Making sense of Spitzer

A recent Cal Tech study showed that when people think they are drinking an expensive wine, different areas of the brain are stimulated than if they are given the same wine and told it is cheap. The conclusion? Believing a wine is expensive truly makes it taste better.

Perhaps that in part accounts for Eliot Spitzer's taste for multi-diamond hookers. Paying $4,000 or more a pop was likely an important aspect of his fantasy, because the pleasure of such an experience is not wholly contained in the moment of culmination. Like most human pleasures, anticipation is a crucial part of the experience, and the buildup given these professional women by the marketing of the Emperor's Club was probably something that excited him for days before, as he worked himself into a state where he could make the call, that accompanied him on the plane to D.C., and titillated him all the way to his suite in a Washington hotel.

Sure, he could have picked up a 'one-club' prostitute on the streets of Albany, but that would have added nothing to the deluded fantasy world that existed in his mind.

When I was avidly bicycling, I was happy with my cheap Japanese bike until I found out about the Colnago, the epitome of Italian velo-art. For a while, a Colnago was all I could think about.