodka sophisticates and perform a blind tasting. As it happens, 'The New York Times' did just that. And without their labels, fancy vodkas like Grey Goose and Ketel One didn't fare so well. Compared with conventional wisom, in fact, the results appeared random. Moreveover, of the twenty-one vodkas tasted, it was the cheap bar brand, Smirnoff, that came out at the top of the list. Our assessment of the world would be quite different if all our judgments could be insulated from expectation and based only on relevant data." --"Drunkard's Walk," Mlodinow, p. 214-5 The NYT article explains the different bases in vodkas: "In the United States almost all vodka producers buy neutral spirits that have already been distilled from grain by one of several big Midwestern companies like Archer Daniels Midland. The neutral spirits, which are 95 percent alcohol or more, are trucked to the producers, where they are filtered, diluted and bottled. In our tasting only one brand, Teton Glacier Potato vodka, was distilled by the producer. Another producer, Hangar 1, distills a portion of its spirits and buys the rest." "What sets vodkas apart from one another are essentially the base ingredients used in the distillation and the water. Most spirits can be made only from certain prescribed ingredients, but vodka can be distilled from just about anything that can be fermented into alcohol: grains, vegetables, even fruits." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/26/di...=1&pagewanted=... As for the mythbusters show, here's a summary: Myth: You can turn low-end vodka into top-shelf vodka with six filtrations of a domestic charcoal water filter (i.e. Brita filters) They set up the experiment so that the vodka testers would each get 8 shots of vodka: 6 from the filtration stations (single filtered, twice filtered, etc...), 1 top-shelf vodka, and 1 unfiltered low-end shot. The tasters were asked to rank the shots. The tasters we Anthony Dias Blue, vodka expert, executive director San Francisco World Spirits Competion Jamie, degree in Russian literature Kari, former undercover martini tester Kari: "I'm wondering if you might have contaminated your experiment by mixing on the mustache" Jamie: "either that or they're actually very sensitive and able to pick up on subtle variations in the chemistry in the vodka" Kari was a terrible judge, giving a much higher score to the unfiltered cheap vodka than the top-shelf vodka: Kari's worst: 3rd filtration Kari's second worst: top shelf Kari's third best: the cheap, unfiltered vodka Jamie was a better judge: Jamie's second worst: the cheap, unfiltered vodka Jamie's second best: fifth filtration Jamie's best: top shelf Anthony showed off his tasting skills: his ranking corresponded exactly to the number of filtrations, with the top-shelf vodka picked as the best. Anthony: "Passing a low-end vodka through a filter will make it better, but it won't make it a top shelf vodka" They analyzed the vodka samples and found that there was no difference in chemical composition between the filtered vodka and the unfiltered vodka. You're better off buying the top-shelf stuff than wasting a bunch of water filters. http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2006/04/e...red_up_vo.html Judging by the summary, Anthony Blue did quite well in detecting filtration. But it also sounds as if he knew in advance what he was looking for and as if the protocol was not exactly up to what James Randi's standards. The difference between vodka and wine tasting is that one is often detecting the difference between peaches, grain, potatoes, and so forth, while the other is trying to distinguish between grapes. Using a black glass in poor light has a terrible effect on the abilities of wine experts. Cheers (hic!), Carl Fogel Here's an entertaining wiki article on a famous wine-tasting fiasco, which includes this comment: "Some critics have suggested that wine tastings lack scientific validity. For example, Steven Spurrier said, 'The results of a blind tasting cannot be predicted and will not even be reproduced the next day by the same panel tasting the same wines' and in one case it was reported that 'A side-by-side chart of best-to-worst rankings of 18 wines by a roster of experienced tasters showed about as much consistency as a table of random numbers.'" *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgmen...ris_%28wine%29 The article from which those quotes were taken concludes with this interesting comment: "It's much the same lesson taught by UW psych prof Elizabeth Loftus' studies of how 'eyewitnesses' can remember events they never saw: 'Words and concepts and expectations trump perception every time; and among the senses themselves, the eyes have it all over smell, taste, and touch.'" "Touch? You bet; almost all red wines have some tannins in them, extracted from the grape skins during fermentation along with the pigments that make them red in the first place. Tannins feel 'rough' on the tongue. You'd think that anybody, let alone a veteran wine taster, would notice the absence of such a basic sensory datum." "And in fact, a small percentage of drinkers do. 'About 2 to 3 percent of people detect the white wine flavor,' Brochet [whose doctoral study is the subject of the article] told an interviewer last month, 'but invariably they have little experience with wine culture. . . . Connoisseurs, . . . the more training they have, the more mistakes they make.' Words to live by—-and not just when drinking wine." *http://www.seattleweekly.com/2002-02...ob-scandal.php Cheers, Carl Fogel Faux wine expert dude, This is not believable. I drink wine daily but don't consider myself an expert by any means, but I can certainly recognize the difference between two different bottles. I've participated in blind tastings. For example in a blind tasting of Cabernet Sauvignon, I had no difficulty identifying the "two buck chuck", it was bloody awful, and no difficulty identifying the wine that I brought, I knew its signature. In general, the quality of the wine was in line with the cost, though there are always exceptions. You really shouldn't believe everything you read on the internet. That article could have been written by a white zin drinker with an agenda. Dear Bret, So the California fiasco, involving some of the most famous French wine experts in the world, didn't happen? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgmen...ris_%28wine%29 And repeated testings by interested scientists just somehow fail to support your conclusion? Cheers, Carl Fogel |
#584
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Steel frames and le Tour
In article
, SLAVE of THE STATE wrote: On Jul 21, 7:13*pm, Tom Sherman wrote: SLAVE of THE STATE wrote: On Jul 19, 1:04 am, Howard Kveck wrote: * *No, Carl, you state in your above post "the unavoidable knowledge that there were _seven_ whole pounds sitting right there in plain sight." That pretty much defines it as *not* a blind test. You're arguing with a wanna-be-but-ain't scientist. Moreover, you'd have to weed out people like him to start with, as they are so biased they'll say they can't detect any weight difference, unless a piano is hidden inside the frame. Does not the stilted apparent politeness hide a troll? It reveals the indefatiguable steel plate holding his head together. Steel is real, baby. http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/warriorshtm/eaglescout.htm http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/warriorshtm/philosopher.htm -- Michael Press |
#585
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Steel frames and le Tour
On Jul 22, 2:04*am, wrote:
On Mon, 21 Jul 2008 22:26:09 -0700 (PDT), Bret wrote: On Jul 20, 9:35*pm, wrote: On Sun, 20 Jul 2008 21:15:14 -0600, wrote: On Sun, 20 Jul 2008 19:04:04 -0700, "Paul M. Hobson" wrote: wrote: Dear Andres, Actually, "sophisticated" wine tasters may be just as happy as you, but they're mostly fooling themselves. The same is probably true for many of our more indignant posters, who believe (in good faith) that their bicycling shorts can detect speed and acceleration differences in the range of ~2%. Wine tasting lends itself to much easier testing than adding weight to bicycles. (Luckily, Newton can tell us what happens with the weights, so it's no big deal in the bicycle world.) Wine-tasting claims have never survived real testing: [snip] Carl, I don't imagine you to be much of television watcher (neither am I), but I think you'll get a kick out of this nonetheless. *There was an episode of Myth-Busters where they tested the claim that running cheap vodka through a water filter would improve it and that 10 runs through the filter would bring it up to top shelf quality. So they ran batches of vodka through store bought Brita filters 1,2,3,...,and 10 times. *They then had a renowned vodka critic come in a rate the 10 filtered batches along with the unfiltered cheap vodka and the unfiltered top shelf vodka. Much to my surprise, he ranked all twelve vodkas correctly. \\paul Dear Paul, Here's a different take on tasting vodkas that hadn't been filtered: "Vodka is a neutral spirit, distilled, according to the U.S government definition, 'as to be without distinctive character, aroma, taste or color.' Most American vodkas originate, therefore, not with passionate, flannel-shirted men like those who create whines, but with corporatte giants like the agrochemical supplier Archer Daniels Midland. And the job of the vodka distiller is to take the 190-proof industrial swill such suppliers provide, add water, and _subtract_ as much of the taste as possible. Through massive image-building campains, however, vodka producers have managed to create very strong expectations of difference." [Almost like bicycles in the TDF--which one would you prefer and why?] "As a result, people believe that this liquor, which by its very _definition_ is without a distinctive character, actually varies from brand to brand. Moreover, they are willing to pay large amounts of money based on those differecnes. Lest I be dismissed as a tasteless boor, I wish to point out that there is a way to test my ravings. You could line upu a series of vodkas and a series of vodka sophisticates and perform a blind tasting. As it happens, 'The New York Times' did just that. And without their labels, fancy vodkas like Grey Goose and Ketel One didn't fare so well. Compared with conventional wisom, in fact, the results appeared random. Moreveover, of the twenty-one vodkas tasted, it was the cheap bar brand, Smirnoff, that came out at the top of the list. Our assessment of the world would be quite different if all our judgments could be insulated from expectation and based only on relevant data." --"Drunkard's Walk," Mlodinow, p. 214-5 The NYT article explains the different bases in vodkas: "In the United States almost all vodka producers buy neutral spirits that have already been distilled from grain by one of several big Midwestern companies like Archer Daniels Midland. The neutral spirits, which are 95 percent alcohol or more, are trucked to the producers, where they are filtered, diluted and bottled. In our tasting only one brand, Teton Glacier Potato vodka, was distilled by the producer. Another producer, Hangar 1, distills a portion of its spirits and buys the rest." "What sets vodkas apart from one another are essentially the base ingredients used in the distillation and the water. Most spirits can be made only from certain prescribed ingredients, but vodka can be distilled from just about anything that can be fermented into alcohol: grains, vegetables, even fruits." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/26/di...=1&pagewanted=... As for the mythbusters show, here's a summary: Myth: You can turn low-end vodka into top-shelf vodka with six filtrations of a domestic charcoal water filter (i.e. Brita filters) They set up the experiment so that the vodka testers would each get 8 shots of vodka: 6 from the filtration stations (single filtered, twice filtered, etc...), 1 top-shelf vodka, and 1 unfiltered low-end shot. The tasters were asked to rank the shots. The tasters we Anthony Dias Blue, vodka expert, executive director San Francisco World Spirits Competion Jamie, degree in Russian literature Kari, former undercover martini tester Kari: "I'm wondering if you might have contaminated your experiment by mixing on the mustache" Jamie: "either that or they're actually very sensitive and able to pick up on subtle variations in the chemistry in the vodka" Kari was a terrible judge, giving a much higher score to the unfiltered cheap vodka than the top-shelf vodka: Kari's worst: 3rd filtration Kari's second worst: top shelf Kari's third best: the cheap, unfiltered vodka Jamie was a better judge: Jamie's second worst: the cheap, unfiltered vodka Jamie's second best: fifth filtration Jamie's best: top shelf Anthony showed off his tasting skills: his ranking corresponded exactly to the number of filtrations, with the top-shelf vodka picked as the best. Anthony: "Passing a low-end vodka through a filter will make it better, but it won't make it a top shelf vodka" They analyzed the vodka samples and found that there was no difference in chemical composition between the filtered vodka and the unfiltered vodka. You're better off buying the top-shelf stuff than wasting a bunch of water filters. http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2006/04/e...red_up_vo.html Judging by the summary, Anthony Blue did quite well in detecting filtration. But it also sounds as if he knew in advance what he was looking for and as if the protocol was not exactly up to what James Randi's standards. The difference between vodka and wine tasting is that one is often detecting the difference between peaches, grain, potatoes, and so forth, while the other is trying to distinguish between grapes. Using a black glass in poor light has a terrible effect on the abilities of wine experts. Cheers (hic!), Carl Fogel Here's an entertaining wiki article on a famous wine-tasting fiasco, which includes this comment: "Some critics have suggested that wine tastings lack scientific validity. For example, Steven Spurrier said, 'The results of a blind tasting cannot be predicted and will not even be reproduced the next day by the same panel tasting the same wines' and in one case it was reported that 'A side-by-side chart of best-to-worst rankings of 18 wines by a roster of experienced tasters showed about as much consistency as a table of random numbers.'" *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgmen...ris_%28wine%29 The article from which those quotes were taken concludes with this interesting comment: "It's much the same lesson taught by UW psych prof Elizabeth Loftus' studies of how 'eyewitnesses' can remember events they never saw: 'Words and concepts and expectations trump perception every time; and among the senses themselves, the eyes have it all over smell, taste, and touch.'" "Touch? You bet; almost all red wines have some tannins in them, extracted from the grape skins during fermentation along with the pigments that make them red in the first place. Tannins feel 'rough' on the tongue. You'd think that anybody, let alone a veteran wine taster, would notice the absence of such a basic sensory datum." "And in fact, a small percentage of drinkers do. 'About 2 to 3 percent of people detect the white wine flavor,' Brochet [whose doctoral study is the subject of the article] told an interviewer last month, 'but invariably they have little experience with wine culture. . . . Connoisseurs, . . . the more training they have, the more mistakes they make.' Words to live by—-and not just when drinking wine." *http://www.seattleweekly.com/2002-02...ob-scandal.php Cheers, Carl Fogel Faux wine expert dude, This is not believable. I drink wine daily but don't consider myself an expert by any means, but I can certainly recognize the difference between two different bottles. I've participated in blind tastings. For example in a blind tasting of Cabernet Sauvignon, I had no difficulty identifying the "two buck chuck", it was bloody awful, and no difficulty identifying the wine that I brought, I knew its signature. In general, the quality of the wine was in line with the cost, though there are always exceptions. You really shouldn't believe everything you read on the internet. That article could have been written by a white zin drinker with an agenda. Dear Bret, So the California fiasco, involving some of the most famous French wine experts in the world, didn't happen? *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgmen...ris_%28wine%29 And repeated testings by interested scientists just somehow fail to support your conclusion? All that wiki article says to me is that CA wines were underrated at the time of the first tasting. The results were repeatable. Bret |
#586
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Steel frames and le Tour
On Tue, 22 Jul 2008 10:36:38 -0700 (PDT), Bret
wrote: On Jul 22, 2:04*am, wrote: On Mon, 21 Jul 2008 22:26:09 -0700 (PDT), Bret wrote: On Jul 20, 9:35*pm, wrote: On Sun, 20 Jul 2008 21:15:14 -0600, wrote: On Sun, 20 Jul 2008 19:04:04 -0700, "Paul M. Hobson" wrote: wrote: Dear Andres, Actually, "sophisticated" wine tasters may be just as happy as you, but they're mostly fooling themselves. The same is probably true for many of our more indignant posters, who believe (in good faith) that their bicycling shorts can detect speed and acceleration differences in the range of ~2%. Wine tasting lends itself to much easier testing than adding weight to bicycles. (Luckily, Newton can tell us what happens with the weights, so it's no big deal in the bicycle world.) Wine-tasting claims have never survived real testing: [snip] Carl, I don't imagine you to be much of television watcher (neither am I), but I think you'll get a kick out of this nonetheless. *There was an episode of Myth-Busters where they tested the claim that running cheap vodka through a water filter would improve it and that 10 runs through the filter would bring it up to top shelf quality. So they ran batches of vodka through store bought Brita filters 1,2,3,...,and 10 times. *They then had a renowned vodka critic come in a rate the 10 filtered batches along with the unfiltered cheap vodka and the unfiltered top shelf vodka. Much to my surprise, he ranked all twelve vodkas correctly. \\paul Dear Paul, Here's a different take on tasting vodkas that hadn't been filtered: "Vodka is a neutral spirit, distilled, according to the U.S government definition, 'as to be without distinctive character, aroma, taste or color.' Most American vodkas originate, therefore, not with passionate, flannel-shirted men like those who create whines, but with corporatte giants like the agrochemical supplier Archer Daniels Midland. And the job of the vodka distiller is to take the 190-proof industrial swill such suppliers provide, add water, and _subtract_ as much of the taste as possible. Through massive image-building campains, however, vodka producers have managed to create very strong expectations of difference." [Almost like bicycles in the TDF--which one would you prefer and why?] "As a result, people believe that this liquor, which by its very _definition_ is without a distinctive character, actually varies from brand to brand. Moreover, they are willing to pay large amounts of money based on those differecnes. Lest I be dismissed as a tasteless boor, I wish to point out that there is a way to test my ravings. You could line upu a series of vodkas and a series of vodka sophisticates and perform a blind tasting. As it happens, 'The New York Times' did just that. And without their labels, fancy vodkas like Grey Goose and Ketel One didn't fare so well. Compared with conventional wisom, in fact, the results appeared random. Moreveover, of the twenty-one vodkas tasted, it was the cheap bar brand, Smirnoff, that came out at the top of the list. Our assessment of the world would be quite different if all our judgments could be insulated from expectation and based only on relevant data." --"Drunkard's Walk," Mlodinow, p. 214-5 The NYT article explains the different bases in vodkas: "In the United States almost all vodka producers buy neutral spirits that have already been distilled from grain by one of several big Midwestern companies like Archer Daniels Midland. The neutral spirits, which are 95 percent alcohol or more, are trucked to the producers, where they are filtered, diluted and bottled. In our tasting only one brand, Teton Glacier Potato vodka, was distilled by the producer. Another producer, Hangar 1, distills a portion of its spirits and buys the rest." "What sets vodkas apart from one another are essentially the base ingredients used in the distillation and the water. Most spirits can be made only from certain prescribed ingredients, but vodka can be distilled from just about anything that can be fermented into alcohol: grains, vegetables, even fruits." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/26/di...=1&pagewanted=... As for the mythbusters show, here's a summary: Myth: You can turn low-end vodka into top-shelf vodka with six filtrations of a domestic charcoal water filter (i.e. Brita filters) They set up the experiment so that the vodka testers would each get 8 shots of vodka: 6 from the filtration stations (single filtered, twice filtered, etc...), 1 top-shelf vodka, and 1 unfiltered low-end shot. The tasters were asked to rank the shots. The tasters we Anthony Dias Blue, vodka expert, executive director San Francisco World Spirits Competion Jamie, degree in Russian literature Kari, former undercover martini tester Kari: "I'm wondering if you might have contaminated your experiment by mixing on the mustache" Jamie: "either that or they're actually very sensitive and able to pick up on subtle variations in the chemistry in the vodka" Kari was a terrible judge, giving a much higher score to the unfiltered cheap vodka than the top-shelf vodka: Kari's worst: 3rd filtration Kari's second worst: top shelf Kari's third best: the cheap, unfiltered vodka Jamie was a better judge: Jamie's second worst: the cheap, unfiltered vodka Jamie's second best: fifth filtration Jamie's best: top shelf Anthony showed off his tasting skills: his ranking corresponded exactly to the number of filtrations, with the top-shelf vodka picked as the best. Anthony: "Passing a low-end vodka through a filter will make it better, but it won't make it a top shelf vodka" They analyzed the vodka samples and found that there was no difference in chemical composition between the filtered vodka and the unfiltered vodka. You're better off buying the top-shelf stuff than wasting a bunch of water filters. http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2006/04/e...red_up_vo.html Judging by the summary, Anthony Blue did quite well in detecting filtration. But it also sounds as if he knew in advance what he was looking for and as if the protocol was not exactly up to what James Randi's standards. The difference between vodka and wine tasting is that one is often detecting the difference between peaches, grain, potatoes, and so forth, while the other is trying to distinguish between grapes. Using a black glass in poor light has a terrible effect on the abilities of wine experts. Cheers (hic!), Carl Fogel Here's an entertaining wiki article on a famous wine-tasting fiasco, which includes this comment: "Some critics have suggested that wine tastings lack scientific validity. For example, Steven Spurrier said, 'The results of a blind tasting cannot be predicted and will not even be reproduced the next day by the same panel tasting the same wines' and in one case it was reported that 'A side-by-side chart of best-to-worst rankings of 18 wines by a roster of experienced tasters showed about as much consistency as a table of random numbers.'" *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgmen...ris_%28wine%29 The article from which those quotes were taken concludes with this interesting comment: "It's much the same lesson taught by UW psych prof Elizabeth Loftus' studies of how 'eyewitnesses' can remember events they never saw: 'Words and concepts and expectations trump perception every time; and among the senses themselves, the eyes have it all over smell, taste, and touch.'" "Touch? You bet; almost all red wines have some tannins in them, extracted from the grape skins during fermentation along with the pigments that make them red in the first place. Tannins feel 'rough' on the tongue. You'd think that anybody, let alone a veteran wine taster, would notice the absence of such a basic sensory datum." "And in fact, a small percentage of drinkers do. 'About 2 to 3 percent of people detect the white wine flavor,' Brochet [whose doctoral study is the subject of the article] told an interviewer last month, 'but invariably they have little experience with wine culture. . . . Connoisseurs, . . . the more training they have, the more mistakes they make.' Words to live by—-and not just when drinking wine." *http://www.seattleweekly.com/2002-02...ob-scandal.php Cheers, Carl Fogel Faux wine expert dude, This is not believable. I drink wine daily but don't consider myself an expert by any means, but I can certainly recognize the difference between two different bottles. I've participated in blind tastings. For example in a blind tasting of Cabernet Sauvignon, I had no difficulty identifying the "two buck chuck", it was bloody awful, and no difficulty identifying the wine that I brought, I knew its signature. In general, the quality of the wine was in line with the cost, though there are always exceptions. You really shouldn't believe everything you read on the internet. That article could have been written by a white zin drinker with an agenda. Dear Bret, So the California fiasco, involving some of the most famous French wine experts in the world, didn't happen? *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgmen...ris_%28wine%29 And repeated testings by interested scientists just somehow fail to support your conclusion? All that wiki article says to me is that CA wines were underrated at the time of the first tasting. The results were repeatable. Bret Dear Bret, What does this say to you? "In 2001, Frederic Brochet, of the University of Bordeaux, conducted two separate and very mischievous experiments. In the first test, Brochet invited 57 [actually 54--the summary confuses the two separate tests] wine experts and asked them to give their impressions of what looked like two glasses of red and white wine. The wines were actually the same white wine, one of which had been tinted red with food coloring. But that didn't stop the experts from describing the 'red' wine in language typically used to describe red wines. One expert praised its 'jamminess,' while another enjoyed its 'crushed red fruit.' Not a single one noticed it was actually a white wine." http://www.clipmarks.com/clipmark/51...-1E1A3496DA7C/ Yikes! In the first test, not a single expert out of 54 drinking the "red" wine noticed that it was a white with food coloring. "The second test Brochet conducted was even more damning. He took a middling Bordeaux and served it in two different bottles. One bottle was a fancy grand-cru. The other bottle was an ordinary vin du table. Despite the fact that they were actually being served the exact same wine, the [57] experts gave the differently labeled bottles nearly opposite ratings." http://www.clipmarks.com/clipmark/51...-1E1A3496DA7C/ Brochet's own summary pdf is missing the chart for the first test, but has a hilarious comparison of the details of what 57 experts came up with when they thought they were drinking a fine wine (GCC) and a table wine (VDT) a week apart (actually just the same middling Bordeaux) on page 11: "A lot replaces a little, complex replaces simple, balanced replaces unbalanced under the simple effect of the label." http://www.academie-amorim.com/us/la...01/brochet.pdf Cheers, Carl Fogel |
#587
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Steel frames and le Tour
On Jul 22, 1:09*pm, wrote:
On Tue, 22 Jul 2008 10:36:38 -0700 (PDT), Bret wrote: On Jul 22, 2:04*am, wrote: On Mon, 21 Jul 2008 22:26:09 -0700 (PDT), Bret wrote: On Jul 20, 9:35*pm, wrote: On Sun, 20 Jul 2008 21:15:14 -0600, wrote: On Sun, 20 Jul 2008 19:04:04 -0700, "Paul M. Hobson" wrote: wrote: Dear Andres, Actually, "sophisticated" wine tasters may be just as happy as you, but they're mostly fooling themselves. The same is probably true for many of our more indignant posters, who believe (in good faith) that their bicycling shorts can detect speed and acceleration differences in the range of ~2%. Wine tasting lends itself to much easier testing than adding weight to bicycles. (Luckily, Newton can tell us what happens with the weights, so it's no big deal in the bicycle world.) Wine-tasting claims have never survived real testing: [snip] Carl, I don't imagine you to be much of television watcher (neither am I), but I think you'll get a kick out of this nonetheless. *There was an episode of Myth-Busters where they tested the claim that running cheap vodka through a water filter would improve it and that 10 runs through the filter would bring it up to top shelf quality. So they ran batches of vodka through store bought Brita filters 1,2,3,...,and 10 times. *They then had a renowned vodka critic come in a rate the 10 filtered batches along with the unfiltered cheap vodka and the unfiltered top shelf vodka. Much to my surprise, he ranked all twelve vodkas correctly. \\paul Dear Paul, Here's a different take on tasting vodkas that hadn't been filtered: "Vodka is a neutral spirit, distilled, according to the U.S government definition, 'as to be without distinctive character, aroma, taste or color.' Most American vodkas originate, therefore, not with passionate, flannel-shirted men like those who create whines, but with corporatte giants like the agrochemical supplier Archer Daniels Midland. And the job of the vodka distiller is to take the 190-proof industrial swill such suppliers provide, add water, and _subtract_ as much of the taste as possible. Through massive image-building campains, however, vodka producers have managed to create very strong expectations of difference." [Almost like bicycles in the TDF--which one would you prefer and why?] "As a result, people believe that this liquor, which by its very _definition_ is without a distinctive character, actually varies from brand to brand. Moreover, they are willing to pay large amounts of money based on those differecnes. Lest I be dismissed as a tasteless boor, I wish to point out that there is a way to test my ravings. You could line upu a series of vodkas and a series of vodka sophisticates and perform a blind tasting. As it happens, 'The New York Times' did just that. And without their labels, fancy vodkas like Grey Goose and Ketel One didn't fare so well. Compared with conventional wisom, in fact, the results appeared random. Moreveover, of the twenty-one vodkas tasted, it was the cheap bar brand, Smirnoff, that came out at the top of the list. Our assessment of the world would be quite different if all our judgments could be insulated from expectation and based only on relevant data." --"Drunkard's Walk," Mlodinow, p. 214-5 The NYT article explains the different bases in vodkas: "In the United States almost all vodka producers buy neutral spirits that have already been distilled from grain by one of several big Midwestern companies like Archer Daniels Midland. The neutral spirits, which are 95 percent alcohol or more, are trucked to the producers, where they are filtered, diluted and bottled. In our tasting only one brand, Teton Glacier Potato vodka, was distilled by the producer. Another producer, Hangar 1, distills a portion of its spirits and buys the rest." "What sets vodkas apart from one another are essentially the base ingredients used in the distillation and the water. Most spirits can be made only from certain prescribed ingredients, but vodka can be distilled from just about anything that can be fermented into alcohol: grains, vegetables, even fruits." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/26/di...=1&pagewanted=... As for the mythbusters show, here's a summary: Myth: You can turn low-end vodka into top-shelf vodka with six filtrations of a domestic charcoal water filter (i.e. Brita filters) They set up the experiment so that the vodka testers would each get 8 shots of vodka: 6 from the filtration stations (single filtered, twice filtered, etc...), 1 top-shelf vodka, and 1 unfiltered low-end shot. |
#588
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Steel frames and le Tour
On Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:31:36 -0700 (PDT), Bret
wrote: On Jul 22, 1:09*pm, wrote: On Tue, 22 Jul 2008 10:36:38 -0700 (PDT), Bret wrote: On Jul 22, 2:04*am, wrote: On Mon, 21 Jul 2008 22:26:09 -0700 (PDT), Bret wrote: On Jul 20, 9:35*pm, wrote: On Sun, 20 Jul 2008 21:15:14 -0600, wrote: On Sun, 20 Jul 2008 19:04:04 -0700, "Paul M. Hobson" wrote: wrote: Dear Andres, Actually, "sophisticated" wine tasters may be just as happy as you, but they're mostly fooling themselves. The same is probably true for many of our more indignant posters, who believe (in good faith) that their bicycling shorts can detect speed and acceleration differences in the range of ~2%. Wine tasting lends itself to much easier testing than adding weight to bicycles. (Luckily, Newton can tell us what happens with the weights, so it's no big deal in the bicycle world.) Wine-tasting claims have never survived real testing: [snip] Carl, I don't imagine you to be much of television watcher (neither am I), but I think you'll get a kick out of this nonetheless. *There was an episode of Myth-Busters where they tested the claim that running cheap vodka through a water filter would improve it and that 10 runs through the filter would bring it up to top shelf quality. So they ran batches of vodka through store bought Brita filters 1,2,3,...,and 10 times. *They then had a renowned vodka critic come in a rate the 10 filtered batches along with the unfiltered cheap vodka and the unfiltered top shelf vodka. Much to my surprise, he ranked all twelve vodkas correctly. \\paul Dear Paul, Here's a different take on tasting vodkas that hadn't been filtered: "Vodka is a neutral spirit, distilled, according to the U.S government definition, 'as to be without distinctive character, aroma, taste or color.' Most American vodkas originate, therefore, not with passionate, flannel-shirted men like those who create whines, but with corporatte giants like the agrochemical supplier Archer Daniels Midland. And the job of the vodka distiller is to take the 190-proof industrial swill such suppliers provide, add water, and _subtract_ as much of the taste as possible. Through massive image-building campains, however, vodka producers have managed to create very strong expectations of difference." [Almost like bicycles in the TDF--which one would you prefer and why?] "As a result, people believe that this liquor, which by its very _definition_ is without a distinctive character, actually varies from brand to brand. Moreover, they are willing to pay large amounts of money based on those differecnes. Lest I be dismissed as a tasteless boor, I wish to point out that there is a way to test my ravings. You could line upu a series of vodkas and a series of vodka sophisticates and perform a blind tasting. As it happens, 'The New York Times' did just that. And without their labels, fancy vodkas like Grey Goose and Ketel One didn't fare so well. Compared with conventional wisom, in fact, the results appeared random. Moreveover, of the twenty-one vodkas tasted, it was the cheap bar brand, Smirnoff, that came out at the top of the list. Our assessment of the world would be quite different if all our judgments could be insulated from expectation and based only on relevant data." --"Drunkard's Walk," Mlodinow, p. 214-5 The NYT article explains the different bases in vodkas: "In the United States almost all vodka producers buy neutral spirits that have already been distilled from grain by one of several big Midwestern companies like Archer Daniels Midland. The neutral spirits, which are 95 percent alcohol or more, are trucked to the producers, where they are filtered, diluted and bottled. In our tasting only one brand, Teton Glacier Potato vodka, was distilled by the producer. Another producer, Hangar 1, distills a portion of its spirits and buys the rest." "What sets vodkas apart from one another are essentially the base ingredients used in the distillation and the water. Most spirits can be made only from certain prescribed ingredients, but vodka can be distilled from just about anything that can be fermented into alcohol: grains, vegetables, even fruits." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/26/di...=1&pagewanted=... As for the mythbusters show, here's a summary: Myth: You can turn low-end vodka into top-shelf vodka with six filtrations of a domestic charcoal water filter (i.e. Brita filters) They set up the experiment so that the vodka testers would each get 8 shots of vodka: 6 from the filtration stations (single filtered, twice filtered, etc...), 1 top-shelf vodka, and 1 unfiltered low-end shot. The tasters were asked to rank the shots. The tasters we Anthony Dias Blue, vodka expert, executive director San Francisco World Spirits Competion Jamie, degree in Russian literature Kari, former undercover martini tester Kari: "I'm wondering if you might have contaminated your experiment by mixing on the mustache" Jamie: "either that or they're actually very sensitive and able to pick up on subtle variations in the chemistry in the vodka" Kari was a terrible judge, giving a much higher score to the unfiltered cheap vodka than the top-shelf vodka: Kari's worst: 3rd filtration Kari's second worst: top shelf Kari's third best: the cheap, unfiltered vodka Jamie was a better judge: Jamie's second worst: the cheap, unfiltered vodka Jamie's second best: fifth filtration Jamie's best: top shelf Anthony showed off his tasting skills: his ranking corresponded exactly to the number of filtrations, with the top-shelf vodka picked as the best. Anthony: "Passing a low-end vodka through a filter will make it better, but it won't make it a top shelf vodka" They analyzed the vodka samples and found that there was no difference in chemical composition between the filtered vodka and the unfiltered vodka. You're better off buying the top-shelf stuff than wasting a bunch of water filters. http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2006/04/e...red_up_vo.html Judging by the summary, Anthony Blue did quite well in detecting filtration. But it also sounds as if he knew in advance what he was looking for and as if the protocol was not exactly up to what James Randi's standards. The difference between vodka and wine tasting is that one is often detecting the difference between peaches, grain, potatoes, and so forth, while the other is trying to distinguish between grapes. Using a black glass in poor light has a terrible effect on the abilities of wine experts. Cheers (hic!), Carl Fogel Here's an entertaining wiki article on a famous wine-tasting fiasco, which includes this comment: "Some critics have suggested that wine tastings lack scientific validity. For example, Steven Spurrier said, 'The results of a blind tasting cannot be predicted and will not even be reproduced the next day by the same panel tasting the same wines' and in one case it was reported that 'A side-by-side chart of best-to-worst rankings of 18 wines by a roster of experienced tasters showed about as much consistency as a table of random numbers.'" *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgmen...ris_%28wine%29 The article from which those quotes were taken concludes with this interesting comment: "It's much the same lesson taught by UW psych prof Elizabeth Loftus' studies of how 'eyewitnesses' can remember events they never saw: 'Words and concepts and expectations trump perception every time; and among the senses themselves, the eyes have it all over smell, taste, and touch.'" "Touch? You bet; almost all red wines have some tannins in them, extracted from the grape skins during fermentation along with the pigments that make them red in the first place. Tannins feel 'rough' on the tongue. You'd think that anybody, let alone a veteran wine taster, would notice the absence of such a basic sensory datum." "And in fact, a small percentage of drinkers do. 'About 2 to 3 percent of people detect the white wine flavor,' Brochet [whose doctoral study is the subject of the article] told an interviewer last month, 'but invariably they have little experience with wine culture. . . . Connoisseurs, . . . the more training they have, the more mistakes they make.' Words to live by—-and not just when drinking wine." *http://www.seattleweekly.com/2002-02...ob-scandal.php Cheers, Carl Fogel Faux wine expert dude, This is not believable. I drink wine daily but don't consider myself an expert by any means, but I can certainly recognize the difference between two different bottles. I've participated in blind tastings. For example in a blind tasting of Cabernet Sauvignon, I had no difficulty identifying the "two buck chuck", it was bloody awful, and no difficulty identifying the wine that I brought, I knew its signature. In general, the quality of the wine was in line with the cost, though there are always exceptions. You really shouldn't believe everything you read on the internet. That article could have been written by a white zin drinker with an agenda. Dear Bret, So the California fiasco, involving some of the most famous French wine experts in the world, didn't happen? *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgmen...ris_%28wine%29 And repeated testings by interested scientists just somehow fail to support your conclusion? All that wiki article says to me is that CA wines were underrated at the time of the first tasting. The results were repeatable. Bret Dear Bret, What does this say to you? "In 2001, Frederic Brochet, of the University of Bordeaux, conducted two separate and very mischievous experiments. In the first test, Brochet invited 57 [actually 54--the summary confuses the two separate tests] wine experts and asked them to give their impressions of what looked like two glasses of red and white wine. The wines were actually the same white wine, one of which had been tinted red with food coloring. But that didn't stop the experts from describing the 'red' wine in language typically used to describe red wines. One expert praised its 'jamminess,' while another enjoyed its 'crushed red fruit.' Not a single one noticed it was actually a white wine." http://www.clipmarks.com/clipmark/51...-1E1A3496DA7C/ Yikes! In the first test, not a single expert out of 54 drinking the "red" wine noticed that it was a white with food coloring. "The second test Brochet conducted was even more damning. He took a middling Bordeaux and served it in two different bottles. One bottle was a fancy grand-cru. The other bottle was an ordinary vin du table. Despite the fact that they were actually being served the exact same wine, the [57] experts gave the differently labeled bottles nearly opposite ratings." http://www.clipmarks.com/clipmark/51...-1E1A3496DA7C/ Brochet's own summary pdf is missing the chart for the first test, but has a hilarious comparison of the details of what 57 experts came up with when they thought they were drinking a fine wine (GCC) and a table wine (VDT) a week apart (actually just the same middling Bordeaux) on page 11: "A lot replaces a little, complex replaces simple, balanced replaces unbalanced under the simple effect of the label." *http://www.academie-amorim.com/us/la...01/brochet.pdf Cheers, Carl Fogel This says to me that Frederic Brochet throws the word expert around rather freely. Bret Dear Bret, So it takes a _really_ expert "expert" to tell the difference between white and red wine if food coloring is added? Or we need to find a "master sommelier" to get past the fake labels that say fine wine or table wine and notice he's drinking the same middling Bordeaux that he tasted last week? Cheers, Carl Fogel |
#589
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Steel frames and le Tour
On Jul 22, 2:40*pm, wrote:
On Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:31:36 -0700 (PDT), Bret wrote: On Jul 22, 1:09*pm, wrote: On Tue, 22 Jul 2008 10:36:38 -0700 (PDT), Bret wrote: On Jul 22, 2:04*am, wrote: On Mon, 21 Jul 2008 22:26:09 -0700 (PDT), Bret wrote: On Jul 20, 9:35*pm, wrote: On Sun, 20 Jul 2008 21:15:14 -0600, wrote: On Sun, 20 Jul 2008 19:04:04 -0700, "Paul M. Hobson" wrote: wrote: Dear Andres, Actually, "sophisticated" wine tasters may be just as happy as you, but they're mostly fooling themselves. The same is probably true for many of our more indignant posters, who believe (in good faith) that their bicycling shorts can detect speed and acceleration differences in the range of ~2%. Wine tasting lends itself to much easier testing than adding weight to bicycles. (Luckily, Newton can tell us what happens with the weights, so it's no big deal in the bicycle world.) Wine-tasting claims have never survived real testing: [snip] Carl, I don't imagine you to be much of television watcher (neither am I), but I think you'll get a kick out of this nonetheless. *There was an episode of Myth-Busters where they tested the claim that running cheap vodka through a water filter would improve it and that 10 runs through the filter would bring it up to top shelf quality. So they ran batches of vodka through store bought Brita filters 1,2,3,...,and 10 times. *They then had a renowned vodka critic come in a rate the 10 filtered batches along with the unfiltered cheap vodka and the unfiltered top shelf vodka. Much to my surprise, he ranked all twelve vodkas correctly. \\paul Dear Paul, Here's a different take on tasting vodkas that hadn't been filtered: "Vodka is a neutral spirit, distilled, according to the U.S government definition, 'as to be without distinctive character, aroma, taste or color.' Most American vodkas originate, therefore, not with passionate, flannel-shirted men like those who create whines, but with corporatte giants like the agrochemical supplier Archer Daniels Midland. And the job of the vodka distiller is to take the 190-proof industrial swill such suppliers provide, add water, and _subtract_ as much of the taste as possible. Through massive image-building campains, however, vodka producers have managed to create very strong expectations of difference." [Almost like bicycles in the TDF--which one would you prefer and why?] "As a result, people believe that this liquor, which by its very _definition_ is without a distinctive character, actually varies from brand to brand. Moreover, they are willing to pay large amounts of money based on those differecnes. Lest I be dismissed as a tasteless boor, I wish to point out that there is a way to test my ravings. You could line upu a series of vodkas and a series of vodka sophisticates and perform a blind tasting. As it happens, 'The New York Times' did just that. And without their labels, fancy vodkas like Grey Goose and Ketel One didn't fare so well. Compared with conventional wisom, in fact, the results appeared random. Moreveover, of the twenty-one vodkas tasted, it was the cheap bar brand, Smirnoff, that came out at the top of the list. Our assessment of the world would be quite different if all our judgments could be insulated from expectation and based only on relevant data." --"Drunkard's Walk," Mlodinow, p. 214-5 The NYT article explains the different bases in vodkas: "In the United States almost all vodka producers buy neutral spirits that have already been distilled from grain by one of several big Midwestern companies like Archer Daniels Midland. The neutral spirits, which are 95 percent alcohol or more, are trucked to the producers, where they are filtered, diluted and bottled. In our tasting only one brand, Teton Glacier Potato vodka, was distilled by the producer. |
#590
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Steel frames and le Tour
On Jul 22, 1:43*am, wrote:
On Mon, 21 Jul 2008 21:34:25 -0700 (PDT), Scott wrote: On Jul 20, 1:58*pm, wrote: On Sun, 20 Jul 2008 08:14:25 -0700 (PDT), " wrote: On Jul 19, 10:15*pm, wrote: On Sat, 19 Jul 2008 20:56:40 -0700, Howard Kveck wrote: In article , wrote: On Sat, 19 Jul 2008 01:04:33 -0700, Howard Kveck wrote: In article , On Fri, 18 Jul 2008 23:30:32 -0700, Howard Kveck wrote: In article , wrote: The rest of the "heavier" feeling was probably due to all the extra attention that I paid (does it feel heavier? lighter? how does it normally feel?), plus the unavoidable knowledge that there were _seven_ whole pounds sitting right there in plain sight whenever I looked down at the speedometer. * One point I haven't seen made, Carl: this isn't exactly a blind test, is it? If you really wanted to seriously test this, I think you'd have to devise a way to do it so you were unaware of when the bike had the extra weight on it when you went out on the road. Dear Howard, Here's the relevant post: * No, Carl, you state in your above post "the unavoidable knowledge that there were _seven_ whole pounds sitting right there in plain sight." That pretty much defines it as *not* a blind test. Dear Howard, Er, where did I argue with you? The relevant post that I quoted in full makes it plain as sin that it wasn't a blind test. * The point was that doing a blind test is the proper scientific way. Doing it so you know the condition of the bike ("I can see the extra weight") makes the results of minimal value. For fun, tell us how you would "seriously test" for the speed and acceleration effects of a 7-lb bicycle weight increase and what blinding procedures you'd use. * I'd think it would be obvious that you need to have a bike with a package on it that is enclosed. You have someone other than yourself either fill the package with seven pounds or not fill it. Then you ride it, not knowing the condition (standard weight or seven extra pounds). Dear Howard, The rider would probably notice the extra weight if he tips the familiar bike slightly sideways or just rolls it out the garage, so we have to be awfully careful to get him to sit on it. If he stood up, he might well notice the extra weight as the bike tipped from side to side. On a reasonable paved road, he might notice the vibration damping of the extra 7 pounds. Of course, you'd have to go to a lot of trouble to have someone else insert an extra 7 pounds on a random basis. The steel rods were handy, exactly the right weight, and didn't involve awkward wind drag questions or boxes. In any case, blind testing would be far more trouble than it's worth. In Newton's world we don't need a blind test to figure out the effect on acceleration or cruising speed when we add 7 pounds to a bicycle and rider of known mass--it's so trivial that it will be lost in the ordinary real-road variations of wind and rider power. Anyone can log times for a 15 mile ride for a week and see how much the time varies. Incidentally, it was John Tomlinson who kept demanding that I add the weight, apparently unable to understand how little difference it would make. He wanted it added for a year, an even less rigorous test. After all, my power output next year is likely to be lower, given my age. So far, no one has wondered out loud what the obvious effect of paying more attention would be and whether it would be likely to outweigh (sorry, couldn't resist it) the effect of a 4% weight increase. Cheers, Carl Fogel Carl *(Dear?) I think I know what the problem is. I have a similar problem with wine. To me, if the wine doesn't taste like pure alcohol, or like vinegar, I cannot distinguish between a $15 bottle of wine and a $150 bottle of wine. I am merely casual wine drinker and will never be a pro wine taster. With bicycles, it is the same. Maybe we are casual cyclists that cannot distinguish between materials or weighs. JT and jb are more likely the professional sort that have their bodies so fine tuned to bicycles as wine taster have their tongues tuned for wine. TDF riders, being pros, are even more sensitive to this subtle differences being able to distinguish bb types, composition of chainstays, seatstays, integrated headsets, carbon vs alloy cranks, *and even age of the bicycle. So, even though I can down a bottle of wine like the more sophisticated wine taster, and ride a fairly good distance at good speed like some of the sensitive cycling types, I certainly have not developed the subtle sense necessary to distinguish the fruity flavors, the oak, the chocolate, the age, the carbon seatstays, the oversize bb, the carbon brifters, etc. So, maybe you and I are of the less sophisticated kind for whom aromatherapy will not work for recovery. Not sure if this is an advantage or a disadvantage. Advantage wise, I am happy with my inexpensive bikes and with my $10-$15 bottles of wine. However, maybe I am not truly enjoying some of the subtleties of life. (XOXOXO?) Andres Dear Andres, Actually, "sophisticated" wine tasters may be just as happy as you, but they're mostly fooling themselves. The same is probably true for many of our more indignant posters, who believe (in good faith) that their bicycling shorts can detect speed and acceleration differences in the range of ~2%. Wine tasting lends itself to much easier testing than adding weight to bicycles. (Luckily, Newton can tell us what happens with the weights, so it's no big deal in the bicycle world.) Wine-tasting claims have never survived real testing: I guess you're not familiar with the test one undergoes to achieve Master Sommelier status? Dear Bret, "The Court of Master Sommeliers[1] is the most internationally recognized organization and certifies professional sommeliers. As of 2008 there are fewer than 160 people in the world who have attained the designation of Master Sommelier. This is up from 100 in 2000." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sommelier If you've taken the test, you can tell us more. Black glasses and blindfolds? If not, you may still have an interesting link that goes into details of how blind this test is: "The tasting examination is scored on the candidate's verbal abilities in clearly and accurately describing six different wines. Within twenty-five minutes he or she must: " "Identify, where appropriate, grape varieties, country of origin, district of origin and vintages of the wines tasted." *http://www.mastersommeliers.org/exam/diploma Kind of vague, isn't it? The tasting examination is "scored", but there's nothing about how high a score is passing. Incidentally, Part 1 of the master sommelier examination is titled "Restaurant services and salesmanship"--it's far more detailed than the tasting section, which was quoted in its entirety. If you have a case in which _any_ group of a dozen wine experts reproduced their results in blind testing the next day with the same wines, you have data for a doctoral dissertation. Cheers, Carl Fogel- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - Well, as I happen to know a Master Sommelier (who by chance happens to be a former bike racer) who lives in Boulder, maybe I'll ask him what the test is really all about. It'll give me an excuse to visit his restaurant, as if I needed one. What I don't have, and probably can't get for at least a couple of months, is a reservation. I suppose I could just email him, but I'd rather go have dinner. |
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