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Forgotten Debates
With all the focus on current issues, I was reminded recently that it is possible to lose focus on the timeless debates, that might not have a true answer but must be considered in order to have perspective on where we’ve come from to where we’re going.
I’m speaking, of course, on the ancient struggle between “Great Taste” and “Less Filling.” Now, I can’t say which is the correct perspective, nor would I presume to tell other people what they should think. What I can do is provide information on how great thinkers of the past considered the question, and thereby perhaps help others gain insight on the question.
On the Great Taste side of the debate, we have:
- Machiavelli said “It is best for a beer to have great taste and be less filling. But since this is not often possible, it is best for it to taste great.”
- Diogenes was looking for an honest man who could tell him where to get a beer with great taste.
- Max Planck spent his time determining the smallest amount of beer that could be called a cold one and thus supported great taste.
- Malthus thought that the world would eventually be unable to make any more beer, and preferred great taste.
On the Less Filling side:
- Nietzsche was a less filling man. He would often signal for another drink by saying “When you stare too long into an empty mug, the mug stares back at you.” Bartenders hated Nietzsche.
- Marx was unsurprisingly a less filling advocate, believing that great taste was imparted by the blood of the working class. Later on, Stalin would have Trotsky assassinated because the latter had been advocating for a great-tasting beer which Soviet technology was unable to provide.
Those who were unsure:
- Heraclitus believed you could never drink the same beer twice, but wasn’t about to let that stop him.
- Descartes said, “I drink, therefore I am.” and was therefore happy as long as he had a drink.
- Plato never let his belief in a beer that was the ideal proportion of both get in the way of drinking one now.
- Hegel spent most of his time trying to develop a synthesis between the two.
- Einstein had no particular position, however, he was also not invited out much because of his belief that God did not play bar dice with the universe.
- Schrodinger tried to determine if a beer was one or the other without opening the bottle.
- Sir Isaac Newton paid too much attention to medieval alchemists and spent too much time trying to transmute one into the other.
- Galileo believed it didn’t matter since both would travel down his throat at the same speed.
- Hammurabi decreed that if someone bought you a beer, you were obliged to buy a similar one for them.
As can be seen, it’s difficult to determine whether Great Taste or Less Filling is the more necessary requirement for a beer, but that shouldn’t stop us from trying to find out for sure. Perhaps in the distant future, we may come up with the technology that helps us find out, but in the meantime, I invite everyone to hoist another drink and add their own or other’s opinions.
Published in Humor
I applaud any attempt to bring humor and drinking from the dark side (i.e., the PIT) to normal people.
And I can confidently say that lawyers prefer less haste, more billing.
When the law is on your side, pound on the law.
When the facts are on your side, pound on the facts.
When your beer is empty, pound your glass on the table.
Heisenberg observed that you could not know the taste and the filling nature of the beer simultaneously.
He was also fond of the beer named “Natural Sciences.”
Sounds pretty filling to me.
The problem with the Heisenbeer is if you know what it costs, you don’t know how much you’re going to get.
When it comes to science-themed breweries, I figure I’d go with Darwin. “Natural Selection” and “Survival of the Fittest” are solid beer names.
This is the answer.
Thanks. It may not be the answer, but it’s a living.
The greatest of national debates are remembered for their electrifying moments of television. Mere talk isn’t enough. The fundamental issues must be grappled with until some resolution is achieved.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA3lgiPFmSk
I can’t believe that no one has put this up yet:
It’s interesting. I had essentially forgotten that commercial, but as I clicked on the link I knew exactly what I was getting. Needless to say, I am forced to condemn it as being unsufficiently woke for our times. Now, if only it were in better resolution so I could more properly condemn it.
For people outside of the New York City area, or who just weren’t baseball fans in the mid-1970s, the Miller Lite ad featuring Billy Martin and George Steinbrenner brought the modern use of the term “You’re Fired!” by the angry and impetuous boss into the spotlight. And it happened to be at the same time an early-30s real estate developer first started making a name for himself in the NYC area, and co-opted the phrase “You’re Fired!” for his own behavioral patterns. So here’s to Miller Lite, the “Tastes Great/Less Filling” beer that had the biggest impact on the 2016 elections and the current economic growth and relative quietness of the world’s political affairs….
I’ve always thought that George Steinbrenner had a real influence on Donald Trump. Well, and Vince McMahon too.
Rupert Murdoch buying the New York Post from Dorothy Schiff at the end of 1976 and flipping it from the city’s most liberal paper to its most conservative one was the other key factor here. The Post always had a great sports page, and had really focused on the mercurial nature of Steinbrenner and his willingness to say whatever was on his mind, because he was The Boss (a phrase coined by the paper’s young columnist Mike Lupica, who’s probably been kicking himself for the past 2 1/2 years for doing it).
Trump’s willingness to attack the Manhattan elites for trying to keep him and his dad out of the main island’s real estate market made him the perfect Page 1 voice to hit them for their corruption and incompetence that Murdoch and now longtime Trump pal Steve Dunleavy were hitting the pols for on the inside of the paper. The Post simply took Steinbrenner’s back page personality and “You’re Fired!” tag line, and grafted it onto Trump on the front page, and because Trump was such great media copy, the Daily News and the TV stations took it and ran, because he boosted their ratings and circulation, too (and just as an aside, it’s hard to believe that if George was still around today, the Yanks would have thrown Kate Smith under the bus the way they did last week).
Always been a Descartes man myself. lol
When asked, all Archimedes said was “You’re disturbing my drinking!”