e-Nagar

Frankly, I don’t. I cannot differentiate one from another. So I conducted this test to find out if I am the savorly challenged person around or there are hordes like me.

IT industry is considered to be filled with people who can drink pitcher full of it, so they could be no better test subjects. There is one friend of mine who drank a whole 750ml bottle of beer in 19 seconds flat (I do not think I can even drink water that fast)

So with this aim in mind, I started with the most freely available human resources at my disposal. Company colleagues! I stocked the bar with 6 different kinds of beer, 5 different kinds of soda (for the tea-totlers)

Beer I picked up was:

1) Kingfisher (stuck to Premium variation only… as strong and lager might be too close for anybody to judge)

2) Fosters

3) Castle

4) Cobra

5) Knock Out

6) Hayward’s 5000

Everybody was encouraged to have a sip, smell and sample them before they were handed out the unknown drink. At later point of time, to simplify the competition, I also allowed people to taste all the 6 brands after the test, so that they could make a second guess.

To my surprise, out of the 15 contestants who gave the test, only 2 could correctly guess their brands. Being a dice player, I thought the odds of the random guess would be around 3 correct guesses. The most interesting observation was when I asked the guy who seems to be the foremost proponent of organizing beer parties on 3 different occasions, his favorite Foster’s beer, and all 3 times he went wrong.

Now there could be only 2 reasons why people could not detect their favorite drink

1) They lack what it takes to be a connoisseur

2) All the different brands taste the same, and it’s a marketing gimmick which decides what price to be quoted for which.

Well luckily I had another control test to justify my notions. The Cola test!

This time 25 participants and most of them took both of the tests. The Cola used were

1) Pepsi

2) Diet Pepsi

3) Coke

4) Thumbs up

5) One mystery drink without the label.

To make the competition a bit challenging, I discouraged people to sample these drinks beforehand.

To my surprise, almost 1/3 of the people could guess the drinks accurately. 2 of them just looked at the glass in sunlight, smelled and accurately told me which drink was which. To discount for flukes and random guesses, I made them retake the test. Luckily most of the retakes were also accurate.

The only explanation I could think for this could be

1) The taste of beer fluctuates drastically between batches.

2) The taste depends on chillness. So it changes a lot from the time u take the first sip to the time u finish it. Hence the mind is not able to register one particular taste with even the brand you relish.

3) All the breweries use similar raw material and processes. Hence they come up essentially the same product, but different packages.

Archaeology as a profession faces two major problems. First, it is the poorest of the poor. Only paltry sums are available for excavating and even less is available for publishing the results and preserving the sites once excavated. Yet archaeologists deal with priceless objects every day. Second, there is the problem of illegal excavation, resulting in museum-quality pieces being sold to the highest bidder.

I would like to make an outrageous suggestion that would at one stroke provide funds for archaeology and reduce the amount of illegal digging. I would propose that scientific archeological expeditions and governmental authorities sell excavated artifacts on the open market. Such sales would provide substantial funds for the excavation and preservation of archaeological sites and the publication of results. At the same time, they would break the illegal excavator’s grip on the market, thereby decreasing the inducement to engage in illegal activities.

You might object that professionals excavate to acquire knowledge, not money. Moreover, ancient artifacts are part of our global cultural heritage, which should be available for all to appreciate, not sold to the highest bidder. I agree. Sell nothing that has unique artistic merit or scientific value. But, you might reply, everything that comes our of the ground has scientific value. Here we part company. Theoretically, you may be correct in claiming that every artifact has potential scientific value.

 Practically, you are wrong. I refer to the thousands of pottery vessels and ancient lamps that are essentially duplicates of one another. In one small excavation in Cyprus, archaeologists recently uncovered 2,000 virtually indistinguishable small jugs in
a single courtyard, Even precious royal seal impressions known as/melekh handles have been found in abundance— more than 4,000 examples so far.

The basements of museums are simply not large enough to store the artifacts that are likely to be discovered in the future. There is not enough money even to catalogue the finds; as a result, they cannot be found again and become as inaccessible as if they had never been discovered. Indeed, with the help of a computer, sold artifacts could be more accessible than are the pieces stored in bulging museum basements. Prior to sale, each could be photographed and the list of the purchasers could be maintained on the computer A purchaser could even be required to agree to return the piece if it should become needed for scientific purposes.

It would be unrealistic to suggest that illegal digging would stop if artifacts were sold on the open market.But the demand for the clandestine product would be substantially reduced. Who would want an unmarked pot when another was available whose provenance was known, and that was dated stratigraphically by the professional archaeologist who excavated it?

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I found this article in one of the printed materials. Unfortunately they did not quote the author's name so lets assume it as unknown

Today going through one of my collegue’s website I can across this article

Some of the skeptics of Wikipedia always said, now the rumours are going to be institutionalized. Well that day has already come. A lot of print media (esp. tabloids) are quoting some obscure article in some website/blog as the breaking news. Then the website/blog publishes a copy of that article to prove their point. Net result a figment of imagination of a nerd becomes a popular opinion. Spreading disinformation was never easier.
Search Engines also add to the trend. If my website had a million hits, then anything I would say would be in the third best match (google reserves top 2 matches for commercial links). Its more convinient for the search engines to return a dubious information then no information.

Luckily, there is still BBC news website which gives me trust worthy news.