It's Science!!!

Aug 11, 2024

3 min read

Catching up a bit here, taking this blog to the end of July.

Another in a week....

Science continued to revisit us in this fortnight, in many of its forms:

Deductive reasoning - Wine in France

Turning our attention to our hirsute, Greek friends below

The fellow on our right (younger, short beard) is Aristotle, explaining that all that happens in the world can be known (motioning down, "from the earth") to the fellow on the right (older, long beard), being his mentor Plato, is disagreeing, explaining that all things that happen in the world happen at the whim of the gods (pointing up, where the gods are).

Aristotle is known as the father of deductive reasoning, which is the cornerstone of the scientific method of hypothesis, premise, testing and proving.

Put simply, Aristotle might posit:

"All men are mortal;

Plato is a man;

Therefore Plato is mortal."

Nailed it!

Wine - a scientific, self-experimental study (of course)

So, setting out to exercise science and deductive reasoning with an experiment on ourselves (as Barry Marshall did with H Pylori and landed himself a Nobel prize) we tested the premise

"We enjoy wine

French wine is wine

Therefore we will enjoy French wine"

In summary, after much self experimentation and reflection, the answer is almost but not quite (there goes our Nobel), but maybe.....

French reds are a bit like French food. When they are good they are really good but the bulk of what is produced (and there is a lot of it) is generally average to OK.

One feature of French reds is that they can taste, mildly, a bit of mould.

When French winemakers talk of their wine's maturation, they will proudly show you cellars caked with mould and boast how it is an essential part of their wine's development.

An acquired taste perhaps - and six months seems not long enough to acquire.

The wine here is famously very plentiful and packs the shelves in the local supermarket (and the staff are proud of that

and it can be really expensive or really cheap (these bottles below at 2.15 euros, a bit under A$4.00)

and rose is plentiful in Provence (as you can see above in the supermarkets) which, on examination, almost smells like wine and almost goes close to tasting like wine, but goes quite OK with four ice cubes on a hot day.

So, hypothesis tested, and the outcome is.....

Not sure yet.

More self experimentation needed!!

Next science:

Physics

With the impending visit of a friend a (verrrry) full) diary of activities was developed.

Like a vacuum at sea level (that's the physics bit) any gap of greater than ten minutes was filled with a rush with more activities.

There was no room for anything but lots of fun!

but then...

Virology and Epidemiology

In a combination that we have become all too familiar with, this happened

Tony mumbled his way through work meetings for a week, not making much sense. His colleagues were very patient and were even kind enough to say they didn't notice anything different. At least we think they were being kind....

So for our guest, in the end, each day of the visit involved waking up feeling poorly, seeing what was on the itinerary and cancelling most of it.

We did manage to get out with our guest (who, having a cast iron immunity system, somehow did not pick up covid from us) to some outdoor outings.

We enjoyed (very slowly) taking in the Provence coast