Penn & Teller's Bullshit!

I was infuriated by the episode where they claim that tap water tastes the same as bottled water. I can taste chlorine, you fat fuck.

they thought u oh my goodness

I remember seeing their book, and there was a page in it that had a fake recipe for some lovely looking dinner, except the result would be nothing like as successful if it was followed.

Basically, it was a prank for you to leave this somewhere where someone nosy would see it, go *ooh* and make a copy of it and do it at home, to failed result.

Made me think, "Where do these guys live?"

xp What has Penn's size got to do with his loathing of bottled water?

Just been watching P & Get Killed in youtube - the whole thing is there but I doubt you'd get past part 1. It's exactly how Abbott describes it. And they look spookily young. I did enjoy the Fool Us prog though, mostly because it seemed Penn had brought the rage down a notch or two. All the card tricks were amazing.

Apart from the guy that implied that he'd implanted a suggestion in JRoss' mind, who Penn called out (did he shout Bullshit or just Bull, there?) and pretty much explained the trick, all the acts got respect for what they did.

I guess Penn keeps the rage for people on the "bullshit" show trying to defraud people.

I remember seeing the ad for the P&T film in my (then current) copy of the "What Goes On" Velvet Underground App Soc mag, and wondered why we didn't get cool film like that over here.

has anyone seen the vegas show?

I agree that water matters. It matters when you drink it straight, and when you make coffee, and beer, and whiskey, and... water has taste, and it matters. HOWEVER they're right that bottled water is bullshit, at least the way we market and consume it most of the time.

Yeah but I can tell the difference between tap water and purified bottled water, and I suspect everyone else can too.

Yeah but a lot of bottled water is from municipal water supplies.

People think they can taste the difference between a lot of things, but blind tests usually prove otherwise.

Almost always, in fact. The latest Freakonomics podcast was about wine. Just guess what they found.

More about wine: http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2008/11/expensive_wine_1.php

Ummm, even in a blind taste test I am sure I could tell the difference between "spring water" (which is usually just tap water, I guess) and purified water. I buy the 24-packs for home and used to accidentally get the spring water every once in a while before noticing how it tasted like tap water every time (you know, without really knowing what was on the label). It's not a placebo effect or anything. They literally do taste different.

No argument, they do. I know Houston tap water when I taste it, for sure. Ew.

But part of the experiment, for both the water and the wine, was presenting ordinary, inexpensive, or even outright crappy product to people as if it were the finest of the fine, and that influences people's opinion ENORMOUSLY, in every experiment ever done, like, in history.

Yeah but I don't know exactly what that proves. Most people who buy expensive wine do it for the image, like I would argue if you're on a date, you would get the expensive wine for reasons that have nothing to do with how it actually tastes. Our brains just naturally assume they taste better...that they don't doesn't really matter too much. Also, I am sure that if we blind tested, say, 128 kbps vs. 192 kbps MP3s on $20 headphones, most people would say the one labelled 192 'sounds better'. Actually, even on a good stereo I don't think most of your standard music fanatics could tell between say, 256 VBR and lossless. It doesn't really prove anything.

It proves humans are delusional. Which is good to remember if you deal with humans at all.

i'm still not sure that vinyl sounds better than CD tbh

Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.

It doesn't if the CD is mastered properly (hint: most of them aren't)

I've heard vinyl rips to mp3 that sound better than the CD, or more flattering anyway. If you play around with wav files on a computer, you can hear sample bit-depth (word length?) empirically affect the perceived quality of the sound way more than sample frequency.

(these are all very important tradeoffs to someone wanting to fit as many high-quality-sounding fart noises on a floppy disk as possible)

p & t had a v good trick

first they told u to get a blank vhs ready to record

then they thought u how to get someone to pick a specific card from the deck, say ♣8

they said to invite your friend over, do this trick, get the card wrong, be sad & say "oh well, whatchu wanna do now, let's watch some tv i guess"

at that point u secretly play the footage they are about to tell u to record, which was a highly recognizable & serious newsreader finishing off a legit-sounding report and then saying, "and this just in: was this your card?" *holds up a GIANT ♣8 card out of nowhere*

Ha! They have so many variations on this. In How to Play with Your Food it was always 3 of clubs. They had a little pattern you could print out to send to your pizza place to design a 3 of clubs pizza to be delivered. "Is this your card?" Also they made a lot of "pizza trick" jokes which I didn't get at age 13 (also popcorn trick! rude stuff! I didn't even know erections existed!). They said a friend of theirs got a tattoo of three of clubs on the palm of his hand to do this trick. P hardcore!

I remember seeing their book, and there was a page in it that had a fake recipe for some lovely looking dinner, except the result would be nothing like as successful if it was followed.

Basically, it was a prank for you to leave this somewhere where someone nosy would see it, go *ooh* and make a copy of it and do it at home, to failed result.

Made me think, "Where do these guys live?"

lol – the recipe had you mix vinegar and baking powder. The best thing about this is you were supposed to fax it to people.

I like their stupid tricks and bad jokes so, so much better than I like "Bullshit"!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIU6ZNBxIRo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSiI0N_fjas

"Three of clubs" is classic, being an easily recogniseable 'medium' card

not like, say, nine or ten of hearts, where conj goes "Is this your card" and the guy goes "um, maybe, let me count the hearts..... yep!"

The point with bottled water isnt the taste, its the fact coca-cola amatil et al claim you have to buy bottled water because your tap water is full of germs and chemicals.

BULLSHIT. It is not, if you live in a westernised city. Bottled water otoh sits in storage and parking lots and shops in the sun and gets all gross and has been shown in tests to have far more ecoli and etc than tap water.

Dont buy bottled water, any of you. Just dont. It is a crime against everything, a problem created by coca cola to make money.

Then again, the first time I made a disprin with bottled water, I was like "whoa, it actually dissolves! As opposed to "go all clumpy and have to be stirred"".

The point with bottled water isnt the taste, its the fact coca-cola amatil et al claim you have to buy bottled water because your tap water is full of germs and chemicals.

Where do they claim this?

"In designing DASANI to be the best tasting water, we start with the local water supply, which is then filtered to remove impurities."

"Since [Aquafina's] state-of-the-art HydRO-7 purification system removes substances most other bottled waters leave in, you get pure water and perfect taste every time."

"Does Aquafina remove the substances like bacteria or gaseous compounds?
Our state-of-the-art HydRO-7™ purification system is designed to remove dissolved solids and organic compounds that may be present in the water. The reverse osmosis process we use removes these organic compounds, but we also employ other steps such as carbon filtration, ozonation, and Ultra Violet (UV) light as additional safeguards."

"Does the Aquafina purification process remove pharmaceuticals?

The Aquafina purification process uses the best technology available to purify water. It is an accredited and validated process that meets or exceeds government standards and has been verified by independent experts.

The seven-step RO-7 process includes reverse osmosis, ozonation and carbon filtration. Each of these steps - even individually - is designed to remove manufactured molecules such as pharmaceuticals, as well as naturally occurring substances such as heavy metals. When these steps are used together, as they are in our proprietary RO-7 process, they further ensure the purity of Aquafina."

So is none of that actually true? Or, is it true but not really a big deal (as in, tap water won't get you sick anyway).

Yeah the latter, mainly (and thanks Phil! Some excellent quotes)

I did mean in the marketing sense rather than anything scientific of course. Not all that long ago bottled water did not exist, and people sniggered at Perrier and Evian drinkers. "why would you pay for water?".

Softdrink companies manufactured a concern. There's some excellent web-movies on this stuff. I'm trying to rememver where I saw them.

FIJI water's a nice example of something supposedly pure and quality actually completely fucking up the community in Fiji where the factory is.

Recycled plastic - there's too much of it - is sent to India for "processing" and most of it ends up being burnt. WHich poisons the commnities where they do the processing. Which means their water gets tainted. Whoops! Better send in some bottled water to help them out!

Well I can see people drinking it as a "novelty" back in the day but it's not really that laughable of a product anymore. You can get around 30 bottles for $4 which is about the cost of just buying purified water by the gallon.

Aha here we go: this is what I saw recently.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/annie-leonard/the-story-of-bottled-wate_b_507942.html

The question is why are you buying purified water? Do you really need to? And is it, really?

...you have to buy bottled water because your tap water is full of germs and chemicals. BULLSHIT. It is not, if you live in a westernised city.

People do tend to forget that there are still a lot of places in the world where the water will make you very, very sick. And not over several years, Erin Brockovich-style, but that very same afternoon. No, we have not 100% perfected the total purity of the water supply in America, but there does seem to be a prominent feeling -- just a feeling, is all it is -- that drinking water from the tap is BAD for you. This is not because most municipal water supplies are unsafe to drink. In America, almost no municipal water supplies have been shown to have any ill health effects of any kind over any period of time. (With a few notable exceptions, of course.) A huge amount of time and money and engineering and invention and all-around giving a shit has gone into making sure that you can drink a glass of water right out of your faucet whenever you like, and even if you have taste issues with your local tap water, I don't think enough people stop to consider what a modern miracle it is that we have unlimited access to perfectly safe, clean water.

The question is why are you buying purified water? Do you really need to? And is it, really?

Because it tastes much better, and yes I would do a double blind test or whatever

Yeah Kenan I'm obviously talking about western cities with clean water supplies. Theyre the ones soda companies are selling this crap to!

but there does seem to be a prominent feeling -- just a feeling, is all it is -- that drinking water from the tap is BAD for you.

It is Coca Cola Amatil et al who CREATED this "feeling". Watch that link/video I posted.

Sorry this is my one barrel I push haha. Wrong thread for it really.

oh my god you guys

Bottled water is a load of bullshit. please don't drink/buy it. Thanks from the rest of the world.

pretty sure all water is fine unless you drink it out of a muddy hoofprint. Like you guys being all "don't put bad things in your body" on a board that has a 340-post thread on how awesome four loko is, i mean

it's the BOTTLING of the water that is the problem

Thankyou Shakey, I was begnning to think I was on crazy pills!

And if your tap water is hard (which is why Mark G's disprin wont dissolve), or metallic, or a little funny tasting - buy a filter jug!

I like hard water, both for drinking from the tap and for showering. Calcium and magnesium are not problems with the water, they're just common minerals. Hell, the water out of Lake Michigan has so much calcium in it, you don't need to drink milk anymore.

And it's delicious, btw.