oh, now someone's just stirring up shit :)

looks at quester, pops popcorn, gets comfy and waits for the fireworks to begin.

If you asked someone "what's your favorite beer?" and they answered Bud Light, would you let them order a beer for you? Knowing nothing else about their food/drink preferences?

If someone was ordering for me, I'd think it would be more useful for that person to know my preferences than for me to know theirs.

oh, now someone's just stirring up shit :)

What? It was a serious question!

I'm skipping to update:

Lou pulled another Lazarus, and on steroids now to help with the edema. Next 3 days will be critical to see if he'll react well to it, but he's back, and eating, and most definitely not in pain at the moment.

We just need the tumor not to spread out down, to the throat. The more we'll have, the better chance Lou has.

My heart, however, is a wreck. Give me chocolate and a Buffy marathon and a week off, and I just might recover from this month.

I usually trust my sister to pick out wines for me. I don't know much about wines, and so a wine list that just tells the names and years doesn't give me any useful information. But I trust my sister not just because she can actually get useful information from that list, but because she also knows me and knows what wines I like -- if I ask her "Will I like this?" her answer isn't based on how good a wine it's supposed to be, but on how it compares to others that I've liked and haven't liked. Asking the world's greatest wine expert "Will I like this?" would be about as useful as me randomly picking something from the wine list if that expert doesn't know anything about what I like.

So, a vodka martini isn't a real martini?

Depends on what you mean by "real"? t /Bill Clinton

I don't know why my argument is even controversial. I can't imagine anybody who watched one episode of Project Runway would have a problem with the notion that you can judge things by making qualitative distinctions.

I think taste is informed by knowledge and experience, and allows you to make those qualitative distinctions.

Sometimes, though, the notion of "good taste" becomes calcified, a series of rules which become outmoded and needs to be challenged.

I will acknowledge Teppy's point about her brother. When I worked with Kevin (who worked in restaurant kitchens for years) I'd give him shit about his daily sandwich, "You call yourself a chef? That's the same damn salami sandwich you've had all week." To which he'd retort, "First of all, I don't call myself a chef. And second of all, this the kind of thing most restaurant people eat. When you walk into the kitchen before a shift the chef is usually eating a bowl of Fruit Loops."

I think Amy's point is useful. If my friend ordered a dirty martini I might call them a gin philistine, but I would basically expect them to come back with, "Well, you're a knitting ignoramous. Shut your gin hole."

Relating to smonster's point upthread, I've got one book out referencing Britney on the cover and another one reviewing Leonard inside the book. The point of the Bubblegum book was about addressing a subgenre dismissed as a class and specifically challenging received notions of standards.

Rock music itself was critically dismissed at the outset because it was judged as failing by the standards of jazz, or folk music. Instead of being assessed by its own standards. But it took a while to establish a critical defense of rock, a generation of people who could articulate its virtues instead of complaining that it wasn't Charlie Parker.

So I'm not as doctrinaire in my snootiness as some seem to think. The means by which we make critical distinctions are certainly open to debate.

However, getting back to the dirty martini, I think that the very approach is what's wrong. It's sort of like trying to tart up rock and roll with classical suites; it winds up watering both things down. As Jessica notes, the point of the dirty martini is to cover up the flavor of the gin. (or vodka) That's just a waste of good gin.

It's sort of like trying to tart up rock and roll with classical suites

Ooh, I'ma tell Matt Bellamy you called him a tart.

I don't know why my argument is even controversial. I can't imagine anybody who watched one episode of Project Runway would have a problem with the notion that you can judge things by making qualitative distinctions.

That's not the controversial idea. The problem is the idea that someone who likes crappy [foo] cannot, therefore, be trusted as able to assess/appreciate "quality" [foo]. One does not follow from the other.

Obviously it's a judgment that one CAN make, but if, for instance, one were to see my bro eating Spam and decide they'd never trust his culinary knowledge, they'd have made that decision without all the info and it would be an incorrect decision.

One does not follow from the other. That's the only thing that seems to be implied, and it's that implication which is, for me at least, controversial.

I asked how much cred needs to be established in order for a phrase like "the good stuff" to be understood as microbrew or Bud Light.

That depends entirely on who is having the conversation and how well they know each other.

I will note that just about everyone on the "there's no such thing as cred" side of the argument has made sure to establish their own as quickly as possible before arguing fervently that it doesn't matter.

My main point is that taste levels DO EXIST, and are useful markers in determining how informed (and therefore how useful) a person's opinion on any given subject is going to be.

I just got an approval to write a very cool paper (economical-anthropological analysis of the music trade on the internet, which pretty much is based on this: [link] in a very raw, very basic notion of the future paper), and an extremely important informant to another anthropological work (that: [link] ).

I'm very excited.