From: owner-ammf-digest@smoe.org (alt.music.moxy-fruvous digest) To: ammf-digest@smoe.org Subject: alt.music.moxy-fruvous digest V1 #158 Reply-To: ammf@smoe.org Sender: owner-ammf-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-ammf-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk alt.music.moxy-fruvous digest Saturday, July 25 1998 Volume 01 : Number 158 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Madness [ourhamster@aol.com (OurHamster)] Re: Coke v. Pepsi (was: greetings from Alberta!) [Nate DeRose Actually >Fruvous' opener at Shank Hall, Hammel on Trial, just played here in Madison >last night. Note, he is thanked on Live Noise. See some of you real soon. >Best, Michelle I still have memories of Hammel in Syracuse...a couple of the jokes ingrained in my memory...in particular, "Did you hear they got e-mail in the jails? "C: enter (See colon, enter)" Yikes... - --Novac - ---------------------------------------- '#,:#$#. ,,, $, #, ,, ,,, :# '#; .#' `, #, ,$ .# #; .#' ` $# '# ##. : #,,#' #' '# ##. ,:' ,#' '#:,,#' ;' "#,,$#,. '#:,' - ---------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1998 01:12:46 -0700 From: Nate DeRose Subject: Re: Coke v. Pepsi (was: greetings from Alberta!) Stephen R. Laniel wrote: > However, as I said, the best study of cola preferences shows no > difference. I'll find the citation for you. I find that awfully hard to believe.... I can't even stomach Pepsi... and I love coke (drink about.. ohhh... 3 cans a day?)... I can tell you for a fact that can tell the difference. Boy am I tired.... Time to go and fall asleep on my couch watching TV... then wake up and go to work. :) G'night folks, nate ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1998 05:12:30 GMT From: "Stephen R. Laniel" Subject: Coke v. Pepsi (was: greetings from Alberta!) - --On Friday, July 24, 1998, 12:32 AM +0000 FruWench wrote: > Really? Then why is it I can't stand Coke, but I like Pepsi. And I can't > stand Diet Pepsi, but I like Diet Coke? Marketing? I don't know. I doubt it's strictly marketing, or else Coke would never have invented New Coke. New Coke tasted more like Pepsi, which was what Coke thought Coke fans wanted. It backfired, because people wanted the Coke taste. So obviously Coca-Cola thought Coke and Pepsi tasted different. However, as I said, the best study of cola preferences shows no difference. I'll find the citation for you. - --Steve Stephen R. Laniel | "If only it were so easy to deal Carnegie Mellon University | with Lulu." laniel@cmu.edu | --Louis de Bernieres ------------------------------ Date: 25 Jul 1998 05:25:48 GMT From: ourhamster@aol.com (OurHamster) Subject: Re: Oswego Directions OK, so the traffic wasn't nearly as bad tonight for the concert. Tomorrow night, it's horrible, though (they do fireworks to music, and *everyone* shows up for those...) Anyway, I'm proud to say that I roped my aunt into Früvous, and got her to come to the Oswego concert. I also got both of my parents to come, and even my mother enjoyed the Canadian boys. (Usually she just comments, "That was different", but she admitted to liking the concert this time). - --Novac - ---------------------------------------- '#,:#$#. ,,, $, #, ,, ,,, :# '#; .#' `, #, ,$ .# #; .#' ` $# '# ##. : #,,#' #' '# ##. ,:' ,#' '#:,,#' ;' "#,,$#,. '#:,' - ---------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1998 05:27:19 GMT From: "Stephen R. Laniel" Subject: Re: Review of 7/17 Burlington, VT show - --On Friday, July 24, 1998, 12:43 PM -0500 "Chad Maloney" wrote: > But still, no opening band compares to Goat Boy. Not even White Lightning... The best show I've ever seen -- of any band -- was Blues Traveler, in Vermont about three years ago. One of the reasons it was so great was that the opener sucked so badly. Have you ever heard Dude Of Life? Certainly the worst band I've ever heard. And they played a ridiculously long set. Then there was an hourlong break, during which the crowd fumed over the weakness of the opener. Finally, Blues Traveler came out and demolished "Crash Burn", and the crowd went wild. Without a terrible opener, I doubt the audience would have appreciated the band as much as they did. So, three cheers for horrible bands! :) - --Steve Stephen R. Laniel | "If only it were so easy to deal Carnegie Mellon University | with Lulu." laniel@cmu.edu | --Louis de Bernieres ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1998 05:19:29 GMT From: "Stephen R. Laniel" Subject: Re: Walmart Policies (related to Warning Sticker thread) - --On Friday, July 24, 1998, 12:49 AM -0400 MTKeener wrote: > I may sound a bit bigoted here but if your sole shopping choice is Wal-Mart, > you have larger problems than not being able to find the latest CD from your > favorite band. The problem is that Wal-Mart kills downtowns. I live in Vermont, which a couple years ago became the last state in the union to get a Wal-Mart. It resides in a suburb of the state's largest city, Burlington. Burlington has tried for years to draw people back downtown; one of its most successful efforts to that end was to create the Church Street Marketplace, a pedestrian mall in the middle of the city. It draws a lot of people, but even it is losing business to Wal-Mart; any place near an Interstate will be more convenient for suburbanites than finding parking downtown. With every Wal-Mart come the Filene's, the McDonalds (Vermont's capital just became the last one in the nation to get a McDonalds), the Barnes & Nobles (I work at one, so I guess I shouldn't talk), and so on. Pretty soon, everyone buys his books at Barnes & Noble, his CDs at Wal-Mart, and his dinner at McDonald's. We're trying hard to prevent it in Vermont, but it's hard to ignore the trend in the rest of the nation. So you see that a Wal-Mart monopoly is not a sign of a backwater, but rather a sign of the homogeneity that Wal-Mart creates wherever it goes. It's a homogeneity from which the United States now suffers, and which scares me. - --Steve Stephen R. Laniel | "If only it were so easy to deal Carnegie Mellon University | with Lulu." laniel@cmu.edu | --Louis de Bernieres ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1998 05:56:36 GMT From: "Stephen R. Laniel" Subject: Re: Coke v. Pepsi (was: greetings from Alberta!) - --On Saturday, July 25, 1998, 1:12 AM -0700 "Nate DeRose" wrote: > I can tell you for a fact that can tell the difference. I know; every person with whom I've spoken has said the same thing. But to look at it in an unbiased way, ask yourself how much of the taste difference comes from knowing what you're drinking. If you put both drinks in dark cups, and neither you nor the person serving it to you knew what you were drinking, and you put in place a lot of similar controls, you can see how at least _some_ of the taste difference would disappear. Again, I'll find the citation for you. I first heard of this study in a class called Experimental Design for the Behavioral and Social Sciences in the fall of 1997. It involved a lot of good experimental designs. You'll also note that most of the blind taste tests conducted before that one were sponsored by one or the other of the cola companies. - --Steve Stephen R. Laniel | "If only it were so easy to deal Carnegie Mellon University | with Lulu." laniel@cmu.edu | --Louis de Bernieres ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1998 05:52:08 GMT From: "Stephen R. Laniel" Subject: Democracy and stuff (was: greetings from Alberta!) - --On Friday, July 24, 1998, 9:45 PM +0000 Dot0926 wrote: > ah, but who really takes these polls? i don't know any statistics on this, but > i highly doubt that the poverty stricken, single mother with 10 kids, living in > the slums, trying her hardest to keep her family fed, ect. has time to answer > polls. As a statistics major who has tried to design representative samples, I know for a fact that this is the hardest part of survey design. But the pollsters work really hard on it; they've developed a whole body of theory and practice on the subject over the last 50 years (since Gallup made polls so prominent). You'd be surprised how representative the samples are. > i think we could tackle the obvious first, the economic, racial, > religious, gender lines. then we can work on the curly haired etc. > subgroup. :) The decision of how to partition the public is a bias on its own. If you're going to suggest that a legislative body represent its public, then choose the subgroups based on your own interests, you cannot say that the legislative body is representative. Of course most people would agree with you on what constitutes a subgroup, but it's still a judgment call. I continue to argue that the only truly representative legislative body is a direct democracy, a la the ancient Greeks. And it has its own problems, among them that dictatorships spring up really easily. One of the reasons Madison wanted a legislature rather than a direct democracy was to avoid the possibility of a dictatorship. Representative democracy has its own problems, as you can tell. But so does every system. > true democracy was never intended to > be the outcome of the constitutional convention, rather a republic which > represents only one class' view: the white, rich majority, for example, > the white males who made up the constitutional convention and who wrote > the constitution only allowed white males to vote. I agree with some of your other points, but this one simply cannot be true. It is built into the Constitution that it can be changed. It is of course not a perfect document, but I think we all can agree that any document which governs people for hundreds of years must be able to change over time. If the Founding Fathers really wanted power to stay with an elite, why would they not set certain elite clauses in stone? Why did they allow the document to change? The British have no written constitution at all, but they have a greater economic stratification than we do. The absence or presence of a constitution certainly makes a difference, but I don't think you can argue that it's a reason why our nation is still economically stratified. Further, I don't think you can argue that anything about the structure of _our_ Constitution in particular contributes to stratification. I challenge you to point out something in _today's_ Constitution which contributes to stratification. How did slavery disappear if the Constitution itself is biased toward rich white men? > The issue of democracy was never an intention of the constitutional > convention, and thus, was never truly implemented into our society, as > illustrated by our nation's current socio-economic-political situation Again, this cannot be true. The Constitution as originally proposed was not passed by acclamation. It went through months of strenuous debate between those following Jefferson (who believed in the wisdom of the common folk) and those following Madison (who did not). The Constitution has its flaws, but please don't claim that it is one-sided when this is demonstrably not the case. > the majority of politicians represnt only the needs of those who can help > them monetarily. Well, everyone can help them monetarily. If you check the box on your taxes, you can give to the Federal Government's matching-funds program without adding to your tax burden at all. When you pay union dues, you are paying, in part, for their lobbying efforts on your behalf. When you join the AARP, you help fund lobbying for the elderly. When you join AAA, you help pay for pro-transportation lobbying. I argue that people have a great say in their political process, only through their secondary representatives: the political action committees. The PACs would not exist without our help; if we want to end them, we can stop joining them. Because I think we're veering a little off the topic, I'd like to state again that I think we have a very democratic system in this country. We will never avoid economic inequality, and the economic divide is certainly growing, but we each have a voice in a lot of ways: through the polls which project our voice to Congress, through the PACs, through the power of recall, etc. And everyone over 18 can vote, though as I've mentioned before we could take some lessons from the British on bringing more people to the polls. > the wealthy are capable of affecting election outcomes, and subsequent > legislation, with the money they spend to buy politicians, Uh-huh. Do you disagree with the voting record of a politician? Vote against him or her. If you think your politician is corrupt, vote him or her out. The fact is that when it comes to the moment of a vote, you have the power to take the politician out. The business does not. - --Steve Stephen R. Laniel | "If only it were so easy to deal Carnegie Mellon University | with Lulu." laniel@cmu.edu | --Louis de Bernieres ------------------------------ End of alt.music.moxy-fruvous digest V1 #158 ********************************************