Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2007 December 31

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December 31

Second and Third Movies of His Dark Materials

The first book of the series His Dark Materials was made into a movie called The Golden Compass. But what about the second and third books of His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass? Will they be ever made into movies? Bowei Huang (talk) 00:51, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Most probably as The Golden Compass was quite a box office success. The second film appears to be planned already [1]. I'll find some more information. Seraphim ^Whipp 00:58, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

This link suggests strongly that a second will be made. Seraphim ^Whipp 01:01, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

IMDB lists The Subtle Knife as announced and in production. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 01:06, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

This would be better addressed to the Entertainment reference desk. I believe that all three books were to be turned into movies. According to this interview with Chris Weitz [2] the script for the second movie was already underway back in March of this year. SteveBaker (talk) 01:08, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it says it would be made if the Golden Compass does really well. Having a first draft of a script doesn't mean a whole lot in Hollywood. --Panoptik (talk) 01:36, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

A story in Entertainment Weekly made it sound a bit more dubious, as The Golden Compass did okay but not nearly as well as people had hoped it would. So maybe. Personally I wouldn't hold my breath over it—I wouldn't be surprised if it fell through, there isn't a ton of momentum behind it at this point. --Panoptik (talk) 01:34, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

I went to see it last night and was fairly dissapointed. It doesn't finish where the book does so there would need to be more than three films to complete the series anyhow. Theresa Knott | The otter sank 14:15, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Unless they put 1.3 books into film 2, for instance? --Tagishsimon (talk) 15:49, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

True, but you have to admit that the ending to the book is a bit of a downer. I'm not surprised they edited the film to end on a different note. GeeJo ^(t)⁄_(c) • 17:27, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

ZAC EFRON

Please can you tell me how to chat with zac efron?122.163.37.124 (talk) 12:54, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

You would probably have to contact his agent first of all. --Ouro (blah blah) 13:21, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

(posting also here, because the user seems to operate via a dynamic IP) I do not have Zac Efron's e-mail address. As I have written at the Reference Desk, the best way to contact him would be through his agent. This website seems to provide some information, but I wouldn't know anything whether the info is reliable. Good luck though. --Ouro (blah blah) 13:38, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

(posting only here) And no, I do not know how to contact any of the people mentioned at that website. Probably Googling might help bring up some information. --Ouro (blah blah) 14:14, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Of course if you mean some other "Zac Efron" other than the person that Ouro seems to be referring to, you'll have to give us more info. I for one, have never heard of anyone named Zac Efron. Dismas|^(talk) 15:32, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Me neither, actually. Bear with me, I do not watch TV nor do I listen to mainstream radio or watch mainstream cinema - I thought the original poster was referring to Zac Efron the oh-so-cute actor. --Ouro (blah blah) 19:38, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Exactly my point. I had no idea who he is/was. The OP assumes we know who Mr. Efron is. Dismas|^(talk) 19:42, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

...and how to contact him or his agent(s). Well, sure we do, after all, this is Wikipedia ;) --Ouro (blah blah) 20:10, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

outdent

Difficult google search. Not. Meanwhile I'm going to guess that the original questioner thought that people who know of a Zac Efron might answer, and those that do not would keep quiet. That's the normal way: know the answer: say something. Do not know the answer: do not say anything. See also pedant & churlish. --Tagishsimon (talk) 20:37, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

However, many (most?) questions posted here aren't things with a simple answer, but pose a problem to be solved, an answer to be found or what not. In an ideal situation, both sides can benefit from the discussion. --Ouro (blah blah) 07:58, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Unfamiliar bird: identification required

I know how much we all like trying to identify mysterious things in photos; and having had success at finding out various rare makes of car from photos I have posted here, I'm now going to offer an unusual bird which appears to have taken up residence in our garden. Please see here for a photo montage, which shows a full-length rear view with various garden items providing a measure of scale, a close-up front view and a couple of side/rear views with the head in vision. I believe it is a partridge of some sort, and initially assumed Perdix perdix, the commonest type found in Britain. Our village, in SE England, is surrounded by fields of various types, including those which grey partridges favour for their nests; so perhaps it has just got a bit lost. Now, however, looking again at its rather long tail and its wing and back markings, I am not so sure. As well as its genus and species, I would love confirmation of its sex and developmental stage: I think it looks like a juvenile. If it's going to be living with us, we might as well get to know it a bit better! Incidentally, it is extremely tame, and has even shown signs of wanting to wander into our house. Thanks for any help! Hassocks5489 (talk) 13:05, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Erm, and what is so odd about a partridge in a pear tree in this season? Look foreward to some milking, dancing, leaping, piping and drumming folks in your garden and have a Happy New Year :)--Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 13:44, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

I am almost certain that it is a juvenile female pheasant, Phasianus colchicus. Maybe you have some local shoots where they raise pheasants. They can become quite tame if you are patient and provide regular food. Unfortunately it will probably desert you in the spring when she hears a male calling - unless he is in your garden as well! Richard Avery (talk) 13:55, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

It certainly looks like all the pheasants around here (Austria, just down the road from your place). There is a good picture in the German Wikipedia under lemma Fasan of an avian couple of the species. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 14:03, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

There are photos in our article Common Pheasant. Marco polo (talk) 15:47, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

←Ah yes, that looks right. I didn't even think of the possibility of a pheasant! I've looked at those pictures and a few more on Google Images, and she certainly matches them in appearance (especially the long grey toes). There are indeed pheasant shoots in the next village and the surrounding area — in fact, the prize at one Christmas pub quiz I went to a few years ago in that village was a brace of freshly shot (male) pheasants. Incidentally, with reference to Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM's observation on this subject, the funny thing is that we do have a pear tree in our garden, and our visitor first arrived on ... yes, the first day of Christmas (26 December). I haven't seen any geese a-laying yet today, though! Hassocks5489 (talk) 16:13, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

A question about something I thought...

I'm just wondering something...is there something like a multi-instrumental player I can download from somewhere? Let me explain...I'm talking about a program that I can play different instrumental tunes, like I can click an instrument from a selection list, and then I can click buttons that sound like the instrument I selected, like they can sound like piano keys, trumpet sounds, guitar strums, and other instrumental sounds. Or a downloadable program that can play sounds of life. like I can click buttons to a heartbeat, wind blowing, and other sounds. Are there such programs like this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sirdrink13309622 (talk • contribs) 14:13, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

MIDI software and certain audio editing software with music sample libraries will do what you are talking about. --Ouro (blah blah) 14:21, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

On a Mac you get GarageBand (see [3]) which is useful for amateurs and comes free with OS X. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 14:46, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

There are really two parts to this - firstly the format that the music is in and secondly the way that these various instrument sounds are provided. You obviously can't use MP3 types of music because the instruments are all mixed together and we can't extract which notes each one was playing. So what you need is a music format that stores what notes were played by each instrument - not what they sounded like. For that, there are really two choices: MIDI (or technically, MIDIfile) or various kinds of 'MOD' file. Either of those would do just fine for your needs.

For the sounds of the instruments, there are again two possibilities:

• With MIDI, the instrument sounds (called 'patches') are loaded up separately from the music - tied together by numbers - so if the MIDI music says that the 'lead' line of the music is played on instrument number 12 and if the patch file says instrument number 12 is an electric guitar - then the lead will be played on electric guitar - but if the patch file puts a church organ on instrument number 12 - then the lead will be played on an organ. To enable standard MIDI files to "sound right" when played on different people's machines, there is a standard set of patches called 'General MIDI' that follows some kind of standard as to which instruments are assigned to which numbers. This isn't entirely successful because different players may choose different kinds of electric guitar sound for that patch - so the music doesn't sound exactly the same everywhere - just kinda-sorta the same. However, you can change that by loading up your own set of patches - and some MIDI replay software will allow you to switch the patches around so you can experiment in the way you want. However, making up your own 'patches' is often tricky - and sometimes impossible - so for you to play the sounds you want, MIDI isn't the way to go.

• With MOD (and it's MANY derivatives) the instrument sounds are stored as little audio clips inside the MOD file itself - which gets around the General MIDI issue by storing exactly the sounds the music needs right there inside the file. This means that a MOD file always sounds exactly the same no matter who is playing it. (The downside is that MOD files are a little bigger than MIDI - but both are vastly smaller than MP3's so it hardly matters). However, MOD players always let you switch sounds around and even load your own as 'WAV' files - so if you want the lead line in some music played on your doorbell with the backing track played by dog barks - you can do exactly that!

So I think you should be looking for a MOD player. These programs are generally (for historical reasons) called 'Trackers' - and our article on them provides lots of links to suitable software. Tracker software generally have a mode where you can play notes on your computer keyboard as if it were a piano - that would also solve your issue of wanting to experiment with wind sounds and such.

Both MIDI and MOD music can be found in vast quantities all over the Internet (Just do a Google search) - some of it is illegal because the music is copyrighted - but lots of the files are of out-of-copyright classical music or amateur musicians who just want to get their stuff out there and don't care about copyrights.

SteveBaker (talk) 17:43, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Oil wells in America

I recently read that we are building in this country 40,000 oil rigs (or tapping 40,000) oil wells per year. First of all how and where are they finding so many oil wells and if so why is this not enough to rely on our own supplies rather thatn on foreign oil wells/supplies? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.120.70.241 (talk) 16:15, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

That's the number of wells drilled, not the number of successful wells. The reason our vast number (more than 500,000) of producing oil wells do not provide our needs is that each well averages about 10 barrels per well per day. Compare a Saudi Arabian well, averaging about 5000 barrels per well per day. Cheers Geologyguy (talk) 16:18, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

"U.S. oil consumption is approximately 20 million barrels/day, yet production is only 6 million barrels per day.". See Energy use in the United States and United States oil politics. --Tagishsimon (talk) 16:20, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

For 2005, about 42,000 wells were drilled [4], but 38,000 were development wells in existing fields; only 3,400 were new exploratory wells. And that is the total for both oil and natural gas. Of the 42,000, only 10,000 were successful oil wells, and of that total, only 429 were new exploratory discoveries. And don't forget that even as these new discoveries are made, other fields play out or become uneconomic. The net result is that oil production in the United States has been declining since 1970, and this decline is virtually certain to continue. Cheers Geologyguy (talk) 16:37, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Put another way, the United States had a limited amount of oil in the ground when it started pumping oil in the late 1800s. It used up most of this oil and most of its big oil fields by the 1970s. Since then, the United States has had to drill more and more wells to get at smaller and smaller remaining pockets of oil. This is how oil production can decline even though so many oil wells are being drilled. Marco polo (talk) 17:05, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

For the second part of your question (would this let the US rely on it's own supplies?) the answer is a very definite "No!" if the US relied on it's own reserves, they'd be pumped dry in two years! If you'd like more details - we've answered this several times before - I put my previous answers together on my own Wiki page.

For a chart of US oil production, consumption, and imports over the past 50 years and showing the production decline, go here. (Disclaimer, the chart is from the Energy Information Administration, but the page is my own). Cheers Geologyguy (talk) 17:39, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

How is it known how much the US has of oil(in reference to the statement made above about the limited amount it started out with in the 1800's and then used up by the 1970's)to pump? Could there possibly wells in parts untapped that could produce viable oil wells in the United States that haven't been looked or discovered before? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.126.143.69 (talk) 21:24, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Certainly there can be, and indeed are, undiscovered oil fields in the US. That's what those 429 discovery wells in 2005 found. It's just that the US is by far the most explored territory on earth - so the likelihood of finding anything big is remote. The only reasonably possible locations are the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, offshore California, and parts of Alaska. Cheers Geologyguy (talk) 21:29, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

The probability is small that the oil community has overlooked a possible location of oil in the US or its continental shelf. Enough is known about the geology of the US and the geology of oil-bearing strata to be able to make well informed estimates. See also Oil reserves#United States. All that that leaves you is the fact that as the price rises, it will become profitable to attack previously unpromising sources, such as tar sands. But you;d be clutching at straws if you were to think this would have any very great impact on the central problem: that there is massive imbalance in production & consumption. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:41, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

But still they don't know everything that is underground, they make educated guesses from promising sources (chemicals that bubble to surface tip them off to drill and explore) but it is still a mystery, is it not to know all that is underground and what resources may still remain? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.126.143.69 (talk) 22:54, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Depends whether or not you trust the assertion made in Oil reserves#United States: "With over 2.3 million wells having been drilled in the US since 1949,[12] there are very few undrilled areas left where another supergiant oil field could remain undiscovered." They make educated guesses based on a mass of geological and empirical data - from the drillings, from seismic surveys &c &c. To all intent & purpose, they do know what's under your feet, and it ain't undiscovered oil (of any real magnitude), nor is it a mystery. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:09, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Keep in mind that many of those wells may be shallow and low-output wells. I know that there are a lot of natural-gas wells in northern Ohio, for instance, which is hardly a fossil-fuel hotbed, but they're generally small-scale operations. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 23:44, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

As an aside, NW Ohio and NE Indiana were indeed hotbeds of oil production late in the 19th Century - the Trenton Oil Field, discovered in 1887, is essentially fully depleted today, but it helped give birth to Marathon Oil Company (headquartered in Findlay), as well as Standard of Ohio (Sohio, now part of BP). Cheers Geologyguy (talk) 00:33, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, we learn something new every day, don't we? Thanks, Geologyguy! -- Mwalcoff (talk) 01:33, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Yup, Oil's well that ends well... groan! --WebHamster 01:55, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

So, if there were still oil wells that were much deeper they might not be easily detected by the traditional means such as geological surveys, drillings, and seismic surveys? Is that possible? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.126.143.69 (talk) 01:57, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

It's possible. But as indicated by several posts above, very unlikely in the US for anything sizeable except in those few areas I mentioned. Most onshore US basins have been explored to the basement. Cheers Geologyguy (talk) 02:50, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

How to find out impact factor of a specific journal?

While updating categories and info in articles on journals on Wiki, I decided to add their impact factor, and looked on related websites, but I couldn't find what I would expect - either a ranked list of all journals in a discipline, or a search engine where I could put in the name of the journal and get its rank (the best I could find was 2004 Top 10 from here). Perhaps I am missing something obvious? Btw: I can't access this, and this interesting tool seems to be down too (main page online but I get 404 on search results).--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:43, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that the Journal Citation Reports are published by a private company, and you need to have a subscription to get a hold of recent impact factors. If you're at a university or other major institutional library then you may have access to impact factor information through the ISI Web of Science. For what it's worth, this page has links to impact factor lists for the years from 1999 to 2005, inclusive. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:29, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Rocking back and forth

In films psycologically disturbed people are often portrayed with their knees tucked under their chin and rocking back and forth, is there a name for this in real life? And what is the purpose of the rocking motion as a natural coping mechanism? thanks, RobertsZ (talk) 18:55, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Stereotypy is the closest term I'm aware of - it covere more than rocking back and forth - also hand flipping and other repetitive movements. I don't think there is a purpose to it - it's a result of a brain abnormality. SteveBaker (talk) 19:12, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

It appears to have the rather prosaic name "Body-rocking" [5].

Unlike Steve, I'm sure it does have a purpose; I don't know what that purpose might be. It is a commonplace behaviour in the 6-12 month phase of an infant's life, according to a brief google search. Biological systems tend not to be profligate in expending energy; I think we could perhaps search a little harder for cause before we dismiss it. And whereas it may also be a stereotype, the study I cited notes in its abstract that "when compared with college students who engage in habitual body-rocking, persons with mental retardation engage in more body-rocking than college students". --Tagishsimon (talk) 19:27, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

"self-comforting mechanism" and body-rocking "seem[s] to increase with boredom, tension, or frustration, and it appears that the movements are self-stimulatory and sometimes pleasurable. The root causes are unknown." [6] --Tagishsimon (talk) 19:31, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it is a result of brain abnormality at all but is a response to some kind of stress, the extreme boredom that comes from being stuck in an instutution for example. You sometimes see it in animals in a zoo. Theresa Knott | The otter sank 19:45, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

How does this relate to the practice of young men in certain religious schools reading holy books aloud while rocking back and forth? 71.57.125.95 (talk) 22:47, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

• See Fetal position."Sometimes, when a person has suffered extreme physical or psychological trauma (including massive stress), they will assume the fetal position" Rfwoolf (talk) 07:54, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

• Make of this what you will: Bill Gates does a strange rocking thing in many interviews. example. --Sean 12:42, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Wow that video is quite interesting, this is exactly what i was talking about, Bill was under alot of pressure in this video. do you think people are self-aware of the rocking? thanks for all of the replies this is very interesting stuff RobertsZ (talk) 16:19, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Glenn Gould did a similar thing. He was known for his peculiar body movements while playing the piano, including circular swaying. These were just one of his many eccentricities. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:09, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Redundant occupations in the US that continue to employ people.

I just had an e-mail from a friend in the US that told a story about a "Grocery Store Bagger". The story is unimportant to this question - but I live in the UK where we don't have paid assistants in our stores to bag our purchases - we do it ourselves. But that called to mind the many times I have visited the US and have always been amused to find a very helpful - usually older - person in the airport arrivals area, who inserted dollar bills into an automated luggage trolley dispenser on my behalf, handed me the trolley, collected the "fee" from me and expected - and got - a tip for his trouble. I have never visited another country on my extensive travels that employed such people - unnecessarily in my opinion - doing work that could be done by myself - or by the automated system like the luggage trolley dispenser. Is this practice common throughout US stores and airports and if so, isn't it a burden on the wage bills involved? After all, the trolley assistants I encountered were working air-side (pre-Customs and Passport Control) so must have been authorised to be there. Thanks and Happy New Year from Scotland. 81.145.241.123 (talk) 22:00, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Well in Tesco and other stores they offer bag-packing service for you if you would like it. I suspect there is a difference in the US as they have a more tip-based service culture (whereas in the uk we don't so much) and as long as there is enough 'demand' for them in the airport they will continue. Certainly i agree it is a somewhat unrequired job, but we have 'greeters' in Uk stores and they serve little purpose more than saying hello and we also used to have ticket-men on the buses until someone figured we could do that job with just a driver taking tickets. ny156uk (talk) 22:18, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Not every store in the U.S. has baggers. "Discount" grocery stores will often lack them, along with the selection, attractive displays and level of service of the regular supermarkets. But most Americans are willing to pay an extra few cents on the dollar for the advantages of a "nice" grocery store, including baggers. I heard from a friend who works in international retail that one of the reasons Wal-Mart failed in Germany is because German consumers demand deep-discount practices, and even Wal-Mart -- which would be considered lower-end retail in the U.S. -- was too upscale for German tastes. (I'd answer your question, but I've never used a luggage-cart dispenser. My luggage has wheels.) -- Mwalcoff (talk) 23:41, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

You know, it never occurred to me that those airport baggage trolley guys were actually employed by the airport - I always thought they were just trying to scrape a living by getting your luggage (and therefore you as well) into their mate's taxi and off to their mate's mate's hotel. Astronaut (talk) 02:02, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Not sure about the airport question, but speaking as someone who briefly held a bagging job as a kid I can vouch for the fact that baggers are required to do a lot besides bagging. Usually this seems to include cleaning, customer surface, sometimes restocking, and generally odd jobs. It also helps speed up the transaction in stores and makes a huge number of jobs. --S.dedalus (talk) 03:06, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Baggers make the checkout go so much faster, and nothing breaks up a long shift in front of the register like getting a bagger and nuking him with 200 items at once :D --f f r o t h 10:04, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

In South Africa where labour is comparitively cheaper and unemployment at a rediculous rate of allegedly 25-40% (depending on what you count as 'employed') there are typically people at the supermarket checkouts that bag your goods for you as the cashier scans them. There is no tip required - I have never ever ever heard about or seen anybody tipping them, so as far as I know they are employed, but, I would think that they do a variety of other jobs as well, such as shelve-stocking. I also know that in such supermarkets it isn't uncommon for the bag-packing person to not be present - it seems to be an on-and-off type of thing. At the airport in Johannesburg (South Africa) there are people that help you with luggage in exchange for tips. Although they are not employed, the airports had to start to regulate such things because of security issues (crime) as well as competition and in-fighting between these kinds of hawkers. As a result they are required to wear bibs (throw-over illuminated shirts) and possibly tags. In South Africa if you park somewhere say out on the side of a road in a high-traffic place you are likely to find car-minders. These are poor unemployed people that want to watch over your car to ensure that nobody breaks in or steals your car (Realistically if a car-thief did try to steal the car they could just bribe off the attendant, considering the tips are normally the equivalent of $1, you could just pay them about $20-$50 to get them to disappear). Again, this became regulated in certain areas, where they still work for tips, but are regulated, have to wear bibs, carry a name tag, and the number of guards are limited. I know all of this doesn't really answer your question, but if you really were interested in this type of thing I thought it might help to tell you some anecdotes relevant to South Africa :P Rfwoolf (talk) 07:50, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

We used to have car minders in Malaysia but they have AFAIK largely disappeared I guess due to government crackdowns. They weren't an entirely voluntary exercise of course, if you didn't tip them there was always the risk they would scratch your car or let the air out of the tires (of course this may not have been that common since it's obviously something likely to result in police complaints and them being kicked out of the area). Bag packers similarly do exist although they are not always there and often it's just the checkout person. In NZ bagpackers are AFAIK fairly rare, it's often just the checkout person. N.B. Bus conductors have also disappeared from Malaysian buses Nil Einne (talk) 10:22, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

I just thought I'd mention that as an American, I've never once seen a bagger at a grocery store tipped for bagging groceries. As for why this job exists, they do, as mentioned, do more than just bag groceries. They stock shelves and such as well. It's common in the South for the baggers to also push your grocery cart out to the parking lot and load your purchases into your vehicle for you. This is nice for older customers or those who have a baby in their arms but as a 20-30 something old male without children, I always told them that I didn't need assistance. More than once, I got the idea that they could be reprimanded for allowing a customer to carry their own bags. Dismas|^(talk) 15:28, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

I grew up in Atlanta not too long ago. We always had baggers, usually high school kids who got paid minimum wage to do the grunt work. They helped speed up the check-out process and make sure that bags weren't overstuffed or crushed the perishables. My mom use to buy hundreds of dollars of groceries at the beginning of each month and we'd get two or three of them to keep up with the scanner. Strangely enough, tipping was expected at Kroger but expressly forbidden at Publix. I was told Publix paid a bit better. Similarly Publix refuses to allow Girl Scouts or others to sell in front of their stores, but Kroger allows it.160.10.98.106 (talk) 16:59, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Is there a correlation between the price of wine and its taste quality?

OK, I am not talking about some of the grease solvents that are sold as wine in downmarket stores for pennies per litre - but I have just read an article on expensive wines with examples that have sold at auction in excess of £100,000 per bottle. I buy wines at less than £10 per bottle (and some a lot cheaper than that), and find most of them perfectly palatable. Anything more expensive and the taste is spoiled by the hole in my pocket. But I regularly see wines in some of the better restaurants and wine-shops I visit at over £100 per bottle. I would never spend that much, even if I could afford to do so, but can't help wondering whether those people that do buy them can actually taste the quality they are paying for - or are they just happy to be buying the exclusivity? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.145.241.123 (talk) 22:33, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

See ego --'n1yaNt 22:40, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

The short answer is yes, but with caveats: a decent wine in short supply will have premium value distinct from its taste quality. I suspect it is a combination of "taste quality" and limited supply which leads to the £100 wines. And there will also be an element of confusion introduced by wines which may be classed as Veblen good, for which peoples' preference for buying them increases as a direct function of their price. Finally the whole taste thing is somewhat subjective, the mass marketplace ill-informed ... recipe for a complex pricing algorithm. I'd speculate that few people who are attracted to wine as a Veblen good have palettes sufficient to be able to discriminate. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:19, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

The issues in your question of value, cachet, taste are all covered by Tagishsimon but to reflect a bit more – artifact value and wine as artifact can conflict with expecting it will taste great too. Great tasting is not necessarily the same as a taste having the expected nuances of flavours to do with a particular bottling from a specific region, year, and/or maker that get it lots of ticks from wine educated buffs. Even old rare wines can fail the taste test which they might have passed if they'd been younger. There's some debate about the best year to open a collectable(ible?) wine. There's also a hint that more expensive wines don't have as much preservative in them, but it's new year and sori not to have links for you today. Julia Rossi (talk) 23:50, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

You're asking two different questions. There is some correlation between price and quality. I only know a little about the German whites, and the better (sweeter) wines are scarcer and therefore more expensive. They're scarcer because they pick those grapes later, and there aren't so many grapes left by then. They pick the bulk of the grapes well before the frost; it gets cold there, and it would be risky to wait. The upshot of this is that they produce a range of wines across the price spectrum in proportion to the number of bottles at each price they can expect to sell, and the high-end stuff is almost always better. By "better" I mean smoother, more complex, more aromatic, tastier in general. You can sometimes find a kabinett that is just wonderful, but usually not, and you can find an auslese that tastes like after-shave with a spritz, but usually not.

Your other question has been well answered, whether connoisseurs can taste the difference. But I would add that if you are perfectly happy with 10-pound wines, then you shouldn't spend more. One wine is only better than another if you like it better; wine quality is 100% subjective. Me, I'm dying to try a real Sauternes, but I refuse to spend that much, even though I know it'll be worth it. --Milkbreath (talk) 04:31, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

See Charles Shaw wine. (aka "Two buck Chuck") Corvus cornix_talk 19:14, 2 January 2008 (UTC)