Expensive vs. Cheap Wine

In one study with over 6,000 taste tasters, comprising about 12% sommeliers and the rest general public, they tried to determine if people like expensive wines more than cheap ones.
It found the correlation between price and overall rating is small and negative, suggesting that individuals on average enjoy more expensive wines slightly less. For individuals with wine training however, there are indications of a positive relationship between price and enjoyment.

Results indicate that both the prices of wines and wine recommendations by experts may be poor guides for non-expert wine consumers.
Consider that over 400 compounds which influence the scent alone have been identified in wine. Also, temperature by itself can make a huge difference to taste, because of how this can affect smell and taste. As wine enthusiast David Derbyshire notes, “Serve a New World chardonnay too cold and you’ll only taste the overpowering oak. Serve a red too warm and the heady boozy qualities will be overpowering.”

As for the wine experts, while they may have honed their skills with sometimes thousands of hours of study into all things wine, they still have the same brain as the rest of us. Wine expert and journalist Katie Kelly Bell, was traveling with a fellow group of wine connoisseurs. While at Waters Vineyards in Washington State, the owner poured everyone two glasses of white wine and asked them to identify what types they were.


Bell sums up: "We swirled, we sniffed, and we wrinkled our brows in contemplation, some of us nodding with assurance. I took notes, finding the first white to be more floral and elegant than the second. Drawing on my years and years (there have been too many) of tasting, studying and observation, I swiftly concluded that the first wine was an unoaked Chardonnay and the second was a Sauvignon Blanc, easy peasy. Much to my mortification I was dead wrong, as was everyone else in the room. The proprietor chuckled and informed his room that the wines were actually the same wine; one was just warmer than the other. He wasn’t intentionally shaming us (not one person got it right); he was pointedly demonstrating the power of just one element in the wine tasting experience: temperature."

A test conducted at the suggestion of winery owner Robert Hodgson at the California State Fair wine competition. Panels of 65 to 70 expert judges were given a huge variety of wines to rank as per usual, but what they were not told was that they were actually given each of the wines three times and from the same exact bottle.

After running this same experiment four consecutive years, what Hodgson found was that, to quote the paper published on the experiment, only “about 10 percent of the judges were able to replicate their score within a single medal group.” In fact, he even found about 10% of the judges were so far off that they switched a Bronze rating to a Gold for the exact same wine from the exact same bottle.

In another experiment, Brochet also gave a similar panel a glass of white wine and a glass of red wine and gave them a list of common words used to describe white and red wines and told them to assign them appropriately to the two wines in front of them. It turns out the red wine was actually the same as the white wine except dyed red, and only a small percentage of the testers were able to accurately identify that both wines tasted the same in the descriptive words they chose to identify each wine. Not all of the taste testers got it wrong.

Bottom Line - Wine tasting is subjective and what about a given type appeals to you is all that matters. If knowing you paid $200 for that glass enhances your experience, great. For others buying several bottles of Two-Buck Chuck so they can enjoy many glasses with friends may make that one all the more enjoyable. The only thing that matters with regard to a wine is whether or not you like it.

Library of Congress Photos

It has a website showing free downloadable photos of 11, 710 roadside buildings and statues around the US, from classic diners to Paul Bunyan, to hot dogs, and more. They are true nostalgia. I found a few that I have seen in my travels. Fun diversion. LINK

Happy Friday

A smile is the window to your soul.

I always open the blinds to let the light shine in, especially on a Happy Friday!

Burger Sandwich

A burger is not called a sandwich because it is not sandwich. A sandwich is made by putting a filling between two slices of cut bread. Sandwiches can be hot or cold.

Only bread slices can make a sandwich, anything placed in a bun, roll, sub, cob, or whatever not a sandwich. A patty melt is a sandwich that has a burger between two slices of, usually Rye bread.

Palindrome Dates

This is the last full week of palindrome dates in this century. However, there are still plenty of single palindrome days to celebrate. If you are willing to add a zero to the beginning of the date, you can look forward to February 11, 2020 (02-11-20) and February 22, 2020 (02-22-20).
9-13-19 (91319)
9-14-19 (91419)
9-15-19 (91519)
9-16-19 (91619)
9-17-19 (91719)
9-18-19 (91819)
9-19-19 (91919)
A palindrome is a word, phrase, or sequence that reads the same backward as forward.

Steering Controls Trivia

In dual-control airplanes, the captain always sits on the left side of the plane. In helicopters, the captain sits on the right side.

Many early American motorized vehicles placed the steering wheel on the right hand side of the car, even though America used the keep-right driving rule.  This practice was ended largely due to Henry Ford. He preferred the left side steering wheel.  Ford cars adopted the left hand side steering wheel and, due to their popularity squashed right hand steering wheel cars in America.

Typing Emojis Tip

If you are a Windows user, there is a quick keyboard shortcut to add emojis to whatever you are typing. Hold down the Windows-key and tap the period (.) key. A new box will pop up from which you can select an emoji. Tap on one to add it to your document, email, etc. You can scroll down for more to use. The bottom row allows you to change categories, such as objects, people, food, etc.

After you open the emoji box with Windows-key/Period, you start typing and the box will search for a match.

Overpaying for Fast Broadband

Recently, 53 reporters worked with Stanford and another major University to develop custom software and high end routers to monitor speed at the router level as opposed to most speed tests that are done at the device level (such as your TV or PC).

They found that even trying to stream video to more than 7 devices at the same time, most people were never able to use more than on average 18 Mbps. Startup times for Netflix and other streaming services were within .6 seconds regardless of if you had a 15 mbps connection or a 500mbps connection. Ironically one of the few ways you are able to fill your full bandwidth is running a speed test. The test sends a large file and tests how long it takes to transmit it.

One of the few times having a super fast connection is useful is if you are downloading really big files, like movies. Most often, we just watch movies and do not download them.

For one or two TVs, 25mbps up and down is good, including Netflix, Prime and any other service. For families with many devices, children playing online games and multiple TVs being used at the same time, 50mbps up and down is more than sufficient. For most people, any speeds past these provide no benefit and are a waste of money.

I and Me

Here is a quick test for using I and me. Take the other person out of the sentence to see if it still makes sense.
"Draw this picture of my husband and me." "Draw this picture of me." Me is correct.

"Hanging out with my girlfriend and I." "Hanging out with I." It does not make sense, so I is incorrect.
------------------

Optimists May Live Longer

According to a US study, optimists are more likely to live longer than those who have a more negative approach to life. The theory is that optimists may find it easier to control emotions and so be protected from the effects of stress.

A recent study spanning thousands of people and three decades, confirmed optimists live longer. Optimistic people live as much as 15% longer than pessimists. Scientists combined data from two large, long-term studies: one including 69,744 women and another of 1,429 men, all of whom completed questionnaires that assessed their feelings about the future. After controlling for health conditions, behaviors, like diet and exercise and other demographic information, the scientists showed that the most optimistic women (top 25%) lived an average of 14.9% longer than their more pessimistic peers.
For the men, the most optimistic of the bunch lived 10.9% longer than their peers, on average. Results were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The most optimistic women were also 1.5 times more likely to reach 85 years old than the least optimistic women, whereas the most optimistic men were 1.7 times more likely to make it to that age.

Prof Bruce Hood, chair of developmental psychology in society at the University of Bristol runs a course called "the science of happiness". He said the study supported existing evidence of the benefits of positive thinking. He added: "I think that one causal mechanism could be that optimists cope better with stress, and this could be by avoiding rumination about negative life events.

Happy Friday

Happiness is not the fulfillment of what you want, but the realization of what you already have.

I am always fulfilled, especially on a Happy Friday!

Conception Day, Russia

September 12 is Conception Day, also called Procreation Day in Russia and couples get the day off specifically to have sex. Couples who “give birth to a patriot” during the June 12 festivities win money, cars, refrigerators and other prizes.

Origin of Cardboard Box

Few inventions have blended as seamlessly into our daily living routines as the humble cardboard box. During the 1st and 2nd century, the Han Dynasty of China was pioneering the use of paper. During the same era, sheets of bark from the Mulberry tree were used to wrap and protect food, one of the earliest examples of a sturdy, wood-based product being re-purposed for packaging.
The earliest form of the cardboard box as we know it today did not appear until the 1817 German board game The Game of Besieging. Throughout the 19th century, companies began using the boxes as a means of storage and transport for cereals and even for moth eggs used by silk manufacturers.
A pleat was needed in order to turn these carriers into something more durable. During 1856, top hat peddlers Edward Allen and Edward Healey used a stiffer paper made with a fluted sheet in the middle of two layers to provide stability and warmth to the lining. It was a precursor to corrugated cardboard.
The breakthrough came during 1879, when Robert Gair, owner of a Brooklyn paper factory, figured out he could both score a single sheet of cardboard and then have his printing press cut it at the same time, eliminating hand-cutting.
Gair sold consumer product companies on this handy new form of storage, eventually receiving a 2-million-piece order from Nabisco. Snack foods could now travel without the danger of being crushed, and soon the cardboard box was migrating from kitchen cupboards to anywhere a cheap, effective form of packaging was needed.

During the 1930s, the Finnish government adopted the boxes as part of a take-home maternity package for new mothers who may not have been able to afford cribs. Babies took their first naps in the mattress-lined box.

Blog Visitors

An interesting change this past month as the top twelve countries reading my blog were, in order: United States, Vietnam, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Thailand, Taiwan, Switzerland, Sri Lanka, South Korea, and South Africa. Welcome to my new BFFs. Am delighted by the diversity of readers.